Megan and Murray McMillan

I loved to play with toys, especially Legos, GI Joe and Transformers. Styrofoam and wooden blocks were an essential ingredient. These heads of state, their cabinet, and the workers who kept them looking good became network power creations emmersed in political agenda: my childhood play was furious. Intricate offices, cargo holds, hangers, docks and jails–it was important to always have a jail. What’s better than a jail is a freezing chamber. The Empire made a big impression on me, their swift efficiency, their gleaming white walls and oh (!) those wonderful dual doors that would slide sideways with protruding lock bolts like a bank vault.

Bank vaults: only tractors come close, and a distant second at that.

I was very excited to save up enough points to mail order the legendary Hooded Cobra Commander. Legendary, of course, because of the TV show dramatized his power so successfully. Six to eight weeks seemed like forever, I marked it on my calendar carefully. They never come exactly on the day they are supposed to. Although disappointed, I knew this was logical. It was fine that it didn’t come on the second day either because the chances of it coming the third day were only improved, and it did say eight weeks was a possibility. A week after the eighth week I felt even surer it was near. And some more time passed, and I got distracted or something, and…well…a lot of time went by and I forgot about it.

However, this was not the case this week. Yesterday I opened a large box that contained a small box which contained something I’ve been waiting for, an Omer 12.40: dark green, red trigger, bump fire and only slightly more loud then the whole air under the door thing I mentioned before. I used it to fasten a piece of wood into my model and it sank the nail completely flush with the surface and with no mar whatsoever. Like Saturday morning waffles.

It’s funny when I think about how similar my art is–moving people around and putting them in things: doing things–to how I played as a kid.