Nature Boy

At the hotel, I spotted the nametag of one of the girls who works behind the check-in desk. I don't even recall her name, but written underneath it on her brass tag in tiny black italic letters it said "Gustav Klimt".

"Gustav Klimt?" I asked. Why put the name of an Austrian painter on your nametag?

"Yes!" she said emphatically. "Gustav Klimt! He was a Viennese painter from the 19th century and—" I cut her off as politely as I could. "I'm aware of Gustav Klimt." His body of work as a whole is underappreciated, but every college dorm in the United States has at least one poster bearing a copy of that damned waste of canvas. Klimt had a gift for drawing the female form. So what is his most enduring creation? A picture of a woman fully clothed and swathed in a cape.

Philistines.

But I digress. "I'm aware of Gustav Klimt," I'd said. "But what's the significance?"

"Oh, everyone gets to pick their favorite artist to put on their nametag," she explained. "It's more interesting than just putting down a hometown or something." I thanked her for the explanation. This concept intrigued me, because I would totally dig letting people know that Toulouse-Lautrec is one of my favorite artists.

Sadly, most people don't even know about him. Perhaps I didn't think this all the way through at first. Explaining him to people would be more hassle than it's worth. "Short dude from the movie Moulin Rouge?" "Oh, yeah. Funny little dwarf." "Yeah, he was a real person." "Really?" "Yes. But he was an artist. He didn't write Nature Boy." "Whoa. No kidding?" At that point, I'd start rubbing the bridge of my nose until I could get a new nametag with the words, "State College, PA" emblazoned on it.