Inflatable Rampage

In Florence our speed-sampling of the cafe culture shot us to a level of consciousness from which Nescafe and weakened import beans had thus far sheltered us. Even this miniature albino demigod seemed like a feasible tourist guide.

And he might as well have been; lining up for cultural baptism outside the Uffizi Gallery, it occurred to us that a much more interactive and rampagey way to immerse ourselves in Italian art would be to have one of these moes render us more grotesque than thought possible, even by those with the misfortune of having ever awoken next to us.

So here's our moe of choice. A charming man: an Italian in every sense of the word, whatever that means, and judging by his impressive visual client list, he is able to draw. He is also willing to exaggerate others' unfortunate facial blips while wearing a coiff like this. Conclusion: moe is still running off the confidence of having caricatured all 6 members of the All-Star Celebrity Tour to Florence in 1986.

After some batting of eyelashes and signing over of souls, we have ourselves a deal of moderate bargainness. Our sketchy friend seems disturbingly mirthful at losing a few pennies, and his apparently immobile sidekick has remained immobile. This bodes oddly, but we press on, crazed.

We attempt to retain an air of cool beyond our reach even in normal circumstances, our maniacal smiles growing parallel to our unease. Unbeknownst to us but knownst to the crowd of Americans drawn to the scene like iron filings to a magnet, our faces have begun to take their really, really munted shapes.

Growing more Skeksie-like with each stroke of the charcoal, our mulleted portraitist takes a moment to incite the assembled into a facial evaluation of the work so far. Judging by these mugs it's fairly safe to assume this was the point at which he endowed us with chestal accessories worthy of an ancient fertility goddess.

And Lo, here is the result of 25 euros and social flagellation. Get it? Get it? We're AUSTRALIAN, and we're at the beach! Inspired!
At first...few..... glances, we thought that Nat just had a disproportionately full lower lip. On closer inspection, it would seem that's her teeth. On the other hand, Liz's piercing has become a gaping hole, and she is the love object of a shark with lockjaw.

We decide to hide out in the ruins of an old concrete wall for a closer look. Moments later the moe himself actually caught us using our full combined weight to stamp his masterwork into the cobbles. He just took another puff and strode on by.....

In other news, we were no less disturbed on sight of this weirdass pharaoh-mermaid, whose principal move consisted of leaning forward creepily at whoever was misguided enough to drop five cents into his receptacle. You know street art's lost its mystique when after a long day of leaning, the "artiste" slings a black gym bag over one shoulder and slopes off in a gold full-body condom.