I went to the giant antique fair in Round Top, Texas, this weekend. It was an entertaining afternoon.
The event is...extensive; about a mile of highway is packed with vendors 10 booths deep. It just goes on forever and ever. Some of the stuff is beautiful, Depression glass and knitted lace and ingenious foldable wooden kayaks and whatnot, but the majority of it is just really great junk. Shit. Trash.
A lot of that junk is really creepy.
Creepy plywood angel choir. Whatever they are singing about--eternal salvation or kittens or breakfast tacos--I want no part of it.
Creepy bejeweled mannequins. The smaller one's eyes are so accusatory. I would be pissed too if I had to wear that plastic atrocity, but jeez, lady, don't take it out on us.
Creepy lunchbox that is also overpriced. I had this one as a kid, which means I sat and stared at creepy, dirty orphans every day while chewing peanut butter on whole wheat.
Creepy doll parts, but aren't they all?
Creepy car for a creepy ride depicting the most recently blown-up space shuttle. In addition to creeping me out, this one also made me a little sad.
But the creepiest thing of all, the creepiest thing I've seen in a while, was this:
Clowns are creepy. But a smirking rape-vibe clown standing casually between a distraught woman and a basket stuffed with a bat, a sombrero, and what the hell is that, anyway? A lampshade? A fan? A giant shuttlecock? That kind of clown is downright chilling.
Now that I have a few days and some ironic distance between me and that painting, I keep thinking I should have bought it; you know, just for giggles. But I recognize that I am able to think that only because I am wilfully forgetting the bleak wave of misery that broke over me when I rounded a corner and saw it for the first time. It makes me shudder. It makes me glad I went to Round Top, and just as glad that I left.
(Photo of the clown painting and shuttlecock comparison courtesy of Dan!)