Going to the Movies with Joe

An America Eats! Short about the weird, brillant, funny artist and writer sitting next to you in the dark.

Welcome to the second edition of Saturday Shorts. You’re about to meet one of my favorite artist and writers, Joe Brainard. Here is a bit of his masterpiece, a memoir that’s really not a memoir.

I Remember 

I remember (I think) a candy bar called "Big Dick."    

I remember "Payday" candy bars and eating the peanuts off first and then eating the center part.   

I remember a big brown chewy thing on a stick that you could lick down to a very sharp point.    

I remember a very chewy kind of candy sold mostly at movie theatres. (Chocolate covered caramel pieces of candy in a yellow box.) They stuck to your teeth. So chewing one box would last for a whole movie.    

I remember how boring newsreels were.    

I remember a boy named Henry who was said to have poured a mixture of orange pop and popcorn off the balcony of the "Ritz" movie theatre as he made gagging sounds.

I Remember is a string of sentences that, as you can see, begin with “I remember.” This is pretty ironic because, by his own admission, Brainard was really bad at remembering things. But once he wrote one “I remember” sentence others piled after it. At some point—and as a miracle of beauty, sweetness, hard truths, and genius—his life reveals much of his reader’s own memories.

As the above does for me: Every Saturday the moms on our street grabbed hold of some sanity by giving their kids a handful of change and, en masse, we all walked up the hill to the Roxy Theater for a double feature. There, in the flicking dusty gray light of the screen, the universe filled with screaming, laughing kids stuffing themselves with all kinds of junk. When you got older, and supposedly got lucky, you moved up to the balcony and became a vessel overflowing with all of life’s feverish mysteries and desires that would to be endlessly scrutinized on the walk back to our moms.

Here you will find more of I Remember to read.

Here you will see just a sliver of Joe’s artistic range.

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The Nancy Book is sort of a cartoon travelogue where the comic book Nancy finds herself enmeshed in one strange world after another.

And here is some of Joe’s fruit art.

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I hope you’ve found Joe Brainard good company!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend! Stay away from the news! Get some rest! Go to the movies!

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This says more about my night stand’s witless ambitions than actual abilities.