Just to paint the picture, I’m driving through Indiana on my way to a high profile gig at the University of Notre Dame, with the high profile Beards of Comedy Tour. Okay, that was a beautiful picture I just painted, but not as beautiful as the picture I saw for sale at the gas station where I stopped for gas. Right at eye level, near the registers, was a framed 3D shimmering Bald Eagle with an American Flag, for $19.95.

Now, when I say “gas station,” I don’t mean a travel plaza type spot with a souvenir shop. I mean, a gas station. This is the type of place, right off the highway, where you’d only stop for gas.

My question then is, who goes inside for gas and returns to the car with a framed shimmering 3D Bald Eagle?

The following is a close representation, if you imagine this image framed, and in shimmering 3D.

I get it, you’re patriotic. I’m patriotic, too. I’ve been to other countries, and the U.S. is the only place that offers unlimited free refills on soda. But, patriotic or not, where do you hang a 3D bald eagle portrait? The living room? The hallway? Perhaps the foyer (or is the foyer the same as the halway?)?

Something tells me that the person who makes this purchase, is the same person who illegally shoots a real Bald Eagle in the wild, and then stuffs it and mounts it directly next to the framed hollogram eagle. “Well hot damn, I been desiring to bag a real Baldy! Gotta say though, ain’t as cool as the painting.”

Perhaps I have the time-line wrong. Maybe you would first shoot the real eagle, and then you go to the gas station, and think, “Well hell, that would look swell next to my real one!”

Thousands of years from now, when futuristic robot-archaeologists have gone through the remnants of our lost civilization, I worry that museums will be filled with framed 3D bald eagles that are touted as the influential art of the 21st century. Given the glossy finish, these may even be the only pieces that survive unblemished through the nuclear winters. Even more disconcerting is the possibility that these 3D portraits are the influential art of the 21st century.

At this particular gas station, the flag eagle wasn’t the only art option. Below that was an even larger portrait of a shimmering pack of wolves, who spoke to me, as I moved my head from side to side. The artist who hollogrammed these wolves may have been creating a poignant metaphor for the way we isolate ourselves and create pack mentalities for the wrong reasons – differences in race, religion, politics, and even just location. The wolves could be a symbol for these ignorance-based divisions that create dangerous pockets in our society, who hunt to kill, and move around when you look at them, and who buy framed bald eagles at the Quick Stop to prove they are part of the group who loves their country – when really that just means they secretly hate all the Mexicans who are “taking their jobs,” and all the black people who are “running the country,” and all the hippies who are trying to take away their guns so they can’t hunt eagles just to put a good patriotic plate of food on the table for their family. This is the highest form art can take; art that says something honest, and then jumps out of the frame at you in an awesome way.