Not Today, Hades!

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (0:01)
From WBEZ Chicago, It's This American Life. I'm Ike Sriskandarajah in for Ira Glass.
Pablo, does this feel like an Icarus story to you?

**Pablo Manriquez** (0:13)
Maybe, potentially.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (0:15)
What part?

**Pablo Manriquez** (0:17)
Well, Icarus dies. Not that part.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (0:25)
This is Pablo Manriquez, and he recently survived his own personal Greek tragedy.
He's a reporter in Washington, DC, known him for years. And this all began when a ripped open package showed up on his front stoop.

**Pablo Manriquez** (0:40)
It's late winter, 2022 I find a box outside of my apartment. Inside is a canvas, a couple of the four primary colors, a paintbrush, and a palette.
It just seems like a sign.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (0:56)
Yeah. And that's like, what's the sign?

**Pablo Manriquez** (0:59)
It was just, I thought to myself, somebody painted every painting in the capital, in the White House, in the Department of Justice, all these agency buildings, they have oil paintings. And yet, in the 15 years that I've been in Washington, I've never met an oil painter.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (1:16)
Yet, this light bulb moment, that could be him.
It wasn't the first time he decided to become a new Pablo. When we first met, he was doing PR work, but he decided he wanted to be a reporter no matter what. So at 37, he moved into a flop house and began freelancing for small publications. And now he spends his days chasing down politicians in the halls of Congress. He made it happen.
So with these art supplies, he began to imagine this other life for himself. And he made a Pablo kind of plan.

**Pablo Manriquez** (1:55)
So I was like, if I become an oil painter, I would basically be the only oil painter I know and in some sense have like a monopoly on oil painting in Washington. You know, I mean, like if you want an oil painting, especially a portrait, you have to come to me.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (2:14)
Well, Pablo lacks in skill and experience. He compensates for with heat seeking opportunism and blinding self-confidence.
It can rub people the wrong way. But I appreciate the hustle. Pablo, it's so funny to me that you're trying to pick one career in a, I can say it, the dying industry by supplementing your income with another dying industry.

**Pablo Manriquez** (2:44)
Yeah. Reporting an artist, it's like the two porst.
It didn't make any sense to a lot of people.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (2:53)
But it made sense to Pablo. Pablo looked down at the new tools in his hands and then tilted his head skyward. Even as Icarus did before him, he saw a way to soar where no mortal had dared to soar. Our show today, myths in real life. What happened next to Pablo and other daring actions by mortals challenging their small lives. And a cameo by a real life god. Because the gods get mad if you don't include them. And I'm too busy to get smote. Not today, Hades. Stay with us.
It's This American Life, Act One, Icarus.
So Pablo Manriquez in Washington, DC had received these art supplies, perhaps discarded by an Amazon package thief, or perhaps a gift from the gods. And he figured, there's all these big egos in town who would love to be memorialized in oil portraits. Well, I could do that for them, even though Pablo himself had never painted a portrait in his life, or painted anything for that matter.

**Pablo Manriquez** (4:20)
I had sort of a clear vision in mind of what I needed to do. I needed to learn how to paint a face.

**Ike Sriskandarajah** (4:26)
Politicians have them. We can't sell a portrait without one.
Pablo finds a YouTube channel called Paint Coach. It has a 10-minute crash course. He follows along, he starts moving paint around on the canvas, and he's hooked. In his head, he's already competing with the legends who are hanging on walls around town. He just needs a first subject to paint.
It's got to be someone widely recognizable, someone distinct, and iconic. So he picks Mitch McConnell.

**Pablo Manriquez** (5:01)
He's always had super, super loyal staffers.
I mean, I imagine he's, according to his book, The Long Game, he's run out all his enemies and installed all of his friends. So I was hoping to find Mitch McConnell fans to buy Mitch McConnell paintings. Another thing I did, I looked up on Etsy, I looked up on the typical places where you would go to buy an oil painting, and I couldn't find any oil paintings of Mitch McConnell. If I painted five paintings of Mitch McConnell in a week, I had the only five paintings of Mitch McConnell in existence for sale.