John’s Big Head Eccentric Outsider Art Blog

Dirty old outsider artist Tripping in the Americas
by John Dog a.k.a. John DAgostino, Eccentric Outsider Art Maker 

Part One - I was IN SIDE now I am way outside. I left Side Turkey on the 15th of October and made that 14 hour bus trip to Istanbul, like I done so many times before. That’s why I’m standing here knocking on your front door. I had the keys, but after three break-ins by an old employee, they changed the locks at the pad where I was crashing. I arrived at 11 am as planned. Found a matress on the floor and stretched out my long body along its full lenght. Damn knees are sore from being cramped on that friggin’ bus so many hours.

The first night in Istanbul was awesome. I am staying with my friend Aziza, a lawyer from NYC, an ex-pat, like nyself. Aziza is certifiable. If it wasn’t for all the meds she is on then she’d be bouncing off some rubber walls in some looney bin. We drank a bottle of vodka and talked all night. Ordered the most excellent Indian food around 2 am - spicy curry chicken and lamb with all sorts of hot and tangy side dishes. Somewhere we found some wine and washed down our meal with that. No pussy that night. Went to sleep in seperate rooms as the Imam was beginning the morning call to prayer.

I can’t remember if it was Monday or Tuesdays that we went to Uskadar to some Turkish friend’s house for dinner. It was great to see my buddies Nesrin and Erkan. Nes had no problem wiping up some healthy vegetable dishes from the Turkish Kitchen cooking book stored in her head. I laugh when I read news stories about letting those strange Muslims into the EU. These are normal people. Erkan is a top financial manager in a large company. He has a pony tail, eclectic tastes in music (he burned us copies of some Spanish Caribbean hip-hop), and a thity-something middle class desk job belly. He smokes more than he drinks. We were drinking Chivas and toking on Backwoods cigars - vices from each end of the economic spectrum.

After dinner the party got more crowded and I found myself on the couch with some fine young pussys. I got pictures to prove it, as soon as my friend e-mails them to we. Young girls go crazy for eccentric outsider artists.  It was pretty kinky. I love open minded females who don’t think three is a crowd. Aziza, Erkan, and Nes were spending lots of time in the kitchen doing god knows what. I was happy for the time alone with my new babes. I won’t bore you with all the details.

The rest of the week continued in a similar vein- good food, cheap booze, and beautiful women. Got in a bit of bowling before I took off for Miami and the second leg of my trip. Wilma was supposed to meet me here Saturday, but it is Sunday an I’m still waiting. Part two will tell the rest of this tale. Think I’ll pop me a can of Guinness and have breakfast. It’s an eccentric outsider artist jet lag living in two different time zones meal thing - bagels and beer, gotta love it, Miami in the morning.

Part Two - Well, of course the CIA had played some games and when I got to Miami, I was on the list.  They let me through after answering many weird questions, like, Why are you sweating so much?  (duh, its 90 degrees with 90 % humidity) What were you doing in Bulgaria? He didn’t care about the answers, he fired off the questions faster than I could answer and didn’t wait for a response.  They let me throught but I know I am being followed.

More CIA fun and games.  I got to the car rental place and found that my license was suspended.  Before I left the US, I had no points, no accidents, no violations. So how does my license get suspended when i am not driving for 20 months?  More CIA shit to try to get my foot out of.  Without transportation I was limited in my movement and wound up in North Miami in a place that looked like it got hit by a hurricane.  But that wouldn’t actually happen for 2 more days.

Wilma finally came after a week of foreplay in Mexico.  They Spanish fly itched her hole wide open and she came in torrents.  It was a very moist wet event to use the expression of one weathered weather man.  Wilma did a few quickies on the Florida Keys, Miami-Dade and Broward counties.  She got off and left.  Wilma was such a costly whore. She was a category 3 bitch that left many with no energy and a dry taste in their mouths.  Southern Florida was spent, recoverery from this screw would take some time and many banana and rum coctails. 

I was scheduled to leave on the 26th at 8am.  Got to the airport a 5 and waited for the plane to Guayaquil which the airline (COPA) swore was not cancelled.  At 9:30 I decided to find me another flight and I booked with American for a 7 pm flight.  After a nap stretched out on the cold carpet in corridor ‘C’ I awoke at 11 and headed for the bar.  Many beers and double tequila shots waited there for this stranded eccentric outsider artist. I made my flight that got me to Ecuador at 11 pm Miami time.  It was a fucking long day.  I stunk like a street bum, but I had no problems at customs - American, American, welcome, welcome, thank you for bringing us mas mucho dolars  dinero bueno

Part Three will hit the wordpress after my head clears more from all the rum I drank last night.

What would John Dog do?
by John DAgostino, Eccentric outsider Artist, a.k.a. The John Dog

I get obsessive sometimes about my web sites.  I always want to keep them interesting.  Put new things on them, add pictures, and links. I check my stats not too frequently to see if people are visiting them.  I also check my page ranking for some of my key words, outsider artist, eccentric art, etc.. John Dog is one of my key words and one day I was checking yahoo search and found  "What would John Dog do?" posted on Molly Goatwax’s Blog. Mrs. Molly Goatwax is an artist, poet, and  pub owner of Molly’s Public House in Baltimore.  Here is the item below.

July 13, 2005
What would John Dog do?
I have been invited by the education co-ordinator at the musuem to conduct a hands-on seminar in small collage for twenty people at a (winter) Holiday event. I have mixed feelings about this, because while it is an honor and a chance for "face time", there is no stipend and the offer has been extended to several artists in an effort to provide hands-on activities for the fund raising event. If my seminar is well recieved, it may lead to a more featured, paid attraction. It looks as if there might actually be some considerable outlay for materials. I’ve got a few days to think about it.

I had no idea why Molly used the name John Dog. I thought maybe it was a "Baltimore" expression, slang term for genius or something.  Before I became a full time eccentric outsider artist I had many jobs in the real world.  One of these jobs was as an education coordinator for a museum in Miami.  I did this for 7 years. Time to make the Twilight Zone - do - do -do - do -do - do noise.  Here she is sending out a question in cyber space to the John Dog - little did she know that she would soon get a reply from a John Dog with 7 years experience in museum education programming.  Pretty much I told her that normally museums have budgets for these things so they can pay visiting artist or lecturers. I didn’t post my reply on the blog but e-mailed it to her.  I thought maybe I would get an e-mail back saying, thanks blah, blah, blah. But I never got one and forgot about it.

Just the other day I was doing a John Dog search and checking my results and found another blog entry by Mrs. Goatwax.  Here is the post below.

July 19, 2005
Big Wow
My post the other day about the quandry with doing a workshop at the museum was titled "What would John Dog do?", because when I fed the term "eccentric artist" into the search engine, there he was. I have never met nor communicated with Mr. DAgostino, aka John Dog so you can imagine how absolutely floored I was to find an e-mail from him in my in-box this morning. And rather than take umbrage with me for having invoked his name in vain, he gave me some good advice! I quote his missive, in summary: "John Dog says Do It on the condition that the education director (maybe with your help) creates a program and a budget for future workshops. I’m sure your artist friends will appreciate being included if they are justly compensated. It is a win-win situation for the museum, the artists, and the public." And, in viewing some of the links and threads from the sites that I went back and actually looked at (rather than just pluck his name from the search), I find a philosophy from which much more can be learned…besides that, he seems like a nice guy. Thank you, Mr. Dog

Thank you Molly.  When I am in that wonderfully funky city of Baltimore I’ll have to stop in for a cold one.  Also thanks for introducing me to Beer Church (a link I saw on your site).  Although I am already a self-ordained minister in The Church of The Only True God becoming an official credentials as a minister in Beer Church would be pretty cool.