ATTN: Paintbar Staff
A lot of you have asked me why we’ve kept Paintbar open during these trying times. To be honest, I’ve been asking myself the same thing.
Do people really need to unwind with a glass of Pinot Grigio while they re-create classic works of art under expert guidance, now, in these uncertain times?
Should we really be encouraging people to unleash their inner artist on canvas during these unprecedented times, when it has become all too commonplace for folks to get pancaked by falling Acme anvils whenever they leave the safety of their own home?
In these extraordinary times, is it really advisable for people to visit Paintbar and put their personal spin on “The Starry Night,” when so many of our guests and staff have been unluckily hammered, flattened, blown up, frizzled, miniaturized, kablooey-ed, taffy-stretched, wagon-wheeled, and rocket-launched?
Yes. Emphatically, yes!
The truth is people need Paintbar now more than ever.
I know I personally get stressed whenever I have to dodge an Acme piano or flee from a swarm of odorless wasps. Our customers are no different. They, too, have creative inner spirits that yearn to break free, and they, too, do not want to be unexpectedly cookie-cuttered and baked to a crisp in an Acme PrestoMatic 3000.
Well, we can’t always get what we want.
But what we can do, at Paintbar, is offer customers a refreshing adult beverage and an artistically welcoming environment where they can “toss some gloss” and take their minds off the numbers, which, although we are no longer tracking them, seem to be getting worse.
Is it ideal that Paintbar is technically situated within a Level 5 High-Grade Hijinks Hangar, home to a fully operational Acme manufacturing plant and testing facility? No, of course it is not ideal. But it’s the way things are. Let’s not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Instead, let’s look on the bright side. For example, I have not been punched directly in the kisser by the novelty boxing glove that springs out of Paintbar’s “Days Since Incident” sign for months, because I have not had to go near it, because it has stayed at zero.
Also, we have a lot of customers who have made it out of Paintbar alive.
Doesn’t it feel good to be positive for once, instead of complaining/crying/desponding about the latest Acme bug-spray/human-spray mixup that has caused customers and co-workers to literally drop like flies?
Listen—I hear you.
I hear you when you scream at me to “temporarily close Paintbar,” or to “permanently relocate Paintbar,” or to “restrict Paintbar’s hours to off-peak times when the Acme Electricity Laboratory is not handing out high-voltage breath mints that light up your skeleton like a cartoon cat when you suck on them.”
I absolutely hear you.
Did I think about closing Paintbar when that Frosé Friday class got smithereened by an Acme decoy pie cooling on the windowsill, or when our Watercolor Wednesday instructor got flapjacked by a train that shot out of a freshly painted black circle on the wall, or when an entire Sexy Saturday Bachelorette Blowout got buried alive by an avalanche-in-a-can?
Of course I thought about it!
But then I asked myself, Would closing Paintbar change anything? After all, you don’t have to be at a Pinot-and-Picasso night inside an Acme factory to get cartoonishly spiralized by a puff of instant-razor-blade powder, do you?
No, you do not. It can happen anywhere, anytime.
Here’s the bottom line: if our customers are brave enough to sip a citrus I.P.A. and paint their hearts out to the carefree rhythms of Bruno Mars, knowing that at any moment they could look down and find out that they’ve been standing on an Acme disappearing floor, which has in fact just disappeared, so that now they are actually hanging in midair, legs spinning like egg beaters, poised to drop as soon as they remember that gravity exists, then we should be brave enough to keep the damn doors open!
Period!
—Paintbar Management
P.S. Many of you have been asking why Paintbar has not yet provided Acme all-in-one disaster-resistance armor to our staff or guests. I’m sorry, but have you ever worn Acme all-in-one disaster-resistance armor? It is not comfortable. It is itchy. It is hot. It chafes. Not to mention, it looks bad. It is for chumps. I would rather fire an Acme double-ended back-bending bunny-hunter gun than wear Acme all-in-one disaster-resistance armor. End of discussion.
