I* keep having flashbacks to the time when i was little my mom took me to a craft fair. there was a lady making big easter eggs by wrapping string around balloons and dipping them in fabric stiffener and then popping the balloons when it dried. so we bought some and made one. i guess this wasn’t satisfying enough on some level for my mom, who never did anything ordinary. so without warning, she whipped off her lunch meat-colored underwear and draped them inside out over the balloon, and dumped the rest of the bottle of stiffener on them. when it hardened, she made herself a hat, decorated with peacock feathers and one very long thin pheasant feather that stuck straight off the back like a long tail, and bobbed with the gravity of her stride. and so it was that i developed a deep affection for Edward Munch’s the Scream. perfectly captures the look of the faces in the crowd as we made our way through the mall…