Not even a Break In to the sacred Venus of Willendorf Project Temple/Studio can get me to blog.  Two days ago my precious assistant Amanda Moyer came in to tend the studio cats, Richard Scarry, Dr Jeff Katz, and Daisy May before making her way to my house to do some office work.

As she went back to empty the litter box in the garage/storage portion of the space…she noticed an opening to the back wall that had not existed before…Well it actually had been there all along only it had been covered by a piece of chip board.  Now the board was gone leaving a 2 foot by 2 foot hole in the wall looking out into the jungle of weeds that separates the studio from the train tracks. My mountain of neatly stacked and stowed book boxes labeled soft and hard were now littered with windows crudely cut into at least a dozen of the boxes.  Stuff from the corners of the room were roughly scattered towards the center, in what looked like a half-assed attempt to find something of value in a space that on a regular basis could be described as a crime scene.

Officer Trudy of the Ann Arbor Police Department checking out the point of entry.

In fear for her life and in shock at finding the space violated, Amanda called me from the front entry way of the building, scared that what ever had broken in might still be in there.  Fear had blinded her to the fact that whom ever had done this had opposable thumbs and the knowledge of how to use a box cutter.  Not that that isn’t scary enough…but she was thinking rabid raccoon or something wilder( Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My”). On closer inspection it was clear the intruder had used a knife, and indeed a very fancy cooking knife was found on the floor by what must have been the last box he broke into.   Clearly he/they were losing it by this point…they could not believe that a whole storage space was filled with boxes containing only diet books.  At this point they started to pull out the books figuring this must be a trick and the booty was just hiding behind the books.  The only booty they would find here I’m afraid..would be my big fat one, and I’m happy to say it was not here at the same time they were.

Although the studio was filled with every different size and brand of box cutter our villainous fiend brought his own tool. Anybody missing a nice kitchen knife? Someone has been stealing from Hell’s Kitchen!

Seriously there is nothing in these boxes but diet books!

Thankfully everyone, cats and people are safe and no one appears to have been injured.   At first I wanted to put the furball gang on double secret probation, for not doing a better job at securing the place.  But after closer inspection…I think that our thief or thieves may have actually been spooked by the motley crew.  Dr Jeff loves to roost on the top of the boxes and because the cats are in a pretty busy space they are used to people coming in and out, they probably were rubbing up against our burglar and asking him to change their litter and trying to tell him where I hide the fish flakes cause they were thinking it was a good time for a snack.  I can just see Dr Katz looking down at him from above as he struggled to understand how every box could contain only diet books, all the while having this huge Black Cat with searing yellow eyes leering at him in the dark from above would creep anyone out.  So for this I thank my lovely friendly felines.

Dr. Jeff Katz being his bad ass creepy in your face self. On top of the mountain of book boxes

Bad news however is we now have to spend the week cleaning up instead of finishing the Somersize Me Venus… that beauty will have to wait. Honest to Betsy besides the Venus of Phil…which did not survive it’s own treelike thickness has taken the longest ever to make.  Probably because I have not been any help at all to Amanda…after two summers of Paper Mache every day…I just have really lost my love for it.  Hopefully the next few Venus Sculptures will be fast and fun…so we can make some head way.  Just like dieting itself this work is boring and tedious and you just don’t seem to be getting anywhere most of the time.

Word to the wise if you are collecting things as an investment?Diet Books clearly do not rate. I find it ironic that Officer Trudy L Sahr of the Ann Arbor Police Department thought perhaps they were looking for food, and all that was found were books that teach you how to live without it.

I keep wondering what the heck was going through their minds as they found diet book after diet book…it must have been like that reality TV show Storage Wars…”There must be something good in this box…”  Or ” this one”  “OMG MORE DIET BOOKS???”  Well…it serves them right.  If it wasn’t such a jungle back there I would love to graffiti the side of the building to say…JUST DIET BOOKS!

So the long and short of it is I blame my landlord…and his lazy ass super for never securing the window properly and of course leaving two ladders at the back of the building making the break in even easier.  Thankfully the ladders are now moved and the hole has been boarded up again, but this time from both the inside and the outside.  To bad I didn’t think of it sooner…I would have loved to have filled the thickness of the wall with shards of glass, pointy side up cemented to the wall so that anything thing that tried to climb through there again would get cut to ribbons.

I have such a richly violent fantasy life and even you Mr. Thief In The Night can’t wrestle that out of my cold dead hands!