Toilet Town

Toilet Town is Alexander Duke.  Alexander Duke is Toilet Town.  And these two  photographs here are both Alexander Duke, taken one year apart.

We talk with him about poop, Siamese twins, and G.I. Joe.





Chief Magazine: You do more than just skateboards, right?

Alexander Duke: Yeah, well this is our first time doing wheel graphics. Before I worked in the skate industry I did websites and even worked at M&M's for a short period of time. This is what I'm working on right now... Monkey Balls.

That's a serious banana. He's making me nervous. So when you say M&M's, do you mean the shoe company?

No. I worked at the candy company as a graphic designer. I was let go for not being creative enough. That was the official reason, but i think it was really because of something else. I just did stupid stuff there anyway, like help people set up power point presentations.

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I heard that you’re putting out a ‘zine. Something about Wizard skulls?

Yeah it's going to be a zine of nothing but different drawings of wizard skulls. It’s inspired by Skeletor of He-man and The Masters of the Universe. It’s not going to be done for a bit, I’m just kind of asking people whose art I really like to make a wizard skull. Wizards rule. All of the drawings are pretty bad ass so far, but you’ll have to wait and see.

I definitely see a lot of cartoon influences in some of your stuff.

Yeah i grew up in a small town and spent most of my childhood watching cartoons rather then socializing with other kids.

Any cartoons more than others?

Smurfs, He-man. I learned all of my morals from those 30 second things at the end of G.I. Joe. I watched Rainbow Bright, My Little Ponies. Basically any 80's cartoon that took place in a fantasy land.

Yeah, I definitely see the Rainbow Bright, My Little Pony influence in the one with pink unicorn propelling itself into the air with a blast of rainbow diarrhea.

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I used to collect My Little Ponies and G.I. Joes, and the G.I. Joes would have picnics and ride the ponies.

When they weren't off killin' babies.

When I played G.I. Joes they never really killed each other, they mostly resolved their differences, and invited Cobra Commander to a picnic.

When did you start drawing/being an artist?

Well I've always been into drawing, i never really thought of myself as an artist. I just draw things. To me, when I think of artists, I think of people like Picasso or Michelangelo.

I read in another interview that you used to draw pictures of yourself kicking kid’s asses in elementary school. Do you still have any of those lying around?

No, but i do have this drawing from 2nd grade. In art class we had to draw a Halloween scene. So I drew a guy with a giant penis pissing on someone's lawn for mischief night. But the teacher got really mad and threw it away. But when I got home that day I redrew it, and I still have it.

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So when did you get into skateboarding?

I always wanted to since I saw back to the future, but my mom thought it was too dangerous. Finally in junior high school I was allowed to get one, then after that it was pretty much all I did.

Any injuries sustained while skateboarding that you want to brag about?

I’ve never really had any bad injuries, just torn ligaments in ankles and fractured wrists.

I notice that a lot of your boards feature people or animals with injuries. Do you think that skateboarding makes you think about that kind of stuff a lot?
 
I try not to think about getting hurt. Most of those graphics were more inspired by being in a bad mood. I mean, I was generally in a good mood, but something was really annoying me so that’s why I drew a lot of that stuff. Kind of like when I'm in a bad mood, bad things happening to others is more funny to me. I remember once I was really pissed because I was working at this stressful job as a collections representative for a gas and electric company. One day after work it was raining really hard, and a car drove by really fast and this guy got soaked by the car running through a puddle. I think I laughed for 15 minutes non-stop.

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I've noticed a lot of your stuff involves doodie. Do you have a long and complicated history with shit or shitting?

Basically the way I have lived my life can be described as this: I spent my time looking down at the ground, at shit, rather than looking up to the sky at the stars: metaphorically and literally.

You just blew my mind.

I also have this other rule I kind of live my life by. It's based on revengology which is something i made up. Since it takes too much effort to get revenge on each person that fucks with you, you have to think of it as you vs. the world. So for example, once I was driving and the guy behind me was high beaming me. I was getting pissed, but he's behind me, so I can't get revenge. With my philosophy I can though, because it's me vs. the world. So I turned on my high beams and started high beaming the guy in front of me. But you’ve got to do that exact thing. For example, if you step in gum, you have buy gum at the store, chew it and spit it out in front of the door. Whatever the world does to you, you have to do back.

So if everyone had this outlook, people would eventually stop doing shitty things?

Yeah, and it makes your life much better. Instead of being pissed all day because you stepped in gum, you pass the anger on to the next person, and move on

You should write a book on it, and be on Oprah. You would need a really good catch phrase for it.

I used to want to be a writer, but never pursued it much. I wrote all these stories involving milk being poured on someones face.

There's a lot you can do with that.

Yeah I think I wrote over 20 of them.

Anything good come your way as a result of being in the Untitled Art Show?

Well the board I did for the show, I ended up turning that into a four board series for Consolidated, and a few people e-mailed me, but I didn’t really get any work from it besides that.

Do any of the boards that are on your website have any specific stories behind them, or are they straight out of your head?

Just from my head. Some of them are to help bring awareness to moral conundrums. There is a series of boards I did on Siamese Twins, because there are all these questions about Siamese twins that need to be addressed. For example, if the twins have two of everything, but only one penis, can they still have two wives? Or if they have two of everything but only one heart, can they have two wives? Also what if the twin on the right kills someone, and the twin on the left testifies against him for immunity. And the twin on the right is sentenced to death, but they share the same heart, what do you do then?

I did notice more than a few concerning Siamese twins. Does the Cleveland steamer board explore any moral conundrums?

Maybe, that graphic was actually an idea from Birdo at Consolidated.

Has there ever been a time where you thought, "Oh shit, this is it, I'm going to die?"

Yes. Recently this happened to me. Two months ago while driving on Route 80 in north Jersey at around one in the morning, and I hit a 250 plus pound black bear and totaled my car. I didn’t see it because it was dark, and it was black. The front of my car got smashed and the bear flew onto my windshield and broke it. For a couple of seconds I couldn't see anything because there was black bear all across the windshield. My car started to fill up with smoke and wouldn’t drive, so I had to pull over. I couldn't wait in my car because of the smoke, and it was so dark and no one was around. In my mind I was thinking the bear was still alive and was going to come get me. Also my car was making weird noises, so I thought it was going to explode. I had to wait in the dark thinking that for about 20 minutes until the police showed up. It’s really been a pain, because I only just got a new car, and I live in a very small town in New Jersey. I have been stuck home almost two months without a car. It's been very frustrating. I was definitely thinking that I was going to die the whole time during the accident, especially when the bear was across my windshield, like two feet from my face. It felt like running into a brick wall.

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Website
www.toilettown.com



Photos
Alexander Duke

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