This is a story about Art and Inspiration -- and lack thereof.
Hemingway had his booze. Allen Ginsberg was an early psychedelic. And even Lady Gaga admits to dabbling in cocaine. It's hard to say what came first -- artists or their chemical muses. But since the beginning of time, artists have been as creative in picking their poison as in executing their works of art.
Personally I'm not so good at choosing poisons. I've never smoked a cigarette, and I'm pretty sure I was in my late 20s before I figured out that Mary Jane had something to do with marijuana. The upside is that I am so squeaky-clean that the
FBI could still hire me.
The downside is that my art probably really sucks.
Somehow I made it through college without a lick of alcohol. When I attended college, we had a tradition called Nude Olympics, when pasty sophomores would shed their clothes on the eve of the first snowfall and engage in what was surely an unflattering set of calisthenic exercises. It was a collegiate celebration of debauchery and drunkenness, and everyone in school turned out for it - either as participant or spectator.
Except for me.
Here's what I was doing:
 |
This Crude Drawing Obviously Suffers From
Lack of Any Assistance From Controlled Substances |
That's right; I was busy being a dork, highlighting textbooks. LAME. I was completely sober and alone in my dorm room -- studying for a Chemistry exam. (As it would later turn out, freshman Chemistry would be the lowest grade of my academic career.
That's what you get for deliberately avoiding drunkenness and nudity. DIDDLY SQUAT.)
Even after I turned 21, I still hadn't started drinking. In fact, it was not until graduate school that I had my first sip of alcohol (a very sophisticated jar of cheap bar sangria, thank you very much). After that happened, I started to see what people were talking about. Alcohol did seem to break down inhibitions.
I noticed mostly because I had many.
Many years later, I decided it didn't make sense to hold myself back any longer. I was certain that deep within my mild-mannered self, there was actually a raging rockstar/bohemian artist trapped inside, just waiting for my stupid inhibitions to give me a break!
 |
| Sears Portrait of Me With Something Trapped Inside My Blazer |
 |
| Close-Up of My Imprisoned Bohemian Rocker |
As a teenager, I had seen a documentary about how Jim Morrison got high before getting on stage. The performances were fiery, outrageous, and ... inspired. Because there was no doubting the Doors' iconic place in rock history, I decided to adopt this mantra:
"I'm going to be JUST LIKE THE DOORS!"
 |
| I Wanted To Be Just Like This Dude |
That's when I decided I was ready to get F*cked Up In the Name of Art.
Lying in my garage was an old set of miniblinds I had picked out of my friend's trash. I had Big Plans for these dirty miniblinds. I was going to make them f*cking beautiful. I thought it would be really cool to put a graphic on one side of the blinds and a landscape on the other side, so it would be two "paintings" that together would form THE MOST BAD-ASS WINDOW TREATMENT EVER!
All I needed was a Sharpie pen, a little poison, and my mantra:
"JUST LIKE THE DOORS."
Since I wasn't about to sacrifice my FBI-eligibility in the name of art, the poison I picked for my experiment was Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. This was the formula I had in mind:
+
+ 
=
 |
| Beginning of the Metamorphosis |
 |
| Transition State |
 |
| The State of Psychedelic Genius |
So I spent a few hours drawing with my Sharpie and getting much closer to being JUST LIKE THE DOORS.
 |
| JUST LIKE THE DOORS |
 |
| JUST LIKE THE DOORS |
JUST LIKE THE DOORS.
JUST LIKE THE DOORS.
But then things started to go in a different direction. All of the sudden, I began to get cold. Did the Doors ever get cold?
So naturally, I changed out of my clothes and put on my bunny suit. Lest you think I had a Playboy bunny suit just lying around in the closet:
It was actually more like this:
A Playboy bunny suit would not have kept me very warm but an XXL bunny suit designed for a 200-pound man would. So that's why I put it on. Although I was cold, I was still feeling quite inspired and productive. That's when I decided to start decorating my walls with twigs.
 |
| JUST LIKE THE DOORS |
But after I was done decorating, I was still very cold. I decided the only possible way I could get warm enough was to take a hot steaming bath. So I peeled off the bunny suit and jumped into the tub except by now, I was way past the Doors, lost in somewhere else all too familiar: the Talking-To-God-In-French Stage-of-Drunkenness.
I'm not particularly religious, nor do I speak much French, but when my body stops metabolizing alcohol, God and French suddenly come together to party and to teach me a real lesson.
After I got out of the tub, I think I went to sleep although it's hard to say for sure because this was what my Morning After looked like:
 |
| Clothes and Bunny Suit Abandoned in Hallway |
 |
| A Wall of Twigs |
 |
| Some Really Dirty, F*cked Up Miniblinds |
 |
| Hands Covered in Sharpie |
And worst of all, I realized I had fallen asleep without putting on my pajamas ...
Faced with this physical evidence, I had to admit that the Bad Ass Window Treatment World Tour was a total bust. The only thing that looked worse than those miniblinds was the rest of the house. Despite my fool-proof formula, I had not become the Doors at all. To the contrary, based on the nudity and drunkenness, it appeared I had succeeded only in reenacting the Nude Olympics, albeit in the safety of my own home.
All of the sudden, I longed for my highlighter. Suffice it to say, I haven't seen the Doors much around my house since that experimental evening. But I did hang this up in my bedroom as Artistic Inspiration ...
 |
| Portrait of an Artist, JUST LIKE THE DOORS |
... and in the meantime, I'm still totally waiting for the FBI to call.
