{"id":22748,"date":"2016-08-13T13:21:45","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T17:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=22748"},"modified":"2022-01-07T12:20:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T17:20:34","slug":"not-franzens-kind-of-birding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2016\/08\/not-franzens-kind-of-birding.html","title":{"rendered":"Not Franzen’s Kind of Birding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As told to me by Kurt Wold<\/a>:<\/strong><\/em> One day Kurt came to dinner at the artist Norman O. Mustill\u2019s house and noticed a birdcage. \u201cNorm,\u201d he said, \u201cyou have a bird!\u201d He walked over to it and said, \u201cHi budgie, budgie.\u201d To which a somewhat pathetic-looking, pale blue budgerigar grasped the bars of the cage, pulled his body as tight as he could to Kurt\u2019s face, and announced: \u201cHi, I\u2019m a homosexual.\u201d Norm explained that the bird, which he\u2019d named Sheldon Push, was so keen to talk it only took him 20 minutes of repetition to nail down a phrase. He would hang the cage near him while he worked and quickly had the little budgie cursing in half a dozen languages.<\/p>\n

One time Norm hired a plumber. When the plumber quoted his price, Sheldon let him have it right on cue: \u201cFuck you baby! Jesus Christ, what a motherfucker!\u201d The plumber was stunned. He turned, his hand balled in a fist, and rounded on Norm. \u201cNo, no man,\u201d Norm shouted. \u201cIt\u2019s the bird, just the bird!\u201d The little budgie sounded exactly like Norm of course, only in miniature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Norm also had a cat named George, \u201chis best art critic,\u201d he said, because George would piss on his collages. \u201cWell,\u201d Kurt recalls, \u201cNorm used Sheldon Push to torture his critic.\u201d Sheldon would jump off his perch, stomp around on the papered floor of his cage, and exclaim, \u201cJesus, what a shithouse! Hey George, ya want a little leg? How about a little leg?\u201d It would drive George bonkers. He would shriek and run in high-speed circles, then fly out of the house through the cat door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As told to me by Kurt Wold: One day Kurt came to dinner at the artist Norman O. Mustill\u2019s house and noticed a birdcage. \u201cNorm,\u201d he said, \u201cyou have a bird!\u201d He walked over to it and said, \u201cHi budgie, budgie.\u201d To which a somewhat pathetic-looking, pale blue budgerigar grasped the bars of the cage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-literature","9":"category-political-culture","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sheldon-pushs-BIRDSONG-recto-372.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-5UU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22748"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49468,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22748\/revisions\/49468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}