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| "White Heart Bar" (acrylic on receipt folder; 2008) by Christopher Michael Sullivan |
Customer Copy: An artistic gift that failedWhile you're there, don't forget to take a peek at this month's cover story, NPR's Other Enemy," about John Crosby, interviewed while in jail for sending threatening messages to NPR via email, including a death threat directed at the host of the popular show, "All Things Considered." Or, if you prefer lighter fare, a regular favorite Bollard feature is "That's My Dump," a column which investigates the history (and possible futures) of abandoned or ill-treated properties around the Greater Portland area, here: http://www.thebollard.com/bollard/?cat=46
By Christopher Michael Sullivan
I imagined myself as David Blaine skillfully performing street magic. Not so much the flashy Blaine frozen in Times Square, or the ripped, glowering Blaine who held his breath for 17 minutes on Oprah. I would be the benevolent, unfettered Blaine, the one who wields a simple deck of cards, and who then might suddenly, quietly levitate for an audience of one or two zaftig tourists on a boardwalk. The Blaine who doles out intimate acts like the transformation of a playing card’s color; a delicate trick that brightens the day of the few people fortunate enough to witness it.
As an artist, my deck of cards would be a paintbrush, and my trick would be the transformation of restaurant receipts into paintings. My magic would brighten the night of all the servers who stumbled upon it. It would be my gift to the service industry.
The trick was supposed to work like this. When dining out, after finishing my meal, I would ask for the check and hand the server my credit card. The server would return with a black receipt folder containing my card and the receipt. The server would see me take my card, sign the receipt, and leave. When the server came back to collect the receipt, she would discover that – magically! – the folder now contained two identical receipts: alongside the paper original was an exact replica, meticulously hand-painted onto the inside of the folder.
[...]
I have spent the past two years performing this trick and can assure you that no one has mistaken me for Banksy. In fact, eight “receipts” have been dropped at establishments all around Portland and not one has conjured any excitement whatsoever. They have, without exception, been completely overlooked. After a cursory glance, the painting is mistakenly thought to be another receipt. The work of art, and the magic, are wasted.
My tragic magician’s tale began (as so many tragic tales once did) at the now-defunct White Heart Bar and Cocktail Lounge on Congress Street. [...] Over the course of several weeks and half-price bottles, I studied the rhythms of the White Heart, noting prices, the servers’ work schedules — even the time it took to pour and deliver a drink. I gathered all the information I would need in order to create a convincing facsimile of the receipt I would be given. Then I went to work in the studio, meticulously painting a receipt onto the inside of a folder just like those used at the bar.
After a week of painting, I was ready. With the folder concealed beneath my coat, I returned to the White Heart, ordered and drank wine, executed the switch, and left. A secret magician’s assistant, planted elsewhere in the bar, stayed behind to observe the server’s reaction. He picked up the folder. He entered the totals into the register. Then he put the folder on a stack of others behind the bar and went to take another order.
Maybe the White Heart was the wrong venue, I thought. Two more bars, two similar reactions. Two restaurants, two similar reactions.
Maybe it was a lack of complexity – perhaps the painting wasn’t dazzling enough. I made double receipts, folded and creased receipts, wine-stained receipts, stapled receipts. Nothing. The most notable response was, “Wow! It is really stuck down.” Each time, the work was tossed aside. The hours of preparation, the sleight of hand, and the artifact were all lost on their intended recipients. The work wasn’t received as art. It continued to be perceived as a receipt, and thus failed to manifest magic.
[...]
Click here to read the full article and see more of the paintings! http://www.thebollard.com/bollard/?p=8652
-- Swop: My cute puppy, Toy Manchester Terrier with pedigree. Wanted: Useful things, rare birds, or make offer.
-- I want a hand sled on which I can load heavy stones for drawing away. Will swop with Vantines deodorant spray bottles.
-- Have a natural red fox neckpiece. Would like 20 or 25 jigsaw puzzles (any size); any 3 complete years of National Geographic or Reader's Digest or Holiday or complete year each of all three; and odds and ends of colored yarns (any weight).
-- Will swop crochet work for parakeets or finches.
-- A beautiful old organ with false pipes. Tone splendid. Will swop -- just tempt me right.
A Maine Fish Story.Source: The Indiana Progress, 7/17/1889, pg 8
A fisherman in Winthrop tells that he caught a pickerel through the ice on Lake Marancook, last January, and found in its stomach a roll of undigested bank bills amounting to $300.
He thinks that the money was lost by a sporting man whose boat was upset on the lake more than a year ago. —Bangor Commercial.
Clown prop stolen from truck in LewistonSource: http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/04/22/news/clown-prop-stolen-from-truck-in-lewiston/
By Mark LaFlamme, Sun Journal
Posted April 22, 2011, at 9:36 a.m.
Sun Journal photo courtesy of the Lewiston Police Department
The Kora Clowns Weight Loss Machine in action at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.
LEWISTON, Maine — The tension is thick.
A large clown named Kracker has crawled into a bright yellow box. Bulbs are flashing, blue, green, red. A buzzer sounds. Smoke pours from the magical box. Confetti flies into the air and moments later, the clown emerges, half the size he was moments before.
It’s called Kora Clowns Weight Loss Machine and it dazzles audiences wherever it goes. Only now, the machine is missing, the target of thieves who swiped it from the back of Kracker’s truck.
The theft was a trick in itself — at 400 pounds, the bulky box could not have been an easy thing to carry away.
“The machine is very large and heavy,” Lewiston police Lt. Michael McGonagle said, “and would need more than one person to move.”
Detectives are on the case. Real police, not the Krazy Kops. And they are not clowning around. Leads have already been developed. Police and the Shriners who use the box to entertain crowds at the circus are hoping the thieves will bring it back.
“It’s not a high-value item,” Shriner Michael Morin said. “But it means a lot to us and to the kids.”
On Thursday afternoon, there was a report that the Weight Loss Machine fell off the back of a truck on Interstate 295 in Freeport. Police were checking into that report while chasing local leads.
“If anyone has information,” McGonagle said, “or knows of someone who has lost a lot of weight in the past day, have them contact Detective Roland Godbout.”
Cue rim shot.
It’s hard not to joke about a device used by a bunch of clowns. But the Shriners are serious about getting it back.
The prop was taken from the back of a pickup parked on South Lisbon Road the night of April 12-13. Its absence leaves Shriners without one of their more popular gags with which to wow audiences.
“The guys are scrambling now to put something together for the Augusta circus shows on Friday and Saturday,” said Jim Bennett, also known as Ginjo the clown. The box was constructed by — no, really — the Shriners Klown Unit. It’s a simple box with attachments for the bulbs, smoke and confetti. It’s Kracker who goes into the machine but a slimmer clown named Stumpy who comes out.
Which Rob Farrington, of the Klown Unit, feels is fairly important to note. Who knows if the thieves are crawling in and out of the box, waiting for the pounds to magically disappear?
“It’s a pretty cool little skit,” Farrington said. “But it doesn’t really work.”
Clown prop recovered. Sort of.Source: http://www.sunjournal.com/city/story/1019444
By Mark LaFlamme, Staff Writer
Apr 23, 2011 12:00 am
LEWISTON — The Kora Clowns Weight Loss Machine, reported stolen earlier in the week, more likely fell off a clown's truck in Freeport, police said Friday.
Police said it appears the 400-pound wooden box was not stolen after all. Indications are that the gizmo may have fallen off of a pickup driven Richard Nadeau, aka Kracker the clown, after the Shrine Circus show in Portland on Tuesday night.
Highway officials apparently found the box along Interstate 295 in Freeport late Tuesday or early Wednesday. It was in less than prime condition, police said, and the Weight Loss Machine was disposed of.
Nadeau had been hauling the box and told police he did not notice the item missing from his truck parked on South Lisbon Road until Wednesday morning. When he discovered it was gone, he told police he assumed it had been stolen, police said.
It was not reported to police until Thursday. They began looking into the matter and by the end of the day, they discovered that the box had been found on the interstate in Freeport.
The Weight Loss Machine featured flashing bulbs, ominous smoke and a buzzer that heralded the seeming transformation of a big clown into a little one.
"It was a pretty popular skit," Shriner Mike Morin said.
It had been constructed by the Shriners and was valued at about $500. With more circus appearances on the schedule, Morin expects the Shriners will waste little time in constructing a new and improved Weight Loss Machine to continue the business of shrinking clowns and wowing crowds.
"I'd be really surprised," he said, "if they don't build another one right away."
Ghost hunters summoned for trespassing in OronoSource: http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/05/18/news/bangor/ghost-hunters-summoned-for-trespassing-in-orono/
By Dawn Gagnon
Posted May 18, 2011, at 11:28 p.m.
ORONO, Maine — Four area adults were summoned on trespassing charges shortly after midnight Tuesday after they reportedly scaled a barbed-wire-topped gate leading to Ayers Island with a baby in tow.
“They said they were looking for ghosts,” Orono police Officer Wilfred King said Wednesday evening. King said one of the ghost hunters brought along a camera in hopes of documenting paranormal activity on the island, which is privately owned and off-limits to the public. Several large signs there make that point.
King also said that the ghost hunters picked late Tuesday night because they said there was a full moon.
Sgt. Scott LaJoie said the group didn’t quite make it onto the island, however. King, who was patrolling the area that night, spotted their vehicle shortly after they arrived.
Charged with trespassing, but not arrested, were: Eric Roy, 23, of Bangor; Kimberly Patten, 19, of Orono; and Chauncey Hulbert, 27, of Bradley, and Hulbert’s 25-year-old wife, Suzanne Hulbert, King said.
King said that the Hulberts had brought along their 15-month-old child and that Chauncey Hulbert was taken to a Bangor hospital for treatment of leg injuries he suffered while climbing over the gate, which King said is about 8 feet tall and topped with barbed wire.
According to published reports, Ayers Island is home to the former Striar Textile Mill, which was built in 1890 and last operated in October 1996, as well as the former Orono Pulp & Paper Co. Most of the buildings that remain there were built around 1907, according to local histories.
It has been, among other things, the focus of redevelopment efforts and an environmental cleanup.
It also has a reputation for being haunted. In the summer of 2006, the cable network VH1 filmed two episodes of “Celebrity Paranormal Project” on the 62-acre island titled “Tanner’s Ghost” and “Wooden Lucy.” (Video here: Tanner's Ghost -- http://www.hulu.com/watch/120375/celebrity-paranormal-project-tanners-ghost Wooden Lucy -- http://www.hulu.com/watch/120374/celebrity-paranormal-project-wooden-lucy)
According to local legend, the island in the Penobscot River, located two miles from the University of Maine campus, is haunted by the ghost of a foreman killed in a mysterious accident who is said to haunt the mill seeking revenge, and the ghost of a young girl whose father accidentally killed her after being tricked by a 300-year-old American Indian curse.
Roy and Chauncey Hulbert were among three men arrested in 2008 in connection with the theft of $6,000 in electrical wiring from a Bradley contractor. (Story here: http://new.bangordailynews.com/2008/08/01/sports/3-men-arrested-in-theft-of-wire-worth-6000/?ref=relatedBox)
Roy later was indicted by the Penobscot County grand jury and sentenced the next year to 30 days in jail and $500 restitution. He also has a theft conviction from March of this year and convictions for possession of drug paraphernalia and driving without a license.
Hulbert has been convicted of criminal mischief in 2010 and 2009, and assault in 2009.
Toilet fire reported in RockportSource:
By Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff
Posted May 01, 2011, at 4:03 p.m.
ROCKPORT, Maine — A would-be arsonist used a dollar bill and alder branches Saturday night in an attempt to set a fire in a portable toilet outside a Route 90 convenience store.
“That is odd. That is very bizarre,” said Traci Cultrera, a cashier at the Tolman Pond Market. “I’m blown away that they used their own money.”
She said that staff had discovered Sunday morning that there were a bunch of “brambled sticks” in the urinal, along with the dollar bill. Not much damage was caused by the fire in the toilet, which is adjacent to the store.
“Just a little charring on the Porta-Potty,” she said. “Good thing it didn’t manage to catch. If it did, we would have lost the whole store.”
Patrolman Dana Smith of the Rockport Police Department said that he had been called to the scene to investigate.
“It started to burn, but either somebody showed up, or they got sick of waiting for the green branches to burn,” he said. “The dollar bill was pretty much gone.”
He said that he encouraged the store’s staff to get better security cameras. Smith said that he thinks he has a suspect in the matter.
“You just never know what you’re going to get,” he said.
WHEN: Monday, May 16th from around 10:00pm to 11:00pmI saw two bright lights out the window. The lights came from the east and headed west. It appeared to look like a jet headed for a landing in my driveway.(I have corrected a few minor and obvious single-letter typos for readability.)
When I went outside, it changed direction towards my property which is in a rural area. I then noticed there were two sets of lights. As it got closer I could see two triangular shaped vessels. They were very close to each other. There was the sound of machinery, engine. But it was not like the sound of a jet engine, helicopter, prop plane or automobile. The air was still underneath it. It was not a very loud sound.
I called for my friend in the house to come out and see it. There were many white lights underneath. There were bright lights at each corner of the isosoles triangle. When looking up you could see inside the vessel. It appeared to be about 20 ft across. As you looked up into it seemed to be constructed like a pyramid. Inside the lights you could see geometric patterns.
Lights like search beams eminated from it. The light was very bright but not blinding. At one point the light fixated on me for a few seconds and the vessel continued on like what seemed to be a walking speed. As I stared up at the vessel I knew it was other worldly. It came in from the east and then proceeded south southwest.
I took my dog out for some business about 12:10 this morning. I went out on my stoop and I always look at the sky. Having moved here a little over a year ago, I enjoyed the night sky because it had so many more stars than where I lived before.
I noticed what appeared to be a plane above and to my right. It had a couple of lights on, flashing but not going on and off. They seemed to twinkle more than flash. I assumed it was a plane and continued to watch the dog as she sniffed around. After a few seconds, I looked up again and there was one steady light. I thought I must have been mistaken about the additional lights and thought maybe it was a star. Then they came on again. It wasn't moving but it was hovering, and I realized after a minute or two that this was something unusual.
The lights flickered, and then it started moving extremely slowly toward me, with no sound at all. That freaked me out a little and I went inside. I looked out the window of the door, and I saw it moving side to side, slowly. Then it stopped and continued to flicker.
At first I thought it looked like it was a boomerang shape. But it could have been a disc. It definitely had an angle to it. It reminded me of a wedding band that had diamonds all around it. Like I said, they were white and flickered, sometimes all of them, sometimes a couple and sometimes just one.
It was hovering out towards Lewiston, ME and it was about the height and size of a plane. I watched for about 15 minutes, but because of it moving toward me, I decided to stop watching. It definitely gave me an eerie feeling. I've seen UFOs in the past (many years ago) and they didn't evoke that feeling in me. This just seemed different, maybe because I was by myself and it was so dark out. I watched the news hoping to hear of other reports, but so far there haven't been any. I thought I should mention it to someone. Thanks.
Three of us, July 1978, teenagers at the time, were night fishing for eel on the shore of the Sandy River in Strong Maine. We heard a whooshing sound, like the wind, directly overhead, we looked up, and said at the same time, "Wow look at that", and there was a black triangle, with rounded points. Each point had a fixed colored light, (not blinking)red, blue, and green. The round lights were at least 10 feet in diameter, much bigger than any man made aircraft lights i've seen otherwise. The triangle was an estimated 300 feet each side. The craft was approximately 300 to 400 feet above us and made no noise except the sound of the craft cutting the air. The speed of the craft was about 20 miles per hour, too slow to be a conventional aircraft. It was below stall speed and should have crashed, but it kept slowly flying west, up river until it went out of sight. Time span was about 30 seconds. my brother still thinks to this day that it was an experimental military aircraft. In my opinion, it was a technology out of our reach and beyond our capabilities at the time. This is the only flying triangle I have seen. I have had 9 other experiences that I will share at another time, 4 of which were during my childhood in the 1970s. Keep looking skyward my friends. Phil62.Just one more example of the high-strangeness era of the 1970s! Even Maine wasn't immune to a rash of UFO sightings. In the September 7, 1976, issue of the Biddeford Journal, mixed in with all the other classified ads for lost wallets and "Hairdressing in your home" by Mr. Andre, the following ad was run:
Source:
http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/manage_sighting_reports.pl?mode=view_long_desc&id=28639&rnd=378201303516069
PLEASE report UFO sightings or encounters in your area to:
Shirley C. Fickett, 797-2664, International UFO Bureau, East Coast Headquarters, 482 Auburn St., Portland Me. 04103.
We are serious about UFO's and need information. They are also being seen in other areas. We will be confidential, we are not with the government.
There’s something in the water. Something dark, mysterious and possibly hostile. Everybody on the small, insular Maine island knows about it, but nobody much wants to talk about it directly — except one newcomer, who appears determined to figure out what exactly is going on.For those who want to dig further, there is a blog with lots of behind-the-scenes material here:
That’s the basic premise of “Ragged Isle,” a 10-part Web series that launched online at raggedisle.com on March 9, with a new 10-15 minute episode premiering each Wednesday through May 11. The series was written, produced and directed by a group of Portland-based filmmakers and writers called the Entertainment Experiment, led by the husband-and-wife team of Barry and Karen Dodd, both natives of Waldo County and graduates of Belfast Area High School.
Read full article here: http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/03/21/lifestyle/maine-island-of-mysteries-featured-in-web-episodes-of-the-new-%E2%80%98ragged-isle%E2%80%99/?ref=latest
