Master of the Gardens of Love

Master of the Gardens of Love is not a euphemism for that snake from Eden (y'know in the Bible, a book with which I have little to no relationship) or some band that formed in San Francisco circa '67. He's actually a dude--a 15th-century copper engraver from the Netherlands to be exact. But, to be honest with you, I have a hard time not picturing him as The Travelocity Gnome or Billy Crystal's character from The Princess Bride.

I shall call him MoGoL. That's an acronym, not just a super fun way to type an arbitrary nickname. I didn't accidentally have a lapse and think I was a 14-year-old typing up her MySpace page. Anyway, despite MoGoL's small body of work (he only engraved about 26 things, and I guess most of them were tiny), he did a couple works depicting, shockingly, the Gardens of Love (so it's not just a clever name).

He also did a lot of his work in The Hague, a Dutch city to which I have never been, but by which I've always been intrigued. This is basically because any place--or person, for that matter--that can garner a name with "the" in it must be monumentally cool. The Hague, The Netherlands, The Alps, The Great Houdini, The Zack Morris.

This theory does not, of course, hold true for bands, since most of them start with "the" and only a few of those are actually good. And, if it were true, we'd of course have to change all the world's greatest bands to The Good Charlotte, The Fallout Boy, The Staind and The Jonas Brothers.* Yeah. Little known fact (maybe not if you're someone who wRiTes LiKe tHis, but if you're kind of a grownup): it's actually just Jonas Brothers, not The Jonas Brothers. Weird.

I do have a couple friends with whom I refer to everything as "the" something. The Katy and The Niki and I walk around talking about The Jane and The Karl (The Katy's parents), The Fatty (The Niki's brother), The Pedro's (the restaurant we used to frequent in college), The Carpal Tunnel (the waitress we always used to have at The Pedro's who has GIANT hands)...Yeah. We're as cool as The Jonas Brothers for sure. Maybe we should have The Travelocity Gnome book us a trip to The Hague so we can finally be a little less lame. A little better than lame. We'll be The Lame.

*I am, of course, very kidding. Those bands are very awful. We all know the best band ever is The All-American Rejects. AAAAAHAHAHAHA.