The House of Stuff

A presentation fromDr. Z’s House of Fun

Wilkins-O’Riley Zinn

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing!

Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

• Pablo Picasso

It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our

own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage.

• Learned hand

It’s the day after Thanksgiving and I’m putting things into place, the slow kaleidoscopic falling of this-here-that-

there that follows every move. I cannot NOT live like this and I like the stuff and love handling it even though having no staging area where I can look at all of it is

difficult. I work the puzzle even as I stand in the midst of it. I say to Jim that this is a distillation—it’s been an

installation, dismantled, given away, packed, stored—and now—less is still more than most people have, but it’s less than I want. Ah, to own a museum and live in the

middle of it—The House of Stuff!

• W-OZ journal, November 24, 2006

Myfirstalligator

Welcome home

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?• Stephen Wright

Making Home

My familiars are falling into place and their craft works on me.

They satisfy, delight, comfort, entrance.

They feel like home.

• W-OZ diary, December 20, 2006

It’s an odd world.• Timothy Spall

ROBOTS

and totem poles

And more robots.

And globes.

And mannequins.

And suitcases.

And old radios.

Colo

red lig

hts a

nd

m

an

neq

uin

s

If giv

en

a c

hoic

e, I’ll b

uy a

man

neq

uin

inste

ad

of s

hoes.

And hundreds of masks!

A

I like itBecauseit’s ugly.• William S.Burroughs

A colleague

seesmy RoboJoe

Robot

and says that it

looks just like

hismost favorite

Christmas

present

ever when he

wasabout five years

old.

Stuff evokes

memories. I call

my things

evocateurs.

There Are Stories In the stuff

THE LADY ON THE COKE MACHINE

Ask me about how I traded a James Bond game for a

working Coca Cola machine.

Lesson: Don’t be drunk and obnoxious at someone’s party.

You might be sorry!

Th

e C

hu

rch p

ew

We bought a van because of this. . .

The more a thing is filed away, the more totally useless it is. A sweet disorder in the desk at least ensures that the whole thing is ploughed through often enough for useful things to come to the surface.• Katherine Whitehorn

You can’t get a bookcase in this

country for love or money. They’ve

filled them with all their hideous knick-knacks and they’re NOT LETTING GO!

•Lucy Ellmann about England

I can’t find anything normal here.

• Exchange student/visitor, 2007

The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well. • Joe Ancis

There’s no harm in being a little eccentric.• Amanda Peet, Martian Child

I tell people one of the more fascinating places I’ve ever been in my life is my

daughter’s bathroom.• My mother, July 12, 2006

Th

e o

ld la

dy

She’s a

lways th

e fi

rst

pictu

re h

ung

.

I’ve always lovedschool ephemera.

I used to make my brothers and sisterstake weekly spelling tests.

I know you are, but what

am I?

I like the decorum.

• Tricker or treater about The House

of Stuff, Halloween, 1997

You can be better dressed when you own a lot of stuff.

• Helen Gurley Brown

If there is anythingI hate, It is collecting.

• William James

Oh, William. You’d change your mind if you could visit The Amuseum of Un-Natural History,

The Oddservatory, and The Endearium, all to be found at The House of Stuff.

We Are shaped and fashioned by what we

love.• johan wolfgang von Goethe

You’ve done a nice job decorating the White House.

• Jessica Simpson to the Secretary of the Interior,

Gale Norton, during a tour of the White House

It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells

than to be born a millionaire.• Robert Louis Stevenson

It’s kind of handy to have a family you can call and ask if they have a

milk bottle and a milkman’s hat—and they do!

• Josh Zinn, May 26, 2007

I think we’re all pretty odd.

• Michael Tippett

Th-th-

th-that’s

all,

folks,

fromHappy

Rabbits

Farm,

home

of The

House

of Stuff!