I’m more diced up than Van Gogh’s earlobe over the way the climate change cuckoos are destroying priceless works of art with their lunch pails.
Why just the other day I was admiring a classic Jackson Pollock. (My neighbour Mr. Wong gave me an art gallery membership last Christmas—about the only right thing he’s done.) As I stood there taking in the message behind the medium, some blue-haired twenty something gal butted in front of me. A second later, she removed a bowl of steaming vegan meatball soup, and tossed it all over the masterpiece!
I was shocked at how it actually seemed to improve the abstract work by the American painter, but also offended at the stench of tofu and mushroom sauce that dripped off its priceless canvas. Then the little smug smog proceeded to superglue her hands to the wall and began ranting about the wickedness of oil and gas.
The Artful Dodgers
Seeing as I was the only one there, aside from her pink haired pal who was filming the whole thing for some sort of TikTok protest group called Just Stop Oil, I proceeded to ask what the hell she was thinking. “People care more about works of art and are oblivious to the climate crisis,” she ranted at me. She then proceeded to call me a boomer (whatever that is!).
“Well,” I answered, “I happen to know that your avocado on toast is worse on the environment than old Jack Pollack ever was.”
Eventually security arrived. After confirming her preferred pronouns, they carefully peeled her off the wall, and politely escorted her out of the art gallery.
I couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t arrested or charged; the gallery didn’t even tell her that she could never return. (Even I got banned from the Dollarama last year for not wearing a mask.)
When I got home that night I told my family about the incident over supper. My wife Greta, and our lovely but sadly liberal kids: Juliette, Marisol, Anthony, Jason and even both Danas didn’t even blink an eye. In a rather blase fashion they told me that there were two ‘activists’ who dumped tomato soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London, and a couple more who pulled a similar stunt with some mashed potatoes on Monet’s “Haystacks” in Germany.
“Heiliger Strohsack!” I screamed. “At this rate by next week, the Mona Lisa will be smiling under a plate of spaghetti.”
“You have to look at it from young people’s perspective, Dad,” said my woke son Jason in between bites of organic cous-cous. “Maybe they have a point. If people would just stop staring at art work then maybe they would focus on climate change. By the way Pops, I’m meeting some friends for an oil and gas protest downtown this weekend. I need to borrow your car.”
I said: “Son, Halloween is just around the corner, you and your protest pals are welcome to squeeze into my Dodge Caravan so long as you all dress up as clowns.”
I mean, think about it, Van Gogh lived his life in poverty, if anyone knows suffering it’s him and not these trust-funded activists who live in their parents’ basement and jet set around the world on their dad’s Air Miles; so why attack his work? Added to that, as a published novelist (Toby Gelman’s Johnny Jock PI Detective series, now on Audible), I understand suffering and hard work, and much like the critics of Monet and Van Gogh and other Impressionists, who were ridiculed at the time for their visionary ideas, I wonder if these kids have even ever created a masterpiece… and no, building Ikea furniture doesn’t count.
“I doubt these activists have ever created a thing in their life,” I announced before excusing myself, as my family dove into a conversation about how offensive a sexy nurse Halloween costume is.
I decided I needed to prove a point. I went into my study, fired up my LenovoThinkPad and thought long and hard about something the woke left cares about that I could ruin (beside the climate—LOL) . Maybe I’d whip up a steaming pot of beef stew and toss it on one of their idols. Perhaps Joe Biden or Justin Trudeau, or even Klaus Schwab, I brainstormed. But after hours and hours of online research and thinking I couldn’t come up with one thing that the woke left actually cared about, besides themselves.
That’s because these kids don’t care about anything, everything to them is about instant gratification and becoming an influencer. They don’t appreciate art, music or literature, all they care about is fifteen seconds of TikTok fame or 100k hearts on Instagram. Even Boomerbook has lost its mojo with the kids. And Twitter is just a bunch of face mask wearing Ukrainian flag donning AI bots. Don’t even get me started about Reddit! I mean, Incelit.
Let’s be honest, these so-called movements don’t really care about the environment, they care about getting friends and followers. Because if they did care, and were interested, they wouldn’t try to destroy the work of the very people who were on their side and, perhaps, believed in their cause. And it all makes sense, since instead of learning about history and art in school these days they’re learning about chopping Johnny’s balls off.
But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a senile old boomer with a membership to the art gallery. And that’s all the woke talk of oil and gas that I can pass.
