¬Vanderbilt University, the 16th best University in the galaxy, has recently unveiled a touching and emotional piece of visual art in the venerable Rand Dining Hall that will most surely cause its students to stop, pause, and think during their daily trifles, as well as to question the great ontological issues of modern man. The mural had been hidden behind an ominous “fresh paint” sign for a few weeks now, and the shroud of mystery kept every student, professor, custodian, and skank pondering the unveiling.
“When I walked by Rand the other day, I was craving some purified, crystal clear water for my eco-friendly metal bottle, when I was shocked to see a giant carrot with googly eyes looking down my shirt,” freshman Katie McTrojan said.
“I miss hanging out with the dude who was walking into the bathroom… and the hot chick painted on the girls’ door. I once asked her out on a date, but she was really shy and just smiled back,” said deranged engineering student Cavey Smellsabit. “This whole health food thing doesn’t appeal to me.”
The most excited fan of the new art is adjunct professor of Art History, Paulo Snootabootalous. The Slant is proud to present his art review in its entirety:

“Going from left to right, first we see three bananas and a carrot recreating Jacque-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii. The three banana brothers are all ripe and unpeeled. Their fierce gazes of determination depict a sentiment most similar to the apprehension felt right before equipping your first condom. The father, a carrot, looks at his banana sons with a glaring face of disgust. His snarled growl represents the strife in his heart for having raised adopted fruit children only to send them off to war. Below them lies a stalk of broccoli grasping the last jar of ranch dressing. The broccoli’s head resembles an “afro” style haircut.
Next, a lemon, a zucchini, two bananas and a carton of skim milk are carrying a dead or perhaps wounded comrade off the fields of battle. One of these bananas is shedding a single Indian tear which represents the working man’s grief whenever he hears a speech from Barack Obama promising economic growth. The lemon and the zucchini are both wearing cowboy boots, and the lemon has a single revolver holster. These two foods represent a Wild West Abbot and Costello who traverse the plains as guns for hire, yet they find themselves caught up in slapstick adventures. This image confounded in the image of war creates a stark juxtaposition between the surreal and the sublime.
The skim milk has on his face a look of supreme consternation. Is he questioning his existence in life? Is he disappointed that he was born skim and not 2%, chocolate, or sweet acidophilus? Has he no future in life but war? Merely gazing into this young milk’s face generates an overwhelming torrent of emotional empathy. Again, the fact that the milk is skim represents the modern dichotomy between health food and personal pleasure. Do girls really like skim milk’s taste or only drink it because of its “healthy” qualities? This is an internalized war between black and white, good and evil, or chocolate and skim.
Then, a bundle of asparagus is seen carrying a postmodern Humpty Dumpty across the plains of earthy hell. The egg’s glasses and stylish hairdo perhaps represent the fragility of nerdiness in this modern, skyscraper world. Or does it present a question concerning the egg-like nature of metrosexuality? Easily cracked, raw, uncooked, and full of potential, is this how we associate today’s males, especially in the heat of primal battle? This is a stark contrast to the apple with a face resembling George Washington. With his musket in hand and a grimace on his face, George Washington Apple stares down the enemy fighting for his ideals, a rarity in this politically correct world we live in today.
Next, a bell pepper looks death straight in the eyes as his best pear friend dies in his trembling bell pepper arms. For a spicy bell pepper to have his friend brutally cut apart by a demonic strip of bacon and a Somalian pirate corn dog, the fear racing through his head must be incalculable. Is this a case of the unhealthy foods conquering the better ingredients? Is this a manifestation of the 2008-to-present economic crisis? Perhaps the iconoclastic representation of more virginly foods being killed by bastard un-kosher creations of man, meat, and fire is a parlay against the anti-Semitic views prevalent in daily consciousness.
Looking onward, we come to my favorite character in this masterpiece: the melted crèmesickle. With googly eyes looking to God in heaven above, our hero’s corpse reminds us of the feebleness of pleasure and sweetness. What is a melted ice cream but broken dreams and dashed hopes? What else can turn a child to tears and a grown man to throw a tirade? As the war goes on, our hero melts. Nothing can save him now. Only in the safety of his freezer can he truly be alive. Once thrust into the unscrupulous outer world, cremesickle has no choice but to die. Fight in the war or not, his days are numbered by the one and only biological clock of the universe and nature itself.
Next, another familiar scene is depicted. A sausage tends to his dying brother as a scummy taco sheds his oily tears. Are the two sausage brothers chorizos? Does this Mexican influence suddenly ruin the seriousness of this piece? Would you trust your life to a Mexican in a war? No, my friends, I can safely speak for you on that one.
As we near the end of the mural, we see Napoleon Hot Dog crossing the Alps in another reference to Jacques-Louis David. What is the artist’s obsession with revolutionary France’s most prominent neoclassical painter? Is the hot dog the poster-child for unhealthy, Americanly-mass-produced foods? What is the significance of his victory seizing a spot in the annals of history with Hannibal, Charlegmane, and Dan Quayle? Why is a haggis bag Napoleon Hot Dog’s horse? Does this prove that the hot dog is the superior makeshift meat? Is Scotland during the times of war relegated to nothing but a workhorse?
Finally, in the last portion of the painting, we come to the most modern warfare. An ice cream cone with a very constipated expression clutching a gatling rifle. His civil war hat paraphrases one of the darkest hours in American history, and his role in this war is very similar. With nothing to lose, the ice cream cone shoots blindly or “ghetto blasts” into the fray of healthier foods. Does this imply that unhealthy foods are the most well armed? Why does the ice cream cone have to be white?
Joining the cone on the dessert side is the cherry pie and the sprinkle donut. The cherry pie is reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt from the 1970s cult movie Star Wars. A figure of gluttony, greed, and rage, the pie feeds the endless supply of high caliber bullets. For what reason does the pie fight if he is so fat and well off?
Above the pie are his allies, the pizza and the goofy taco. Why is the pizza, such a collegiate staple, so downplayed in this painting? Does the painter have a vendetta against Italians? Do I find Italians to be a greasy and despicable people? His grin is one of sadistic pleasure as he most certainly finds a twisted Freudian thrill in fighting to the death and ripping living beings apart. Next to the pizza is another slight knock at Mexican culture in a character I like to call the Goofy Taco. The look on his face reminds one of a young fraternal brother in a post-21st birthday state after seeing a female associate first drop her trousers revealing her luscious and healthy labial folds. If this taco gets this look on his face when he is fighting in combat, what expression does his facial muscles create when he is at the height of sexual ecstasy? These are the questions we must ask as we pause to contemplate the pleasure. Let me assure you that I have done just that.
Lastly, on on the far-lower-right corner is the donut. The donut as popularized by The Simpsons is a symbol of fat, wasteful, empty calories. The donut spits bullets. Death flies from his mouth. He alone could mow down the lives and hopes of the youth of the world. Why must the artist place pleasure foods in such horrible, negative light? The geometry of the donut is a circle, an orb, an Earth. Earth is life, yet this donut is death personified. Does he willingly participate in this bloodbath and manslaughter? His eyes are forlorn. Was he discovered to be a proficient killing machine and trained against his will to kill? Does this forced pressure parallel a modern Asian-American family makeup?
Truly, the Rand Mural is just as meaningful as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, the graffiti on the Berlin Wall, and the tasteful images that adorn any given Abercrombie & Fitch glass window. Praise be to God for imbuing man with this power, and praise be to Vanderbilt for spending our student’s tuition on such artistic contracting.”

Yours in Art,
Paulo Snootabootalous. PhD

Morehead State (’69) B.A. Art History, Nashville Auto Diesel College (’06) M.A. Axel Grease, University of Phoenix (’08) Ph.D. Theoretical Physics