Bill Harrison is a fat, balding, bearded and incredibly handsome artist of international repute. As every schoolchild knows, his seminal 1912 work “Nude Descending Staircase with Cheeseburger” is credited with starting both the Cubist movement and modern-day advertising. His giant white “St Louis Arch” still welcomes travelers to the Gateway of the West, though few people know that it’s constructed entirely of Silly String and the filling from Hostess Twinkies, and weighs only 42 pounds.
His connection to the arts goes back to his childhood in the suburbs of Chicago, where he grew up in the same neighborhood as Titian, Rembrandt and Picasso. And although history books make no note of it, as a young apprentice he actually held the ladder for Michelangelo during the painting of the Sistine Chapel. ‘Beel!’ Michelangelo would yell, ‘You queeta shakin’ de damn ladder, eh?!!’
Although his fame as an artist is worldwide, many people are unaware that he is also a prodigious inventor. Among his more notable creations are the cathode ray tube, the Hubble Orbiting Telescope, Daylight Savings Time, and cheese. In 2033, he won the Noble Prize for his work on Time Travel. And he is still the only man ever to have painted a self-portrait for the cover of Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” issue.
He now lives in his hidden mountaintop fortress in the remotest regions of Naperville, Illinois with his gorgeous wife Joan, the former “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” and his two boxers; “Hank, The Wonder Dog,” and “Sonny, The Other Wonder Dog.” He is currently worshipped as a god on several islands in the South Pacific, and in our opinion, justifiably so.