This morning Juniper and I were walking around downtown and I thought it would be fun to stop in Greektown, where the signage contains enough mythology to fill another one of those damn books. She saw Pegasus, and Zeus, and then she sang a song about the matchbox car she was clutching in her grubby little palm. There is a cheesy little souvenir shop across from the casino that sells the exact same wares as the shops in the Plaka or any heavily-touristed part of Greece. We stopped in to look at the shelves and shelves of mass-produced gods and goddesses. The first thing we saw was a life size statue of Athena, and when I pointed to the head of Medusa on her Aegis and said, "Look June: Medusa!" the shopkeeper angrily hurled some words at me in a thick Greek accent. "Pardon me?" I said.
"That's not Medusa! That is goddess Athena!"
"Yeah, I know, but she has Medusa on her breastplate."
"No, No, no, that's not Medusa. That is Athena."
"Yeah, but Perseus gave Medusa's head to Athena. She wore it as part of her armor. See: snakes. Medusa."
"I am sold out of Medusa."
"But. . ." I then decided against disputing it any further. After all, you should never argue with a professional.
* * * * *
I have spent the last six hours trying to get this mythology book on lulu so that I (and anyone else who wants it) can buy one. I added the text as many requested, but it was an incredible pain in the ass to make it all fit in the lulu template. Now that the work is done, I can honestly say I am very excited about this book and I think the end product will be of a much higher quality than the last one. But it may be awhile before I do another one of these.
If you are interested in purchasing a soft cover printed version of the book, click here. Again, I am not making any money on this whatsoever---this project uses artwork that was not created by me, but by generous and anonymous artists who take so many risks to bring beauty to our streets. I will never accept money for any adaptation of their work. If you buy this book, you are only paying for the costs of printing it.
I am also adding the final versions of each individual page, with text, to a flickr set here.