Death Row Diaries
I collect yearbooks because they are so much fun to draw from. Rows and rows of shiny faces and brief statements of accomplishment. Then I discovered the ultimate yearbook (though it’s hard to get the graduates to sign it): an annual publication that assembles the headshots of everyone who is mulling over their last meal order.
I was surprised by what I discovered in their stories. Instead of evil genius, I found stupidity, dreadful planning, and a childishness surrender to id and immediate gratification. While some of the condemned are brooding and long-term bad, most just lashed out in some asinine way that led straight to the gallows.
Should anyone be killed by the state? I think not. Can this level of poor judgment be reformed? I doubt it. What should be done with these folks? I dunno, so I drew them. Here’s the beginning of roll call for the current graduating class and a synopsis of their extracurriculars.
TMN Contributing Illustrator
Danny Gregory first learned to swim in the canal behind the Lahore American School, to kill ticks at Canberra Grammar School, to snap bras at the Kibbutz Givat Brenner, to light a match with one hand at Princeton University, and to mount sheep at the Northwestern School of Taxidermy. He is the author of
several books and
the obligatory blog and lives in Greenwich Village (with his first wife and son), where he does not attend NYU.
» More by Danny Gregory
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TMN TALKS
RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, curator, and author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. In 2004, she founded PERFORMA, a non-profit arts...
