Friday, January 07, 2005

Street Cred, if You're Stuck in The 70s

I was looking out the subway window at all the graffitti tags on the DUMBO buildings and thought to myself that if I had a tag, it could be "pie". "Pie" is easy - just three letters - and while the act of tagging a building carries an air of agressive territorialism or attention-seeking, "pie" is such a cute, non-threatening, homey word that it might change up the reaction people normally have to tags and give them a bit of a smile. I can see it now - "pie", the letters in plump, swoopy bubble style, evoking sweetness and a fullness of the stomach and spirit. And I could also draw a little stylized rendition of an actual pie - but nothing too specific. After all, if I am like a pie, in that I have a crusty exterior but a syrupy, goopy center, the metaphorical crust, filling and topping change from day to day. One day I am a turkey pot, warm and rich and nutritious, full of deep and varying elements, the next a lemon meringue, airy and slightly ascerbic, or a berry crumble, deceptively simple but with a complexity of harmonious components inside.

The only problem is, I am not a huge fan of pie, itself. In fact, I'd have to say my preferred dessert is much more likely to be a mousse, cookie or custard. None of those sound quite right as a tag for me, however. "Cookie" is a possibility, but it has a bit of a connotation already attached, and the obvious symbolic association of a tender-hearted but tough diner waitress-type doesn't entirely fit my personality, not to mention being overused. There is one other dessert that might apply, which is actually one of my most favourite comfort foods: pudding. And I like to think I'm like a pudding: richly comforting and sweet, if perhaps a bit too soft for my own good. Which should it be, "pie" or "puddin'"? As I actually find the act of vandalizing public property with vain, hyper-scale renditions of one's nickname appalling, and am too lazy to conduct a po-mo artistic campaign of pasting leaflets baring my moniker on every streetmap and construction scaffolding, the world may never know. But the comparison has given me an idea for the ultimate combination...

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