One of the biggest debates these days is about health care. I am for universalized health care. The enemy is not. They say privatized health care: no ifs, and or buts. Fools! They say it costs a lot of money. Cowards! They say the quality of the care will be weak. Villians!

All right, everybody, I’m creating an alternate reality. It’s very important that you stick with me on this. Otherwise it will never work. I need you to believe everything I am about to tell you is real. Let’s just say that we make practicing medicine mandatory in this country for four years. Right before college. You go to kindergarden, you graduate high school, four years reaching into people’s guts and stuff, right into Lansing Community College. It’s the perfect solution. More people means better care. Plus, if everyone learns how to take care of each other then they’ll know how to take care of themselves better and won’t have to go to the hospital as often. “Honey, dinner’s on the table. Oh, I also cut myself with a steak knife. I’m applying pressure to the wound, but could you get the gauze and sewing kit.” “Where are they?” “Next to the gun.”

Oh, also in this universe guns are mandatory. That’s why we had to make becoming a medical professional mandatory in the first place. Everyone is given a Desert Eagle at age five. People do not live long is this dimension. I’m sorry to break it to you, but most don’t even get to go to Lansing Community College.

Now you’re thinking you don’t want to become a nurse. You don’t want to become a doctor. It’s just like the army. They’ll find somewhere for you. You can work with computers.

You’re saying you don’t want to work in a hospital. They creep you out. You don’t like the sight of blood. Go to jail.

You’re saying you lost your arm in the war. You’re blind. You can’t work in a hospital. Go to jail.

These are important questions, but Big Brother does not like questioning. Go to jail.

So boom, there it is everyone. I solved health care. Put this one in the win column. Everything’s rose colored now. But wait. You’re saying, Alex, the problem is really cost. Congress doesn’t see a way to pay for it all. How are we going to pay for all of that? I say Fuck you.

Our favorite street artist, Poster Boy, was arrested last month.

If you don’t know who he is, Poster Boy is New York subway artist, who’s work appears seemingly at random in Metro stations all over the city. With a razor blade has his only tool, Poster Boy slices art out of all those awful ads that get in your face everyday on your way to work (for a quick introduction to him, take a look at the video below). We’ve mentioned subway vandalism and scratchitti a few times before, but Poster Boy is our favorite criminal/artist, and certainly the most known. He’s been written about in New York Magazine, the Guardian, and his arrest has been covered by the Times. Every time I take a train in this city, I covet a chance to see a new work in person, on the platform, where I’m forced to study the same oversized faces and beguiling slogans daily.

I learned of his arrest when I passed a box for the New York Press, a magazine I’d never seen before, and saw in red comicbook lettering, over a neon green background, the headline “Who is Poster Boy?” I grabbed the paper, the display copy since the box was empty, and opened to the article. Poster Boy, real(?) name Henry Matyjewicz, was arrested last month at a soho gallery, where they were displaying a new work he’d done with Aakash Nihalani (the guy who makes those tape-cubes on the sidewalk). It was a completely legal piece of art, but the show opening advertised a live appearance by the outlaw, and so some plainclothesman showed up and busted him (apparently he was nabbed because he was bragging to some girl that he was Poster Boy, when he probably should have kept his mouth shut; but can you blame him?).

There’s an interview with Henry Matyjewicz, not Poster Boy, in the paper. It’s pretty interesting. For possible legal reasons, but hopefully more artistic and ironic reasons, Matyjewicz separates himself from Poster Boy, referring to him as if it were a different person. He talks as if Poster Boy is more than a person, and instead a movement, that he, Matyjewiscz, sometimes agrees with, and sometimes doesn’t. He even says that sometimes he wishes he could be more like Poster Boy. It’s an interesting interview, not great, but still worth checking out. I’m not sure the writer’s intentions, and he sometimes makes Matyjewicz sound like an idiot, but you can find the article here.

As a final note, the piece Poster Boy was showing at the gallery the night we was arrested, the piece above the article, ironically features a cut-out from Medea Goes to Jail.

Check out his flickr page, too. Maybe you’ve seen his work before, and just not realized it.

(oh, and he’s not really our first guest. We were talking about trying to get him, but it’s hard to do an interview from jail.)