Why Wasn't I Told About This?

It seems like no one tells me anything anymore. How else to explain that it took me seven years to find out about a giant pink rabbit in the Italian Alps? That's seven years down the friggin' toilet as far as I'm concerned. Luckily the rabbit is not scheduled to fully decompose until 2025, so there's still time.

If the rabbit were merely large, I wouldn't be so upset. But this one is two hundred feet long, twenty feet high, and visible from space. It wears an expression of lobotomized horror and yarn entrails spill from its side. If  you don't believe me, go to Google Maps and search for Colletto Fava, switch to satellite mode and zoom in.

The rabbit is so big it took five years to complete, most of it spent whipping grannies until they knit faster. Gelitin, the Viennese art collective that conceived the project, then dragged the shell up the mountain and stuffed it with straw. Though it has already begun to decompose, hikers are still welcome to climb up the rabbit and rest on top, or in the words of Gelitin, "Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside. Such is the happiness which made this rabbit."

Gelitin worked up to the project with other scandalous and bizarre labours of love, including Arc de Triomphe, a two-thousand kilo plasticine sculpture of a man peeing into his mouth, and Zapf de Pipi, a monument of frozen urine. With a track record like that, you could almost call a giant plushy selling out.

If you can't make it to the Italian Alps, numerous pictures available online approximate the experience. The piece's official name is Hase, German for rabbit. All the photos I've posted here come from Gelitin's official website, http://www.gelitin.net. Feast your eyes:

Rabbit under construction, 2005

Rabbit in winter, 2006

Rabbit decomposing, 2011

Chilean Rap Metal Production Credit

My illustrious career in the music business has taken me to some strange places - mostly bars and coffee shops - but I never thought I'd have a Chilean Rap Metal production credit to my name. Now, however, I've got two. My friend Patricio Salazar is collaborating with a bandmate in Santiago, and he asked me to help record his blazing metal guitar work in my studio. Then we sent it to Santiago, where DJ Chamber added the rap.

I'm sharing this here because I admire Pato's musicianship and I'm honoured to be a part of an international collaboration, but keep in mind this is very, very different from what you may be used to hearing on mattsnellmusic.com. Don't expect old-time banjo or Waits-inspired lyricism - my contributions are limited to recording and editing the guitar. Still, if you've feel there's been a dearth of Chilean Rap Metal on the site up to now, this is your lucky day. Feast your ears on Apalos: