Ted DeGrazia was a local Arizona artist. In the forties he was in Mexico studying under Rivera and Orozco. He used to do murals in bars to pay for his tab. There was a famous one in Phoenix but they tore it down. In 1960 he was commissioned to do a series of Christmas cards for UNESCO. These cute stylized pictures of Indian children became a cliché found on bolo ties and refrigerator magnets throughout Arizona. A shining example of a sold-out artist, in later years he hired others to paint for him. After he died they leveled his studio in Tucson and built a gas station. This city knows how to take care of its own. The following was written for Mallife #12 - tdg; Homage to Ted DeGrazia, 1987.

The night I saw Ted DeGrazia takin a shit in the middle of Speedway Blvd ... I'd been drinkin ... yeah, but ... mescal ... sure ... yet ... the other guy ate the worm. I drive east wandering lonely heated no respite asphalt day-softened dustcloud empty street lamps. Crossing Alvernon a Palo Verde beetle lands on my arm. With a yell I fling it into a telephone pole, then ... over here ... where the ghost of the Midway Drive-In looms pale memory above the security lockers, there's Ted squatting down laying dry yellow coyote turds along the left turn lane his huge flaccid cock dragging the roadbed. It wuz awful. I slow down, pull next to him and lean out. He looks up eye sockets swarming with fat roaches ... millipedes dribbling from his thin baked lips. He'd been drinkin too, I could tell.

Why Ted? Why? Why blank-eyed cutesy brown children staring out soft colored parchment grip of gray grinning valley turquoise encrusted dozer-breathed death camp skull? Oh Ted, why is Tezcatlipoca such a lame bastard? Sixty million dead Ted! They clear-cut a forest to crucify them, lit fires under their feet as they hung there! Where's the blood Ted? Where's the river of life? Why Ted? Why?

Suddenly a roar, evil laughter behind us as a souped-up squeaky-clean jeep full of golden short-haired baggy-shorted frat clones bears down full speed high intensity beams blinding me ...

Ted! Watch out!

I gun my car to the roadside. Ted stands pulls off worn snake-skin boot revealing shining metal claw. With a nimble little hop he side steps the jeep spins round, rips the fucker eyeball to asshole and amid twisted auto wreckage and steaming intestines he screams

EL CON! ELLLLLL CONNNNN!!!!

I'll never forget that night it wuz like seeing Jesus ... yes, I believe maybe ... yes, it wuz.