Things that Give Me Nightmares, Vol. 2

[Previously on THINGS THAT GIVE ME NIGHTMARES: that giant baby sculpture over at the Art Gallery of Alberta.]

And now, Vol. 2:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Life is short. That is, until you’re in the middle of like a breakup, or a hospital stay, or a career change (with me it’s the latter), then it seems g.d. ENDLESS.  People, I can only spend so many hours dodging thoughts of how I plan to fill the next 35 years of my working life with TV and spying on my neighbours; eventually I have to put on my marshmallow pants and leave the house – which I did last week, with an impromptu trip to Southgate.

Now, had I known they existed, these giant shoes probably wouldn’t have had the impact they did on me.  But I came across them cold.  They just sort of appeared on the horizon as my bus approached Southgate Mall, and brought with them an icy moment of pure existential terror, kind of like how I felt watching the Cell for the first time.  Or how I feel when I see wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men.  WTF am I seeing?! Is everything giant or am I shrinking? Time’s moving so slowly, I think I’m dead. Seriously, though, I haven’t seen footwear that big since John Travolta’s boots in Battlefield Earth (Travolta-ZING!).

Anyway, I don’t know how I missed out on the run-up to the giant shoes, given our exhaustive coverage of the Grand Re-opening of Southgate Mall back on August 5,  but I did. I subsequently googled “giant shoes southgate” and learned that the shoes (as everyone but me probably knows) are the handiwork of a pair of Red Deer artists.  You can read the great Paula Simons’ coverage of the shoes here.