Fun with Graffiti, Bad Harrison Ford Movies and What Happened to That Other Guy from Wham!

Graffiti has been a popular communication tool for the Wife and me for many years. I'll explain more later, but it's important to understand the history of graffiti before we get into that. (It really isn't important to my point to understand the history of graffiti, but let's do it any way just for kicks). Graffiti was first noted to be used by cavemen 30,000 years ago. I wasn't around then.

The Mayans, Egyptians, as well as Ancient Greeks and Romans used graffiti, too. I wasn't around then either.

I remember as a kid that my dad would draw Kilroy for me. (That is what passed as entertainment before the days of Xbox, cable television and Al Gore's Internet.) Kilroy wasn't difficult to draw, but my dad was pretty good at doing sketches, anyway. He just drew Kilroy a lot because I was amused by the character's enormous nose. For those of you that don't know, Kilroy was a common graffito during World War II. (I wasn't around for World War II either).

The first successful film directed by George Lucas was "American Graffiti". While this film had a deep and interesting cast, it was Lucas's casting of his carpenter, Harrison Ford, which was most significant. Had Ford not been in "American Graffiti" he may still be a carpenter to this day depriving us of films such as "Six Days and Seven Nights", "Hollywood Homicide" and "Morning Glory". ("Morning Glory"? Really? Han Solo must have been rolling over in his frozen block of carbonite.) Harrison Ford is very old so he may have seen the graffiti used by Ancient Greeks and Romans or perhaps he did in an Indiana Jones movie.

"I like Eric Clapner"

"Physical Graffiti" is Led Zeppelin's best album (and top ten rock album of all time, too). One of the most popular pieces of graffiti was also associated with rock-n-roll culture when the phrase "Clapton is God" was drawn on walls throughout England in 1967. While Eric Clapton (or as Bill Clinton's Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders called him "Eric Clapner") is an amazing guitarist, the solo in "White Room" still isn't good enough to part the Red Sea or heal a leper (Heal the deaf? Maybe.)

You may ask, "Do you have any more interesting facts on graffiti, Keep a Happy Wife Guy?" You betcha! I'm just getting warmed up.
Graffiti was re-popularized in the 1980s partly through the music video to Blondie's song "Rapture". The video is pretty cool, but I don't understand why a man from mars would want to eat all the cars. The dude dancing around in the white tux, top hat and tails kinda freaks me out a little too.

Graffiti was also partially involved in the launching the acting career of another box office legend, Will Smith. Graffiti is a prominent feature in the opening credits to "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" television program. I have two questions about this. First, why do my kids like this show? It was off the air when the Tall One was two years old and long before the Short One was born. I suppose if TBS keeps shoveling it to us and telling us it's "Very Funny", then we'll eventually believe it to be true. Second, what happened to DJ Jazzy Jeff? Is he hiding away in some secret lair with Andrew Ridgley and John Oates plotting how to become Vice President? Enquiring minds want to know!

What does any of this have to do with The Wife and Keeping Her Happy? Well, apart from the fact that she likes Harrison Ford…not much. However, as I mentioned earlier, graffiti is a common communication tool for us. No, you won't see the walls of our living room covered with spray-painted expressions of love for one another. If you go in our bathroom, however, you will see writing ("graffiti") all over the mirror.

Our bathroom mirror is pretty big. It spans a double vanity and is about "so-long" by about "this-tall". We keep a blue dry erase marker in the top drawer that we use for our "graffiti". We use the graffiti for practical things like reminding ourselves or each other of important events on our schedule. A lot of the mirror space is used to post scriptures. It is not uncommon to have two or three Bible verses written out on the mirror that are relevant to things going on in our lives at the moment. You could also write out on your mirror famous quotations or, perhaps, lyrics from your favorite Eric Clapner songs.

Just gave The Wife flowers!

The fun part of the graffiti mirror is the romantic stuff. In some ways it works like the post-it notes I described in an earlier blog post. It's a way to leave love notes to The Wife where I know she'll find them. Small, but effective reminders of how much you love her. The graffiti also works well at planning a date night or a "date night" (wink, wink). So for two bucks you can buy a marker and get to work on that bathroom mirror. A pretty inexpensive way to Keep a Happy Wife.