Spaz-tastic

By Alison

Okay, so my new favorite person on the planet is this woman who fell on the Picasso. Read the article -- but just in case you're too lazy to do that, this woman in NYC was taking an art class at the Met, and somehow, she managed to topple onto a Picasso original, creating a six-inch tear in the canvas. She's not liable for the millions in damage she caused, and the museum is repairing the tear as we speak. But... I mean... Can you imagine???

I can. And this is why I love this woman. This is I why I want to take her out for drinks and create a character based on her, and why I can't stop laughing whenever I think about this story. She was taking an art class and fell on a Picasso!! This makes her, without question, an enormous spaz. And I laugh because... uh... so am I.

As longtime readers of this blog may remember, I spilled wine all over a big-deal Dutton editor at my very first Bouchercon, but my spazzitude goes beyond that. When we were living in Mexico, my husband and I were at a party on a mountaintop --  a pretty fancy affair, with a very expensive high-powered telescope set up to view the planets. It was set up so you could see Saturn though it perfectly, and when it came my turn to look through, I knocked into the thing, and it took them a good hour to reposition it. On a less destructive, but no-less spaztastic level, I'm continuously tripping, falling, spilling drinks, knocking things over. And while I've indeed been a Sean Doolittle drink-spillage and college girl-vomit target myself, I can only view it as some kind of karmic payback.

But... and this is a big but... I have never, in my entire life, fallen atop a priceless work of art and put a rip in it the size of a beer can. For this, I say, Thank you woman in the Met. You make me feel like a more graceful human being.

What's the spazziest thing you've ever done?

Comments

[Jeff Shelby]

You do realize that you will now absolutely fall into a priceless work of art and rip it now, right? GUARANTEED.

Poor Mitch Hoffman.

[Karen Olson]

I walked into a parking meter while walking to dinner at Bcon. Alison may remember that.

[Victor Gischler]

On the high school baseball team, running hard, sliding into third base. When I finished sliding I was still 2 feet from the base.

VG

[SD]

I also spilled a drink on Christa Faust. Sigh.

SD

[JD Rhoades]

I walked off the roof of the Student Union at the University of North Carolina.

Alcohol may have been involved.

[Lori Armstrong]

I was driving a shopping cart in K-Mart when I was about 10, came around the corner too fast and hit a display of glass vases. Broke like 100 of them.

Made a helluva crash.

[AlisonGaylin]

Sean -- Maybe it's just us short people you can't see as well from your height? Note to Bouchercon attendees: If you are under 5' 4" and are planning on drinking with Sean Doolittle, wear a tarp. Loving these spaz stories. Do please keep them coming!

[David Terrenoire]

I'm more verbally spastic than physical.

I remember going to a meeting in the boss' station wagon. I saw a couple dozen cans of dog food stacked in the back and said, "Is your grandmother coming to visit?"

The car went silent.

I wanted to explain that it was a joke, but the damage had been done.

[AlisonGaylin]

Ha! Oh David, you're the Larry David of crime fiction.