BUYING PENS WITH THE STARS!

College is all about delusion. Delusion that you're actually an adult, delusion that you're actually learning something useful, and delusion that you'll be using that something to solid ends when you graduate, and not just taking on extra shifts stocking small pants at the Baby Gap down by the mall.

Art school, in particular, is an elaborately delusional experience. Not only is it the teacher's job to lead you to believe that you are learning a useful skill that isn't entirely beholden to your predetermined natural ability for a particular medium (not to mention being able to come up with concepts and ideas worth sharing), but also to delude themselves into believing they are doing the world a service by helping fill it with important, challenging artwork, thereby making you (the student) believe that painting bowls of fruit and sculpting phallices will somehow earn you a steady paycheck when you graduate.

And for every would-be Jackson Pollock out there just waiting for the alcoholism to set in, there's that first, fruitful art store visit- a rite of passage for any would-be art school kid. Sure, buy the $45 "ArtBIN"... it's not exactly the same as a $10 tackle box or anything! And those packages of pencils you buy 10 for $2 at Walgreen's aren't good enough- instead, pick up pencils that cost $3 each and break easily!

It's one big racket, and at least around here- an area where there seem to be very few working artists- nine times out of ten I find during a quick visit to grab more ink or a pen tip, I will undoubtedly be shopping exclusively with sullen teens who aren't good at math, and their hopeful parents- hoping that somehow, some way, they've managed to raise the next Gauguin in their humble Fort Wayne, IN track home.

On this most recent visit, the kids seemed especially disinterested in being anywhere near the shop, shuffling around with pained expressions alongside their beaming parents under a big sign sporting the store's slogan: "You Might be Shopping Next To the Next Van Gogh!"

I have to say... I don't think I was. The next Steve-O, maybe. Possibly the next Fall Out Boy roadie-turned-meth addict-turned-religious zealot, and more likely than not, the next Waukesha, WI Applebee's shift leader.

One thing I do know, however, is that even if one of those kids shows up my jaded ass and turns the art world topsy turvy with their genre-defying, edgy paintings- the people shopping around me were most DEFINITELY not shopping next to the next Van Gogh.

I like having two ears too much.