So, we were reading yesterday that a house in Houston that’s covered in flattened beer cans has received a $125,000 endowment grant from something called the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. It plans to restore the house to its former, aluminum-coated luster. We know the vision that inspired its now-deceased creator, John Milkovisch. Why, of course, it was beer goggles! According to this write-up on the Roadside America site, “Beer cans quickly became John's exclusive medium—a convenient one, since John drank a lot of beer. He worked on the house for the next 18 years, incorporating a six-pack a day into its adornment—roughly 39,000 cans.” (That’s 6500 six-packs.) We’d love to know what the neighbors thought of Milkovisch’s creation, which also included streamers made out of pull-tabs. But what surprises us most about the news of the endowment is that neither Anheuser-Busch nor Miller has jumped all over this work of art as a sponsorship opportunity. $125,000? You’d think either of them would spend many times that amount for a house that is an ode to beer. And listen to this heart-rending homage to Milkovisch. After his death, back in 1988, his wife said, “John thought beer cured everything.”

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Photo: RoadsideAmerica.com