Tuesday, August 4, 2009

can akat

i have a friend called Can Akat. we went to grad school together. he's awesome.
he has a tattoo of a small circle, about the size of one of the three holes that you might find on the left hand side of a sheet of notebook paper, on his hand between his thumb and index finger. one day, while we were eating pizza, i asked what the tattoo meant. he said "nothing." i thought that was great.
one time, over beers, i was telling him about the funniest thing i had ever seen in my life. the funniest thing i've ever seen in my life is this: senior year of college, two teams of 4 men were having a case race, which is a race to see which team could drink a case of beer fastest. it was a very close race. i was involved. the last two beers came down to two friends. for the sake of anonymity, we'll call them "dafe" and "demefri." both were on the verge of barfing. demefri has a condition where if he hears, smells or sees barf, regardless of his own physical condition, he WILL barf immediately. dafe stopped drinking his beer in order to barf in a nearby trashcan. demefri, witnessing the barf, turned quickly to do the same. as a result, demefri barfed all over dafe's arm. i, in turn, began to laugh so hard that i, also, barfed. it was the funniest thing i had ever been a part of in my entire life.
i finished the story, laughing at it myself. Can Akat was not laughing. he asked me why Americans find vomit funny. he couldn't understand it and i couldn't explain it.
anyway. the word "artist" gets thrown around a lot. you could call me an artist because i make silly drawings and weird videos, but mostly i'm just trying to make people laugh. Can Akat, on the other hand, is a true artist. he shows people ideas that can't quite be expressed in any other way. call me corny, but that's what i think real artists do. anyway, if you're into that kind of stuff, check out Can Akat's website and while you're there, check out the video called "You, The Living" because it's really cool.

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