Herman had a baby!

Back from a quick roadtrip to San Luis Obispo to pick up two Cushmen we won through an online auction for $850 each. Everything went totally normally: I showed up late to Dan's place at 10pm to drive down that night, the trailer we had wouldn't fit Lester, we left thinking we'd find one there, it poured once we reached San Luis, we parked and slept, woke up to thunderstorms and a very wet left shoe for Dan, he put a freezer bag over his sock and said it's fine, then we found out there aren't any car trailers in town... But we went to the gum wall anyway, because when in San Luis you have to wrap your foot in a freezer bag and go to the gum wall. Here's Dan noticing that after a good rain it really really smells like gum:

Dan made his contribution:

As did I:

And then it was Cushmen time. Look at those beauties. They were handing out pain in the ass tickets to the students of CAL San Luis Obispo just a few months ago, and are still running super strong.

The problem was that according to the terms of the auction we had to have them out by 4pm that day or we'd lose them, and he had another buyer who would pay more so he wasn't exactly sympathetic. We scrambled, even had people in SF scanning Craigslist San Luis Obispo (yes there is such a thing) for a trailer. Finally we found the last big-ass 26' Uhaul truck for miles. The problem: how the hell do you get two Cushmen into the back of a big-ass truck?

Dan tests one out. Starts right up and runs purrs!

They don't give these to just anybody:

We drove across campus to the loading dock, o how I'd missed driving down the street and having everyone running in fear to move their illegally parked cars...

We got to the loading dock, my camera switched to some really dark setting, and the dock was way higher than the bed of the Uhaul...

Dan wanted to jump it. Or jack the truck with sandbags. Yikes on both counts.

Finally this forklift miraculously appeared, which also managed to fix my camera:

All loaded up, I followed the Uhaul the hell off campus:

The fleet:

This calls for a celebration...

And that's about the end of the Cushman stuff. But here's a weird one: we randomly drove by this art gallery that was showing knockoffs of Dan's work. It's such an unbelievable ripoff it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. Here's Dan's work, for comparison (link1, link2, link3), or just google for Dan Das Mann. Dan already knew all about it and had confronted the guy in the past.

I expect this sort of thing in the business world, but in the art world?

Argh:

This guy should be shot, or at least embarassed:

This piece in the foreground isn't a Dan knockoff, and of course it also sucks:

Anyway, we blasted home up the 101, Cushmen and us safe and sound. Now comes the interesting wrestling match with the DMV, since these things have no titles, have never been registered, are hard to insure, etc.

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