Posted by pancho from pool0004.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.216.4) on Saturday, November 30, 2002 at 9:06AM :
"Have I got a Torch For You"!
I first heard of Atour when his wife told me he'd called her one day on his cell phone from San Francisco where he was at that very moment blubbering in front of the Ashurbanipal.
Atour is the most devious, shifty eyed bastard I ever met. The man is constitutionally unable to look you in the eyes and give you a straight answer. He's parlayed that into a reputation for being humble...when it's the ploy of a man who's had to look up into people's nostrils his whole adult life...and feels ashamed.
After our first visit to their house...when they'd insisted we sleep in their bed...I left a bronze winged bull on their dresser. Janey told me when Atour saw it after we left, he started blubbering all over again.
Either the man has a serious leak...or he has a kind of problem with Assyrian art...or at least with the one who can make it, that causes him to come apart. From his behavior later on, I'd say Atour is extremely jealous of a talent he'd like to possess...something besides making fall-away Fords.
Without meaning to I had a kind of a hold over Atour's tear ducts...and presumably the emotions attached to them. I could make that man weep at the drop of a sculpture...as such he could resent the "power" I had over him...the ability to have something he covets...something that can "un man" him...gave me power over him (weirdos are like that). Maybe it was something Oedipal...he was jealous of the father, the one who had power over him...me...and wanted me out of the way so he could fuck the sculpture...or fuck it up, himself. And what about the weird insistance that we just HAD to sleep in his bed...what would Freud, or Julie Andrews, have made of that? I can see making your guests comfortable...but it is distinctly UNcomfortabe to sleep in his bedroom...in his bed...where he and she....never mind.
Then comes the little tyke's rebellion. I think he was looking for a reason to screw ME all along...I think that gave him the hots more than anything. Who, in their right mind, seizes the works of any kind of professional, and does what he wants with them? A rebellion against the father figure? I was certainly tall enough to be his father...his great great grandfather actually.
And what of his bizarre behavior when Jackie rubbed his nose in his twerpy insignificance? At the San Hosed convention we had the not too pretty sight of Atour down at the front desk hopping up and down saying HE was the president of the Federation NOT Jackie...and he DEMANDED they upgrade at least to a room with another chair so he could conduct "business"...even if there wasn't any room on the top floor where the suites were because Jackie hadn't booked him up there.
Now why would she do that...and why would he tolerate it...and why did he go along with her plan to break me...and only me? The Federation gave $10,000 to the Ashurbanipal and another $10,000 to the Shumirum. By then Sargon Lewie had become president and changed direction for the Federation into a funding source for his favorite political group in Iraq, ZOWAA. I knew there would be no more money from the Federation for monuments...I was competing with that idiotic notion we have that we are going to get a Christian enclave in Iraq and call it Assyria.
But...Sargon did allow us to use the Federation's bank account to launder money...I mean get the money from sales of my sculpture to me...the Federation was the fiscal sponsor of the Hammurabi...didn't cost them anything. As such they allowed me to sell maquettes of the Hammurabi at conventions to raise the money for the Hammurabi. On top of that Atour and Janey were heads of the Detroit group that were raising money for the Hammurabi in Detroit. Janey had brochures made and they travelled to Flint and somewhere else to speak to groups about the project.
With all of that going, and with Atour now being president of the Federation, and me being his "pal", having slept in his bed and made him weep and all of that...you'd have thought I would have been somewhat protected...or at the least I wouldn't get the worst treatment I'd ever received at the hands of the Federation, especially when you consider Atour's involvement with the Hammurabi. Then why shut me down...why stop me from making the sales we needed to keep the Hammurabi going?
It's a puzzle...until you understand that Atour can never grow any taller...can never learn to sculpt well enough to make anyone weep...that all he can aspire to is to control the person who can...and welding his sculpture for him...and even shutting him down...gives Atour a power he nowhere possess on his own. Being humiliated by Jackie and made to go along with her is just the humiliating icing on his little cupcakes.
And this, boys and girls, is why with amateurish, frustrated and inept leaders like this, we will never produce anything fine...because they are so UNfine they can't stand to be outclassed...and having so little of the article to begin with...we will only be allowed by them to produce glorified mediocrity...and force our truly fine artists under their thumbs...which at Atours height, makes us have to stoop way too far.
Assyria for Pygmies.
-- pancho
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