OMG Afro!

When I was about 14 years old and living in Holland I was sitting at my mate Thys’s place watching tv when on the tube popped up a painting documentary. Thys insisted we watch it, proclaiming it to be ‘best vet’ – pretty cool. Grudgingly I assented and started to watch this clearly ancient show about how to paint. After 15 minutes I couldn’t stop watching and my fate was sealed: I became a fan.

The documentary I’m referring to is Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting… a series of 30 minute guides on how to paint which ran from 1983 to 1994. There are many reasons the show fascinates me. Bob’s massive frizzy afro, The happy little trees, Bob’s mesmerizing voice and him getting high off the fumes from his paint make for a pretty potent hypnotic combination which will make you want more.

Looks can be deceiving though. Under Bob’s hippy exterior lies a steely cold eyed drill-sergeant who was in the U.S. Airforce in Alaska. Wikipedia quotes from an article in the Orlando Sentinel (which I haven’t been able to locate yet unfortunately):

Having held military positions that required him to be, in his own words, “mean” and “tough,” “the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work,” Ross decided that if he ever moved on from the military, “it wasn’t going to be that way any more,” and “vowing never to scream again”

Bob Ross on Family Guy

Bob Ross sadly died in 1995 from lymphoma at the young age of 52, but his work and his videos live on in people’s memories. His T.V. shows are still aired publicly across Europe and the U.S. every now and then. Don’t expect them during prime time though.

Every now and then his name pops up in conversation or popular T.V. shows like Family Guy and all the Bob adepts and haters (srsly, how can you hate that afro) weigh in with their opinion of him. But since there are still quite a few people out there who don’t know who Bob is and have missed the proverbial bandwagon, I’ve managed to track down a few of his videos on a Chinese youtube-like-site called Youku to help inform and educate people regarding Bob and his giant mushroom afro.

Here’s Bob painting some happy little landscape for you.

Note: may be slow to buffer. If it starts stopping at intervals, pause and wait a minute for the buffer to catch up again.. it’s from China after all.

So, what are your thoughts on Bob? Are you as enamored of Bob as I am? Are you an old Bob hater or Bob lover? Drop us a line in the comments below!