Desperately Seeking...

Stranger Two Stranger #3 (Self-Published by Robert Hendricks): It’s the next volume of real life Craigslist “missed connections” ads taken from Chicago, New York, Detroit, and San Francisco, then illustrated and interpreted by the author/artist. Overall, the contents of this issue felt relatively light and quick as compared to previous installments, and there didn’t seem to be any that jump out for me as being particularly memorable, yet I still enjoy the project immensely from a cultural anthropology standpoint. The pieces range from those involving David Lynch, to size 16 shoes, another foot fetish, STD results being broadcast into the ether, and a tough one about a man hitting a woman’s dog, killing it, and then using this as an in to ask out the particularly “hot” girl. I think some audience members may find these pieces polarizing, in that you’ll either love the cross-section portrayed, or be repulsed by it, but contextually they all punctuate moments in time about lonely souls desperately just wanting to connect. Hendricks has, knowingly I believe, captured this odd cycle of the rise of technology impairing face-to-face social skills, but then empowering these awkward attempts to connect by providing a nameless and faceless venue. It’s a seedy underbelly, and one of them most robust exercises I’ve seen in revealing the strange dichotomy of our Modern Age. Grade A-.