Trying to describe what Jared Whitham is doing with his life is difficult. He's a performer/musician/painter/janitor/sculptor from Gainesville, Florida who had a feud with competing eccentric Tom Miller that might have led to him leaving the state ("might have" because the information Jared supplies about his own life is kind of unreliable.) He drove up to New York in an earthbound spaceship made of trash, which was later destroyed by a drunk driver, and for a time he broadcast his very own show 24 hours a day on a bunch of TV channels owned by an old man—the details on how and why that happened are sort of vague. He's built giant foam sculptures of hands and recorded a concept album about Bill Cosby and Wal-Mart and fought a life-sized replica of himself as part of a musical performance.Jared's true passion, however, is garage sales, which he calls "The Last Free American Market Place." He's collected 200 hours of footage of people buying, selling, and haggling over the used goods of their neighbors for a project that's taken him ten years and counting. Now he's trying to finally finish what could be the crowning achievement of his lifetime so far, but he needs money for equipment, editing, Japanese translation, and the services of Phyllis Diller. (If it were anyone else, we'd assume he was kidding about those last two items.) He has a Kickstarter page where he's raising those funds, and he doesn't need a whole lot more, just about $4,650, but there are only 23 days left for him to get that money.In an email Jared wrote us, he says he's "exhausted his pool of supportive friends" and is now at the mercy of strangers who give a shit about the arts, which is a tenuous position to be in. Still, he's not asking a lot: Five bucks gets you a download copy of the movie when it comes out. So check the trailer out and if you like it, don't be an asshole and give Jared some money to make a full-length version.
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