America has a new hero. He's a contractor of culture. His mission: To sell culture to the suburbs of America.
King recalls the day he got the idea. I was driving along I-40 just west of Raleigh and saw this subdivision and wondered what kind of person would live in a house where if there were no numbers on it, they would never know which house was theirs? And what if they had had a few drinks? And if you did make it home, how would spouses tell their husbands and wives apart?
As King found out later after he got to know his clients personally, this was actually one of their favorite games. It was called, "Can't Find My Way Home," named after a popular song from the 60's and the folk group Blind Faith that put out one album and faded into oblivion. Oh, well, King reasoned. I guess it didn't matter. Everything was paint and marry by-the numbers anyway.
Another popular game these commune dwellers liked to play, King discovered, was bunko. This was a popular especially for the women, sort of a retro throw back to their grandmothers.
And it's a bunko princess night!
And everything is alright
We don our tiaras and drink our champagne
We laugh with our sisters to cover the pain
It's a hall of mirrors but what can we say
Everything is alright!
But saving the Star-Bellied Sneeches only became part of his mission. King also set up plans for high-tech companies and large corporations like SLAP Institute in Scary (North Carolina) where many of these people worked.
For those companies, he offers a number of services including African American "walkers" that he contracts to walk around at corporations to give the appearance of integration and community. Even though that is the only job they do, the "walkers" help to loosen up the stolid atmosphere and provide spirit in a workplace that is unnaturally quiet.
"We try to make their presence as seamless as possible," King says of the walkers. "They do have real offices and are encouraged to laugh out loud when they're at the water cooler."
In another bold move, King has created Rastafarian doctors parks where all the doctors are dread-lock wearing Rastafarians, smoking marijuana and walking around in a stupor while Bob Marley is piped in through the building speaker system trying to undo the tenseness and artifice created by the antiseptic, white world.
