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!
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