ARTFARTS™: The Converse Project

So Anonymous A and I decided to leave the John Eats Cave early Saturday morning in an attempt to act like normal humans for a change -- you know, the ones who actually leave the house, eat food and interact with other human beings who leave the house and eat food. So what better place to go than one of them hipster brunch spots that the kids these days seem to enjoy so much after a long night out of listening to the rock and the roll and drinking at the devil juice?

Our meal was made extra-pleasant by the wacky cast of characters occupying the table next to ours: a four foot tall, three foot thick army brat obviously used to being the center of attention who, during the many times he got up and came back to the table, made sure to rub his ass against my coat which was laying on the bench between us; his girlfriend, who couldn't keep her meathooks off of him, laughed like Mr. Ed and may not have had all the spots on her dice; his loud overweight parents, who said things like "He's a nice conservative guy!"; and the brat's sister, who rarely spoke and carried a small pink piece of luggage which was continuously berated by the brat, who was obviously nervous around something "prissy" that reminded him of those filthy, unnatural thoughts from the deeper, darker recesses of his psyche -- the ones he thought he'd banished forever at boot camp. They had finished their meal just as we sat down, but proceeded to stay and "chat" for the entire duration of our meal, which made us eat quite a bit faster than we would have preferred.

We were just plotting to get up to go to the restroom at the same time so as to spare each other from having to sit alone next to the 50-decibel freakshow alongside us when suddenly a member of the waitstaff approached me:

"Excuse me, can I ask you a weird, kind of personal question?"

"Great," I thought, "someone wants me to help them bury a body again."

But it wasn't like that at all. No, she just wanted to take a picture of my face and my black Converse. And put the pictures online. She said she had one of them fancy picture sharing accounts on The Flicka, you know, that web page with the photos and the social networking that everyone talks about these days. She said it was for something called The Converse Project and that I was "the first non-friend" she had approached about being photographed for it. I wasn't sure if she meant an actual human friend or just someone's account she'd added to her MySpace page since I so rarely understand what goes on with these kids on the cyberhighway these days, but there you go. So now I'm up there, at least a full fifteen years older and fifty pounds heavier than everybody else. That's what I get for leaving the house, I guess.

Anyway, give it a looksee! [The Converse Project]