The Mothman’s Pitch For A New Statue

I want to thank you all for coming to this meeting today. The Mothmans have been haunting the hills and hollers of this great state for decades now, and I honestly cannot think of a better place to terrorize average, hard-working people who would later go on to be dismissed as gullible bumpkins getting spooked by a heron or whatever. 

This town has shown me and my family so much support over the years, as evidenced by the beautiful statue erected in my honour. I mean, between the giant, torn-apart butterfly wings on my moth body, which is actually a little problematic but we don’t need to get into that now, and the fluffy patch of moth-fuzz on my decidedly ripped chest, a lot of great choices were made when constructing it. But you know what could make an already great thing even better? Completely redoing nearly every aspect of it. 

So first thing’s first, just kind of like, something that jumped out at me — the scariness. I think it could use more of it. Have you seen that one inside the museum? I feel like it might be papier-mâché but that thing is 10 times scarier than this statue. As it is, I’m just not getting “malevolent force” vibes, but I think that with just a few minor tweaks, we can get there. And we don’t have to do the predictable thing and go Freddy Krueger scary. We’re better than that, and to do anything so on the nose would be insulting to our audience. Think subtle, like, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine kinda vibes. 

Nothing says “troubled supernatural bad boy” like a solid pair of jeans. Let’s get those scrawny little pencil legs covered up with something in a dark wash, fitted, obviously, and not pre-distressed, because that will go out of style in a hot minute. Classic designs only. 

We can figure out the details later, I know we’re all busy, and I can tell by the way Linda’s yawning and checking her phone every three minutes that she’s tired, but if you turn to page two, paragraph three you will find my measurements, just in case anyone needs them. I included both US and EU sizes to keep things simple. 

OK, the facial expression. When I sat for the artist, he actually caught me mid-sneeze. I haven’t seen my mom so bummed since the school pictures incident of 1931. I asked if we could have a do-over but he got super snappy with me and said something about “his process” so I just dropped it. 

Which brings me to the colour. So chrome definitely tells a story, like it has its time and place, but for the Mothman… well, I’m not sure if “shiny silver” is really doing what it needs to capture the sheer terror felt when one encounters me. I mean, c’mon: I’m an archetypical projection of humanity’s deepest fears since the dawn of time over here. Can we step it up? Jason, I saw what you did with your Honda — we could do something like that, like matte black mixed with that colour change paint maybe? Jason, we’ll talk after. 

Plus, the rain and snow leave those dreaded water spots all over my likeness, and who has time to clean that? Certainly not anyone from the Point Pleasant Department of Parks and Recreation with a microfiber cloth, that’s for sure! Just throwing that out there.  

Also, and I don’t mean to offend the creator of this piece because I think they made some great decisions, but the chrome thing kind of clashes with the giant red tail light-looking eyes. The combo makes me look like a 1950’s diner or a marching band uniform, and I think we can all agree that neither of those things is sexy. If there’s one thing Point Pleasant, West Virginia is synonymous with, it’s sex. It’s basically the Miami of the Ohio River. Anyway, simple tweak, hear me out: flame eyes. It would be the coolest if we could get them to shoot straight out, like in True Lies when Arnold DIY’s a flamethrower with that MAC-10. Man, that was fucking so awesome. 

Next up, can we talk about the hands? Can I say, I love, love that the statue’s arms are positioned in a way that it looks like I might be about to grab you, or maybe maybe trying to keep my balance on an icy patch but in a really cool way. But the shape of the hands? I won’t get into the exact details, but a not-so-kind Trip Advisor commentator remarked that it “looks like the Mothman is jerking off two ghosts!” I think we can come back from this one easy though with a couple flippity-flips of the ol’ bird. Or maybe one hand is holding a cig? Either way, I’d like to see someone write a two-star review about that! 

Finally, I feel like I may have come off as supercritical this afternoon, so I just wanna give credit where credit is due — the abs. I fucking love them. I’m making a strong push to keep them, and frankly I think we could see even more of them. The Mothman statue basically cannot have too many abs, especially those ones on the sides and the part that’s kind of near the pelvic bone, so when you wear pants that are kind of too low with no shirt on it seems like you might be close to showing pubes, but instead it’s just more abs that most people didn’t even know could grow there. Honestly though, I trust you guys and your vision, so I’ll defer to you on the abs, all 26 of them. 

Oh right, one last thing:, what do y’all think about adding a porch light near it or something? I honestly don’t know how that detail got overlooked, but if we could just add a nice, flickering porchlight… now that, my friends, is art.

This post appears courtesy of our January 2021 publishing partnership with The Hard Times. Every month, Widget partners with an organisation to feature one post/week from their contributors, members, or so on. View the other posts from our partner’s contributors here.

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