So, a little birdie told me that, for the next season of Top Gear, the “3 graces” (ahem, that would be Jezza, Richard, and James, in case, you know, you weren’t paying attention) are doing an automotive-themed art exhibit, in a real gallery. The reason I’m giving you this spoiler (and I don’t feel guilty about it!) is because, well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how an automotive themed art exhibit would go if the “3 idiots” (I mean, um, “graces” yeah, that’s it) were to actually pull it off.
For starters, Jeremy would want “more POWER” so he’d probably get one of those automatic paint sprayers people use to paint the outside of their houses, their fences, and such. Then, he’d somehow turn the knob all the way and manage to get it stuck on some kind of oddball maximum spray- the kind of setting you would use to douse a fire from three city blocks away. The end result? Well, he’d probably have paint everywhere *except* on the canvas right in front of him. It’d end up looking a little like the great train ride episode, when he ended up covered in soot, only, maybe, say, a bit bluer, or, you know, perhaps the color of some almost acceptable shade of paint.
James May, being the freak that he is, would probably somehow assert that all of this “newfangled Renaissance Italian style perspective” was “too sparkly and new” and so he would do some “proper” style of a painting. I’m thinking here about one of those Egyptian style paintings, you know the kind-the ones that sort of give you the creeps because the eyes are all pointed around the wrong way. (Sort of like this one.) He finds air-conditioning and traction control to be “too new” and “not proper” so I can only begin to imagine what he would do with a bucket of paint and a brush.
And then there’s Richard. Ah, yes, Richard. Now, Richard is a bit of a wild card, you see, because he actually attended art school and probably knows how to paint so, at first guess, you might expect him to come up with the visual artistic equivalent of something like, say, an Alfa Romeo. But, given that he also crashes a lot on the show, so much so that the Daily Mail can barely write a story about him without saying something along the lines of “in September 2006 Hammond was near fatally injured when the jet propelled car he was driving crashed,” and given the fact that the other two will not stop tormenting him long enough to allow him to actually finish a work of art, I’m anticipating something a bit different from the old (hey, he’s almost 40 now) Hamster. Yes, I fully expect him to start painting a nice little red coupe number, only to have it interrupted by some giant “flying piano” styled yellow “blob” (to use a technical painting term) landing smack dab in the middle of his canvas. This, of course, will be followed by rousing choruses of “That’s not gone well” after which, well, we’ll probably be left with a visual mess that can best be described as “the aftereffects of a Volkswagen full of clowns jumping around and vomiting.” The Daily Mail will, of course, report that poor little Hamster has “crashed yet again” (but not quite as dramatically as he did back in 2006 when, in case you haven’t heard, he was nearly killed in an almost fatal car accident involving a jet propelled car while filming for the new season of Top Gear.)
Meanwhile, in some out of the way little corner of the studio, they’ll be this guy dressed in white painter’s coveralls, wearing a white beret (which, of course, completely covers his face and head) standing with his arms crossed, having just completed his latest, greatest artistic masterpiece. Yes, Stigcasso will be quietly admiring the greatest masterpiece to hit the auction block since, well, since those pesky van Gogh sunflowers corrupted the price of paintings for art collectors everywhere.
And people wonder why I love that Stig so much.
Until next time….
