No Millennium

If history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce, the third time it's -- Art History.

Yesterday, while leafing through a book of photographs of the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, I found this arresting image:



Does Infantrywoman Felicia Harris, posing in Uday Hussein's palace in 2001, know that she is imitating Manet's Olympia? Compare:

I need to remember to carry my camera with me. For instance I really ought to have photographed for posterity (or at least this journal): 


The sign reading "S & M Funeral Home" on Wayne Avenue in Dayton, Ohio. Sadly someone must have informed them, since they've removed it.

An establishment in Tipp City, Ohio, called "Dee and Kelly's Hair and Gifts", where presumably the hairstyles are dictated in an angelic language. (Those familiar with Renaissance magic know it ought to be 'Kelley', but spellings weren't standardized in those days anyway. Look at Shakespeare's signature.)

The inimitably apt graffito painted below a viaduct in Grant Park, Chicago, which read,
Drag Queen
Creature
Skeleton Girl. 


One never knows when the marvelous will strike.