Monday, September 19, 2005

The After Effects of Defacing Jan Brady

In 1973 when I was sick, my dad brought home a copy of Spec magazine for me to read. It was a teen mag, but I thought it was terrible. 1973 was the same year I defaced the 5x7 fan club photo of Jan Brady.

Apparently that was the start of a life long process of blackening teeth and making thought bubbles on photographs of things I dislike, look funny, or deserve to be mocked. Here is my slide down the slippery slope that is photo desecration. I really seemed to throw myself into it.


I hated this magazine so much that three years later in 1976 I wrote on the cover, "Spec is the worst magazine I ever read. I like 16 and Tiger Beat." I also saw fit to sign and date that declaration. No one shall ask me why I hung on to a magazine I hated for three years.



Chip Hand and Rad Pera weren't bad looking kids. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thus they were designated part of the clown brigade.



Ow, my eyes! That wallpaper is unbelievable...and I'd paper my entire house in it if I could find it now. David Williams had a twin brother named Andy Williams. He also posed in front of this wallpaper in the same clothing. I could never figure out what the Williams had done to get their pictures in the teen mags. I think they sang, but I never heard anything by them.



Poor David Cassidy. I never really liked David, but he's a sensitive soul. Here we find out the truth about the tears behind his smile. Well I say dance clown, dance!!!



Another group I never liked - the Osmond Brothers. Yup. In my eyes, one's a clown, one's got an old lady granny hairdo, and the other is apparently a spaceman as I've written beep beep above his head. I guess I spared Donny because he's the youngest and the cutest. I'm grasping at straws here, but I would guess I spared the other guy because he's got a picture of Tito sticking out of his chest.



Can you be Randy's girl? Do you really want a man who's got giant pink lips and the start of jaundice? I think not. I used to watch Emergency every week, but I liked the other guy better. Since I didn't color his whole face, I must have considered him less offensive. Either that or I was tired of doing clown faces.


The last entry in Spec's Clown-o-saurus was a double whammy. Donny may be a clown, but David is the newest member of Kiss, which in 1976 I considered a bigger insult. I even went so far as to decide whether they were stuck up or not. You see, Donny is close to his family and down to earth. Yet David is always whining about how tough life is and the tears behind his smile. Get a grip, man!!

6 comments:

Bubblegumfink said...

You're missing out on the Williams Brothers. Andy and David are nephews of THE Andy Williams. They put out a couple groovy records and guest starred on the Partridge Family.

Jamie said...

Brilliant. I want to see more!

I wish I still had all my vintage defacement art. The reason I don't is probably because the pictues I defaced belonged to my sister. "Did you draw in your sister's magazine, young man?"

"Umm...uhh...err..."

Jimmy said...

I'd be curious to see a psychological evaluation of your artwork, Chris ;)
The Randy's Girl pic is just creepy. Even without the modifications, it would still be creepy.

Chris Jart said...

Well if the Williams Brothers are bubblegum music, I'd like to hear them. I always wondered why they were in the mags.

Vintage defacement art - what a great phrase! I'm not sure how many other things I have like that. A few years ago I did a massive cleaning and got rid of at least half the stuff I owned. Amazingly the Spec mag remains.

Psychological evaluation of artwork, huh? Oh boy, who knows what they'd say. I still regularly deface photos to this day. That would probably disturb them the most!

In fact I often take catalogs or advertising out of the recycle bin because something about it strikes me and I figure I can do something funny with it later. The psychologists might say it's disturbing, but I just scream "you don't understand my art!"

Spinning Girl said...

That is a trip!

Chris Jart said...

To the anonymous person who thinks this is MS Paint, in the 70s there were these things called art crayons. You would use them to draw on paper. If you went to an art store, you could still probably find something similar. Also if you think this is MS Paint, then you missed the whole point of the blog.