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the motivation for Bosch's horrifying and fantastical canvases; It's difficult to live near someone who might paint your face onto a damned creature with Hell's staff fraternizing in what used to be its butt. But there's a story about another painter which could shed some light on what Bosch was doing. Pablo Picasso once painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein, only to have someone comment that Stein looked nothing like the painting. Said Picasso: "She will, soon enough." (And she did ). Apply this same reasoning to a picture of yourself with imps in your ass. It might make you think.
    Beyond the existential and theological nature of Bosch's work is the fact that, as paintings, they are just so damned cool. Bosch's paintings of Hell influenced two great schools of art: Surrealism and Heavy Metal. Surrealism got off on Bosch's vibrant and innovative use of color and his ability to combine the mundane and the fantastical to make bitter and intelligent social commentary. In fact Bosch had one up on most of the Surrealists in that he actually believed in something; unlike the surrealists and their kissing cousins the dadaists, Bosch's work is rooted in morality rather than running away from it. Bosch wouldn't have painted a moustache on Mona Lisa; he'd've had her devoured by a fish demon as a pointed warning of the dangers of vanity. 
    Heavy Metal artists dug Bosch, because, dude, he totally painted demons. Without Bosch, we'd have no Boris Vallejo airbrushings or Dio album covers, and it's debatable whether Western Culture would be able to survive their lack.
    Some ask, does Bosch's work show Hell as it really is? No less an authority than the Catholic Church suggests that Hell is not so much a location as it is a state of being, an eternal absence of God's grace rather than a place where pitchforks are constantly, eternally and liberally applied to your eyeballs. In which case, Bosch's turbulent colors and troublesome devils are just another picture show, a trifle used to scare the credulous and the dim from indulging their baser instincts, like sex and thoughts on the possibility of even more sex. 
    It's the wrong question. It's not important that Bosch shows Hell as it truly is; it's entirely possible that, other than a useful philosophical construct, Hell doesn't exist at all. (This does not change the fact that the Backstreet Boys must somehow be eternally punished for their crimes.) But whether it truly exists or not, humans need the idea of Hell, whether it be to scare us into a moral life, comfort the smug ones who believe everyone else is going there, or simply to remind us that the actions of our lives, good or ill, live beyond those lives themselves, and the accounting of them may occur past the day we ourselves happen to stop. Bosch saw the importance of the idea and put it down in oil. 
    The question is not whether Hell exists, but rather: If we could see our souls in a mirror, rather than our bodies, would they be as Bosch painted them? If they were, we wouldn't have to wait until the next life for Hell. It would already be here. 

Best Non-Toxic Creative Tool of the Millennium.
    Play-Doh. No one outside the manufacturing process know exactly what this stuff might be made out of (it's not clay! It's not dough! It's somewhere in between !) but just about everyone has eaten some. When you're four years old, and there's five more minutes between you and your cookies and milk, there's only one toy you have that will quell those annoying tummy rumblings. And as an extra bonus, tomorrow, you're going to have a couple of really creative bathroom moments, too! There's no downside. Thank God someone thought to make it non-toxic.
    Blame the smell. You pry off the lid of Play-Doh, and that sweet, unidentifiable aroma wafts out. It almost smells like a number of things, many of them yummy. Some people think it smells a little bit like vanilla. Sure, if it's been rubberized; as good as Plah-Doh smells, it also smells