TAO LIN TUMBLR PRESENCE

The Enormous Koala by Tao Lin (via West Wind Review 2012)

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Moments after a flawless runway-walk, unveiling Gucci’s new line of hats designed to showcase—rather than accentuate or distract from—one’s face, this “fabulous cat” relaxes beautifully on a Louis Vuitton “Slumber Pet Thermal Cat Mat Cat Bed,” luxuriating in the soothing effects of the medium-large dose of Xanax it ingested about an hour ago with a few sips of Diet Coke from a lime-wedged, pre-chilled, elegant glass usually reserved for vintage wine.

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Previously – Poké Ball Cat

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A cat that woke 4 minutes ago from a nightmare in which he was on extremely large doses of Xanax and Adderall and alcohol at a Christmas party, embarrassing himself in front of his owners and owners’ friends and relatives and all their children by repeatedly rubbing his crotch against people’s heads and faces (by climbing sofas and tables and jumping onto people’s shoulders and clutching their necks and heads or leaping directly toward the heads and faces of small children) while obliviously meowing in an extremely loud, nearly non-stop, frighteningly unseemly manner. His “suspicious” expression and somewhat “stricken” posture (as depicted above) has been sustained without change for almost the entire 4 minutes since waking, during which he has been replaying and studying certain details from his nightmare in an effort (involving decreasing confidence, in part because he has been staring across the room at a Christmas tree that has seemed increasingly dream-like) to confirm, to any believable degree, that it really was a nightmare and not something that happened last night or a few nights ago.

Previously - Gollum’s “Suicide Stash”

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Gollum staring at his “stash,” which he has built up from nothing by working minimum wage for 18 months at Taco Bell while spending 65% of his income on skin care products that his co-workers and managers have mandated he apply twice daily (Gollum isn’t bitter about this, he actually agrees; as an undocumented immigrant he also has no choice, he knows, but to agree), a few minutes before ingesting all of it in an earnest effort to kill himself. Fortunately (for his co-workers, who depend on him to accomplish 95% of manual labor at Taco Bell) he will panic and call 911 and live, waking in a hospital 3.5 hours later (2.5 hours after his 911 call is posted on Gawker) with $53,208.79 in medical bills.

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Previously – Largest Xanax

Size-comparison chart (enlarge) featuring “world’s largest Xanax,” which has been dyed pink to denote its “world’s largest” status. This chart was actually created by the promoters of Mount Everest to subliminally target fans of Batman, Bright Eyes, and Lindsay Lohan to plan their next vacation in the Himalayas. Honda paid 35% of the printing costs to have its “Honda Civic” line of cars be the fourth item of comparison from the left, representing something larger than Batman but smaller than a Stegosaurus.

Relevant links: Drug-Related Photoshop Art archive, other Tao Lin art, Tao Lin presentation on his art

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Close-up of a “serenely passed-out” Kreayshawn (after 2.5 “weed brownies,” 3 beers, 60% of a 40oz, 2.5mg Xanax in a 6-hour period) with her MacBook on her face and a mysterious, vaguely demonic, medium-small cat staring at her from the doorway thinking mostly curiosity-oriented thoughts like “wonder what she’s listening to” and “sweet headphones, wonder where she got them.”

Previously - Psilocybin Nicolas Cage

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re French “Richard Yates”

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An adolescent koala, seated on a trampoline, cries for an unknown reason, clutching 2mg Xanax and a full-grown hamster, adjacent Krispy Kreme donuts. Looking closely, at the background, a second koala, who appears to have “wet eyes” at the same time that it’s smiling, can be seen, behind a tree, in the top-right corner. This second koala (possibly an uncle or, most likely, a friend of the family) seems to have elevated itself for “spying” purposes, though one wonders what, of relevance, it can see, from that angle (behind everything), so maybe not.

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Previously – “Large Dose of MDMA” Halloween-Costume

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The first Xanax advertisement openly targeting the American koala demographic to be approved (in July 2016, two weeks after the FDA approves Xanax to be used on koalas over 4 months of age) for full-scale usage in national print media including two-page spreads in National Geographic, GQ, Esquire, Playboy and half-pages in Village Voice, New Yorker, USA Today. (view 3182px)

Previously - Tao Lin Retrospective at the Whitney

unpublished Drug-Related Photoshop Art “b-side” titled simply Xanax Octopus

Sasha Frere-Jones re My Rejected “The New Yorker” Cover Submission

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On May 28 I received an email from Françoise Mouly—art editor since 1993 of The New Yorker—ostensibly expressing admiration for my “2,000,000mg Xanax,” published earlier that week on the internet. Mouly complimented my toy poodle imagery and “careful application of bright colors” and for “not shying away” from cultural references (re Electric Literature, I think; she didn’t specify). The actual purpose of her email, I assumed (correctly), was to gain contact information for the Thai dealer from whom Schopenhauer ordered his giant Xanax; in exchange, I sensed, Mouly would earnestly commission me to draw the cover of an issue of The New Yorker.  Within minutes I emailed Mouly the Thai dealer’s email address and began to draft my submission in Photoshop. ~40 minutes later I received a mysteriously convincing email from an AOL address stating in a concrete/literal prose style that if I featured a Xanax bar in my submission I would be PayPal’d “six-figures” even if my submission was rejected (if accepted the amount would be “significantly higher” and in either case I would also receive “a lifetime supply of Xanax”). My submission (seen above), which Mouly “loved,” as did “most everyone” at Condé Nast (the cover had “gone viral” internally, apparently; Anna Wintour “could be heard giggling, in her office, throughout the day”), except Sasha Frere-Jones who “neither liked nor disliked it,” Mouly confided to me via email, “but it did not go well with the ad/business departments,” and so—understandably, unsurprisingly—was rejected. To my initial “extreme, ’seething’ anger” and eventual “silent resignation,” I was never PayPal’d “six-figures” nor, to my knowledge, did I gain “a lifetime supply of Xanax.” The New Yorker did pay me a modest “kill fee,” however, and Mouly extended a sincere-seeming invitation to “please submit again,” which I did, a few days later (~5 weeks later, after my 4th follow-up email, a robot rejected me via form-letter).

TAO LIN

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Previously - A Sea Turtle Killing Itself with the Drug That Killed Ol’ Dirty Bastard

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 DRUG-RELATED PHOTOSHOP ART - 2,000,000MG XANAX - by Tao Lin

Schopenhauer watching ‘Walrus sucks own dick’ on YouTube while absently petting his 2,000,000mg Xanax (specially ordered from Thailand) at 3:34 PM on a Tuesday in April after being put ‘on hold’ for the second time in ~40 seconds as he tries to reach the one person he knows at Harper’s, an editorial assistant who “really liked” The World As Will And Representation, to see if there’s any chance they want to send him anywhere—to write about anything—as his toy poodle, ‘ever aware’ that it’s ‘very similar’ in size/weight/color as the 2,000,000mg Xanax, suppresses uncontrollable crying successfully, to a large degree, owing to having licked the 2,000,000mg Xanax a few times, ~30 minutes ago, when Schopenhauer was at the doorway gripping the doorknob tightly while staring across the street thinking [what seemed to be ‘nothing’] after receiving his 3rd form-rejection in 14 months from Electric Literature .