GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Local eye doctor and punk fan Scotty “Scraps” McDonough ventured to make routine eye exams more interesting by using the typographically dense Fest 21 poster to test vision, according to recently dilated sources.
“The Snellen Chart has been around since Civil War times and people can cheat by memorizing it,” said the heavily-tattooed McDonough as he stitched a Subhumans patch onto his lab coat. “It’s tired and old. I had been searching for a more current replacement for some time—and then I saw the lineup poster for Fest 21. It’s got a perfect composition of text that goes from nice and big up top to super-tiny at the bottom. I think reading band names is a lot more engaging than those random letters. It works great—you’ve got 20/20 vision if you can read the line that begins with Restraining Order at ten feet.”
While patient response has been mostly positive, some remain skeptical of the change.
“I’ve been coming to this practice most of my life,” said a bespectacled Helen Kruller. “I saw the elder Dr. McDonough for years until he retired. He reassured me that his son, who would be taking his place, is an excellent doctor and that I’d be in good hands. That may be so, but this new eye chart is just confusing. Are most of these bands local? Why is that alligator playing guitar? It says Thursday is playing two sets, does that mean they are playing ‘War All the Time’ twice?I used to know that if I could see line six, I was doing pretty good. Now he’s telling me that I need a stronger prescription because I couldn’t quite make out Bong Mountain.”
American Academy of Ophthalmology spokesperson Francis Musgrave is intrigued with the punk doctor’s innovative approach to eye exams.
“Yes, the poster is unorthodox, but it’s an interesting experiment which warrants further study. We here at the Academy appreciate it when our members make efforts to modernize what can sometimes be viewed as a stodgy field. We’re not all uptight stuffed shirts; ophthalmologists are regular people who like to have fun, too,” said Musgrave while puffing on a pipe in a book-lined study. “I’ve been similarly interested in gerontologist Dr. Kevin Merriweather’s work in using ‘blackened technical death metal’ as a method of drawing dementia patients out of catatonic states.”
At press time, Dr. McDonough had reportedly taken a leave of absence pending an investigation after allegedly injuring a patient’s eye with one of his liberty spikes.