Lloyd Canning Update

A week ago I posted about Lloyd Canning, an artist who claimed that he had been abducted by extraterrestrials who were now beaming images into his brain, and that this served as the inspiration for his art. He's now done an about face and says that he was just joking about the whole alien-abduction thing. It was a stunt to get publicity.

I have to hand it to him that he knows how to work the media. First he gets free publicity with a crazy claim. And then he gets a second round of publicity for the hoax reveal. P.T. Barnum would have been proud.

However, since a week ago I described the alien thing as a "schtick" he was using to promote himself, I don't really consider myself fooled by this one. A schtick is exactly what it was. Just a more cynical schtick than I gave him credit for.

But it means that I'll now have to add him to the Museum of Hoaxes.