“The only talent I have is this: I’ll flap a piece of bologna in front of thousands of women and say, ‘This is a pig’s ass.'”
— Susan Powter, speaking to Elle magazine in 2006
He’s not a marquee idol, he’ll probably never play for hundreds of thousands at Central Park, and he doesn’t win (or, outrageously, even get nominated for) any of the music awards. All he does is write and perform straight-ahead common folk country jams which you cannot eject from your head once they’ve been granted entry.
One of the most criminally underrated artists of his generation (and a dude who could totally take that discreetly fey doofus Kenny Chesney in a bar fight), the terrific Phil Vassar kicked around Nashville as a journeyman songwriter for most of the ’90s. His big break came in 1998 when, with his twin smashes “Bye Bye” and “I’m Alright” (tunes that garnered him ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year honors the following year), he wrote the blueprint for Jo Dee Messina’s bracing comeback.
So, there’s this sketch.
I drew it a couple of weekends ago, using three half-sharp crayolas, on a paper tablecloth at a restaurant where such artistic expressions have long since passed into the lore between my lover and myself.
The sketch consists of a rectangular mass of cerulean brushstrokes — colored sideways to subconsciously limn a softer effect — strategically placed between a moonbound spacecraft clearly marked “U.S.A.” and two stick figures pointing skyward, projecting all the wondrous awe of which stick figures are capable, toward a crescent aglow from the inviolable glint of starlight.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a soap. It’s a perfectly legitimate form. I acted in soap operas in the day, to make my living. I did a lot of those! I remember, I played a cad in one of them. I was trying to seduce a girl… it took us about thirteen weeks in one rumble seat to get anywhere. But it was the same plot as we see on TV now.”
— the estimable Orson Welles, discussing life and art with Merv Griffin mere hours before dying of a heart attack in 1985
