Learning Day: The Frank Frazetta Museum 🌭

Yes hello to this weiner bunch. Well a while back i started to get that real strong PULL in my head again and a course the sorta scatman crothers wakin-dreams, i couldnt remember the details but I knew they was real important and tellin me it is time again to journey fourth, this time to the East for reasons there to be disenveiled. I didnt even have to tell LaRene she also sensed it so she packed up about a dozen loaves of zuchine bread for me (with nuts even though i dont like em she knew I’d need the protein) and I told Trayton: be good just cuz i’m gone for a bit doesnt mean you can start sleepin in Rabbit’s dog-crate again, and they saw me out to the 92 civic we keep around for hi-way driving and hugs of course and off I went!

Well we had to jump the battery first but then off I went! With nary a map or destination only my kinda ESP GPS and my 1900HOTDOG Diners Club Card but I trusted that would be enough.

And pretty easygoing at first honestly just me and the road and some music from the library and I got all the way to Alliance, Nebraska when i got my first sense of: somethins about to change. So I asked the fella at the Maverik there (nice kid, i was offerin to trade him some zuchine bread for slices of the older pizza in the warmer and he said just take em), i asked him “When’s the next Maverik after this one?” and he said “Goin’ east?” and i said yep and he said “Nope, aint any more Maveriks that way only Flyin-Js.” which we both spit on the ground about that and I thanked him and went outside lookin at the gatherin darkness and took it in that i had reached the verily edge of my known realm.

Well i’ll not go into detail about the rest of the journey but it was some days and nights an there were many ventures and happenins along the way. There was the Corn Wolf of course and I had to answer his Vittle-Riddles to gain passage. And then outside a St. Louis was the beautiful but treachersome Sauce Sirens what emit a seductful and enticin’ hickory-vinegar smell to lure the unsuspectin and I had to plug up my nose with the zuchine bread lest i dash the Civic up on the bales there. And then the fearsome Anabaptist Kratom Raiders who was actually pretty nice once i offered to share my pizzas with em but always followin that PULL in my head like some kinda brain mapquest: East and Easter still into strange lands with service-stations like i never seen before with bitcoin atms and interestin arts:

And candy-toys with unpleasant names:

What kinda tasted more like scabs than candy, but I think Trayton will like the jeep sticker.

And then at last ‘ppeared the twin stone guardians what told me i was pretty much arrived at my destination:

So i parked up the civic and patted her grateful-like for wasnt she a good an faithful steed and approached the portentious buildin what my brain was tellin me go inside there.

And upon openin up the door mine eyes did beheld a cavern of treasures most precious and beautiful!

Many of em which tempted me but I knew i had to follow my psychic guide to the ultimate end of my journey and so i stayed that path until i reached the far end of this treasury and this is what it was i had been called to witness:

So i nodded and said “yep” to myself and thats the spiritual part of this journey over. 

And it’s pretty convenient that a quickly-resolved psychical urge helped advance this-here story about:

And yes right away there was a girl come up sayin sir theres a $15 required donation, which you know what? I paid it gladly because Frank Frazetta is a favorite artist of mine and this museum is the building what used to be his studio where i could look at many of his works up close for as long as i wanted. If your not sure you know who Frank Frazetta is I bet you do actually, like if you had a older cousin what made his own weapons than you probably seen these:

Or if your a fan of cool animal drawings that sometimes include human figures for scale:

And theres even a pretty strong 1900HOTDOG connection:

But if you STILL dont know who im talking about well surely there isnt anyone reading here today whos got this far in life without watchin what is for-real a masterpiece of rotorscoped animation i’m of course talking about when Frazetta teamed up with Bakshi and made:

Which in the museum they have it playin on a infinity loop:

A man could get trapped there til security poked im. 

And you can probly see theres just all kinda special Frazetta memoriables all over the museum like pictures of Frank and his special friends such as Cobra:

And Clyde’s dad:

And Dave Mustaine’s understudy:

And i dont know who this one is:

But hes got that lollipop head so probably a actor? (Frazetta there you might could tell had a stroke near the end and had to relearn paintin left-handed)

So i’m enjoying myself learning about Franks life and neat pop-culture stuff but honestly mostly just looking at what to me is evidence that even though i cant really define it there is such a thing as talent and there’s people what have it and some mix of fortune and effort lets em make real good use of it, i mean look at how much life and sexy and personality there is in just this lil newspaper comic:

But then as i’m walking around i start to notice some things about this museum like its not the tidiest:

And somebodys been using the Fire-and-Ice tv for non-museum purposes:

And the workers are just kinda setup wherever with dunkin-donuts right next to the million-dollar arts:

And then I hear the gift-shop girl talkin to the lady doin the tours and to the older guy who is just kinda wanderin around and arguin about whose car has enough room for the stuff for a trade-show and tryin to explain what “hi-res images” means to each other and did they e-mail em and we better call Will to make sure and you know what? I worked in enough disfunctionin samwhich shops and pizzarias and gas-stations in my time to know that this all is addin up to:

This museum of priceless irreplaceable and pretty much iconical art of a once of a generation talent is: Family-Owned and -Operated.

So some of you might be like me and just even that phrase brings up black-and-white war memories of owners’ kids comin in real late to make themselves a pizza after you already cleaned up for the night or ugly husband/wife arguments happening right in front of the customers who just wanna pay for there slimjims or the one son takin money from the til sayin his dad said he could (but he didnt) or findin out you accidentally took a side in some anscient family feud by sayin hi to the one sister when she came in so you can guess i needed a minute here to process. Out i went to breathe a little bit but now that mine eyes were opened to the nature of this outfit, stuff i had kinda noticed on the way in now had a differnt countenance to me. Like I seen the place didnt look super kept, but first I thought maybe it was on purpose to show how the Artist drew Insparation from his Environment and cant we dissern parallels between his daily world and his creative outputs like:

RUIN OF ONCE-GREAT CIVILAZATION

MANS VIOLENSE AGAINST NATURE

THUNDERSOME MOUNTS WHAT HAVE WELL-EARNED THERE REST

THE INEVITABILTY OF DECAY AND ENTERPY

FELINE-SENSUALITY

AND SEXUAL FRUSTATION

But now it didnt seem real epic and heroic anymore just more like no-one was botherin to keep up the place. So i was a little bummed but I still wanted to get some tradin cards so I went back in and the girl at the counter at first seemed annoyed that i was askin questions about everything and she just kept saying: “That was my grandpa’s I don’t know anything about it.” But then her mom came by and accidentally took a sip of the wrong Dunkin Donuts and made a yucky face and said “Ew that one has sugar!” and the girl rolled her eyes and I said “My wife does that exact same thing haha!” and the girl laughed and was like “So dramatic!” and the mom kinda embarassed smiled and said so do you want the tour? And I said sure and she started show-and-tellin me about her father-in-laws art and his life and i learned that Frank loved his wife Ellie very much and she was the one that made sure that his art was never too dirty or ungodly here is his painting of her:

Except heres one she thought WAS pornographic and blasphemous so before she died she made the kids promise that they would never-ever take it out to show it and they kept that promise…

…by keepin it on its easel and its the first thing you see when you walk in.

Frank himself was also intents on keepin things family-friendly, here’s a memo he wrote about Fire and Ice:

In case you dont want to read the whole thing he says he taught the actors how to KILL FRAZETTA STYLE and invented ROLLING UP NEWSPAPERS IN LUI OF PHONEY WEAPONS and was THE IRON HAND IN MAINTAINING THAT THE FILM BE KEPT CLEAN

AND

INOFFENSIVE

(no ironhand about the racism though)

And I learned other interesting things like how Frank had 4 kids including Frank Jr. (who was the guy wanderin around) and it was his idea to start the museum but the other 3 kids didnt want to donate the paintings they inherited so theyre pretty selfish but also when they sell theres, all of the paintings in the museum get more valuable so also theyre pretty dumb.  

The Mom was real proud of her family too, she said how Frank Jr. coulda been a artist like his dad probly and Frank Jr. came around then and said yeah but when he got to anatomy classes that was like math to him and his brain doesnt work that way. (Also he told a pretty long story about how the guy from Metallica bragged about his real expensive bathroom and Frank Jr. didnt think much of that.) And the mom said that her own daughter (not the one working that day, a older one) was a excellent artist too and heres a album of her drawings so everyone can see how she “really captures the Frazetta Face.”

Which i wanted to see that but I got distracted by some other albums that were on the same table which were full of strange photos i didnt understand at first like:

They look fancy and famous like I SHOULD recognize em but I dont really. That couple on the right there looks pretty happy together though, something tells me their gonna be ok.

But then some of em started looking ACTUALLY familiar like hey.

I’m pretty sure that guy made Mission Earth!

And:

I think was she was the queen of pop!!

And then hold on just hold on is that…?

It totally is!

That’s Trilogy of Terror’s Karen Black!!!

And i think i remember reading about her wasnt she a big…

Oh yeah ok i know what these are now: Elrond Hubbard liked Frazetta and got him to do some of his book covers and I guess Frank went out to LA for some of their Sciencetonomy parties. Look: he kept the program too and put it in his scrapbook:

But where were we oh yeah we were gonna look at Frank’s granddaughters art which her mom said you could see she got some of her grampas talent, here we go:

And lookin at this well, is where my heart grew three sizes that day on the whole family-business thing. ‘Cause here’s this mom and dad surrounded by and curatin’ these real expensive master’s pieces but the thing they kinda talk most about and want to make sure everybody sees is the cute drawings their girl did when she was little, which: I can relate real hard. (And not just the parents, later I saw that somebody had covered up the kid drawings book with the scientomony scrapbooks and the daughter went over and made sure her big sisters book was back on top.) So anyway it made me think it’d be pretty weird and hard in a way i hadnt considered to have your dad/grandpa be real famous and talented and your probly torn between wanting to make a living from his work but also bein real tired of talkin about him to weird scifi nerds for your whole life. Like imagine if a big part of your job was signing books of art that you didnt make and didnt even write, just because you had the same name as your dad:

And probly practiced a lot to make your signature look like his, I guess.

Anyway they still had more kinda salty things to say about the other siblings and haters on Facebooks and such but for me now it was feelin like they were just about as bickery and ‘fectionate and shitty and lovey and lazy and doin-there-best as any other family and they were real nice to me personally and asked about where did i drive from and did i have any questions and take all the pitchers i want and gave me a discount on a book I knew LaRene would like…

…and told me what was a good place to get food (Alaska Pete’s, I got the Philly-Cheese-Steak Spring-Rolls to be like a local) and wished me safe-drivin home and even took a picture of me and Frank Jr.

And yeah maybe they never talked about the part of the museums history when Frank Jr. got arrested for breakin in with a backhoe and steallin about $20 million dollars worth of paintins but i guess maybe all i can say about that is: its probly good luck i never had access to a backhoe on MY worst night In the name of Jesus Christ amen.