Life In the Arts-An Overview: 2009-2011

2009 was a difficult year for me. In late March I had just been fired from a job I disdained and held onto for seven and a half years, because my parents told me I had to keep it despite the mental toll it had taken on me and a job counselor told me I needed to survive with a job, but above all, I apparently needed it to pay bills and my other livelihood in the name of art. When I was fired from my job, I was greatly relieved. I cried for five minutes and then it was over. I had to call my parents and tell them. My mom cried, while my dad hoped they would go out of business. Sadly, those motherfuckers are still in business, ripping people off on a daily basis. 

The day I was fired, my narcissistic author brother Louie had emailed me and proudly announced his non-fiction book had spiked number one that day on Amazon. I responded back, “Hey great. Good for you. I got fired today. Guess why?” My brother Louie during the last 18 months of my job, called me constantly at work while I was on deadline many many times, as I worked at a publishing house, all because I was to appear in an article and subsequently a radio show, that he claimed to have established a great relationship with the host and didn’t want to louse it up by appearing alongside me. It was indeed the radio host who had initially suggested that we appear together, as in two brothers with two very different types of creativity going on in their lives. But Louie didn’t want any part of it.

He would say to me, in a follow-up email, “This isn’t amateur night. We aren’t Abbott and Costello” and boldly and brazenly asked me to tell the radio show host that I wouldn’t appear on his show. I wrote back and told Louie, calmly, “No.”

When email didn’t work, he would phone me up on my cell and proceed to scream at me the same words. I remember at the time being on deadline and telling him so. And that I would hang-up on him if he continued to yell at me. Eventually, I did hang-up on him for being an ass.

When I returned to my cubicle, I received a call within 15 minutes on the toll-free hotline and it was The Arizona Babe, asking me not to go on the show. Good old Louie, I thought, he enlisted The Arizona Babe to do his dirty work, to undo what he wasn’t able to. I told her the same thing, that I was planning to go on his show and then I told her, “If I don’t stand up for myself now, when am I going to do it?” Louie was a constant pain in the neck back then, but that should be no surprise.

For the first time in nearly nine years, I was out of my element, stuck without any income and wondering what would happen next. I had a tour of the south coming up in a few days, not to mention rent due and wondered how I would pay for all of it. I wasn’t sure.

I let it pass by the next few days, as I had a handful of activities working for me-a gig at the 100^th birthday celebration of local writer Nelson Algren (The Man With The Golden Arm, A Walk On The Wild Side) in Chicago with my then poetry band, $2 Cockroach and a southern tour. Craigslist was always a great place to apply for art and performance jobs and a few months later I did just that, as I applied to an ad that was looking for a co-host for an art show web series entitled Art or Shit.

I had a meeting with the co-host and lo and behold, I became a part of the show, co-hosting as an art critic! The show, Art Or Shit, lasted a total of nine episodes spread out over two years (2009-2011), five of which I appeared in with co-host and creator of the show, Zomatic1, two of those episodes in which I appeared in, by the way, received the highest ratings achieved for his web series. 

Prior to doing

Art Or Shit, Zomatic1 himself was a cartoonist and budding animator. He was also a shipping packer at a package and mail shop, prior in his career, who, in his job, came across a ton of art. The audition process was quite simple at the time. All I did was email him from an ad I saw on Craigslist, arranged a meeting between him and I in late May and by mid-June, we were well on our way to filming our first episode in his apartment.

2010 was the eye-opener though, the calm before the blizzard and I was just getting started. At the end of January, I appeared after much aggression and ballyhooing from Louie, on the radio while joining me on the phone from Aarhus, Denmark, my good Internet buddy (at the time, shortly before we met) Pedro DaPalma. While the interview focused mostly on me, with Pedro, we talked about the project at hand, which was recording a live album (Safari Freakshow Adventure) over Skype between me at the now defunct Swing State in Lake Villa, Illinois and Pedro’s band, Clean Boys at their rehearsal studio in Aarhus and having it mixed, produced and released in Denmark, for which I was to fly over and tour with them.

In February we recorded. Between February and up to early April, we formalized plans and worked on the album together. $2 Cockroach was done. It was hijacked from me and was no longer mine. It also marked the first time in as many years, I hadn’t seen my old friend Oscar, as we split for a year and drifted off to other projects and happy life problems. I was also doing regular performance art shows, poetry shows and featuring at open mics. I had come full circle. I had also begun performance art work with Flabby Hoffman Trio, a band that while I first loved the work, eventually grew tired of and left several years later. In November, I auditioned for a spot on America’s Got Talent in Chicago at McCormick Place. Did my act and didn’t hear from them until January 2011.

2011 was a very fruitful year for me. I appeared on Chic-A-Go-Go, throat singing Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer to the tune of Jumpin’ On The Camel, a cover instrumental by Clean Boys, their tribute to local Aarhus performer, Don Saund, who was the author of the song. I would later go on to record it, as a cover tune, during the last days of my first tour of Denmark (See earlier entries on this blog about the tour). It appeared on my four solo album entitled Freewheelin’ Looney, which I released in summer 2011, in the midst of all the America’s Got Talent hoopla.

I saw the rise of my performance career peak with a tryout celebrity audition on America’s Got Talent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a documentary based on what would become my lifestyle for the next several years, entitled Sid Yiddish.  Art Or Shit was over. I kept performing, including the night I was shown on America’s Got Talent.

Overnight, I quickly became a quasi-celebrity in demand and a target for scams, scum, haters, unusually aggressive-types, stalkers, harassers, star-fuckers, hangers-on, wannabes and uncategorized whackos.

Although I haven't written yet about my trials and tribulations about the actual America’s Got Talent audition in Chicago and the celebrity audition in Minneapolis Much media coverage followed shortly thereafter, including interviews given in and published Jewish and Bulgarian newspapers (I will write about it at some point). I also developed my acting career a bit more, by role-playing as creepy characters in a suburban haunted house and later in the year, Santa Claus at Macy's. 

Art was never far away from me though, the need to learn, the thirst and the quest to expand my knowledge on a topical subject, I barely knew. Art Or Shit actually prepared me more than I thought it would.

I can honestly say that I didn’t know much about art and to this day, even after receiving a Master of Arts in interdisciplinary Arts, I still don’t know all that much about arts, because it is as much pulverizing as it is splintered in between all the experts, authorities, scholars, professors, instructors, students and the artists themselves.

I feel awkward in that, knowing that I’m not as skilled in articulateness as I should or appear to be, still. I move forward and of course, as many of us know and realize, that art is subjective.

Very subjective.