Amusement parks have always had a hypnotic effect on me. When I was a kid I use to go to P.O.P., Pacific Ocean Park, almost every day during the summer. In later years I worked at the Del Mar Fair, where I operated a plastic toy vending machine that molded toys out of a kind of hot wax and plastic. I use to think of it as the kind of vending machine that Doctor Frankenstein would have come up with if he were in the vending machine business. 

The machine made these hideous little figures that were as cheesy as they were crappy. The fascination was in watching the machine make the toy under a plastic bubble. Like a magnet this attracted kids to try and stop the molds coming together, by sticking their hand up the trap door where the toy would be deposited at the completion of the coin op cycle. Once they managed to get their hand up inside and disrupt the molds coming together, the hot plastic-wax would be injected in, covering the hand and arm of it's screaming victim. 

The arm and hand were easier to get in than to get out so you would have to wait for the cycle to complete it's run. Vincent Price would have loved to have one of these babies in The House Of Wax.  Next to my torture pit at the Del Mar Fair was the Freak Show, staring Birtha the two headed cow.  

In following years I worked for a carnival, a circus, and then back to the vending machines at Marine Land and Disneyland.  After hours at an amusement park is like a giant monster that has fallen asleep knowing that at any moment it might spring back to life.  (Oil on canvas 1998)