The DC Disaster

   News story this morning: A local student band went on a trip to NYC. On their last night, they ate dinner at an Italian restaurant before boarding their buses to come home. And shortly thereafter, thirty-five of them got sick on the bus & had to spend the night at a hospital in Pennsylvania: food poisoning and dehydration.   This was a total case of deja vu for me. My 8th grade class took a bus trip to Washington DC. We spent several days visiting the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol building, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. It was a fantastic trip.
   On the last night, we ate Italian food at the restaurant in the hotel, boarded the buses, and settled in for sleeping the hours away as we headed home. It was supposed to be peaceful. But somewhere in Virginia, everyones' stomachs went south, and we made an unscheduled stop at an emergency room. I was one of the unlucky ones with stomach cramps and vomiting. One of my friends, Amy, started to suffer from hypoglycemia, and John, who was diabetic, began to have seizures. As they were seated in the row right behind me, it was really scary. We too were diagnosed with food poisoning and dehydration. Imagine an emergency room full of exhausted, sick eighth graders in the middle of the night. Eventually we were evaluated, treated, and were returned to the bus.
   Of course, I was in eighth grade well before the invention of cell phones, so parents, expecting us to arrive back at the school at 6 or 7 am, learned through a series of calls that we would be delayed. They were excited when we finally returned several hours behind schedule, and we were very glad to be home!
   Soon after, one of the parents came up with a fundraiser idea: she sold bright gold shirts with big blue letters that said, "I survived the DC disaster!" I had mine for years. Kind of wondering if it's still somewhere in Mom's house. My heart goes out to this band, as I know all too well what that experience was like!

SUPER SATURDAY!

My day in pictures:

   Completed lesson #7 of 8, swimming 1.5 hours. Spent the next 1.5 hours sunning for a few minutes, jumping in the pool to cool off, sunning, etc. Ended up with a sunburn.

   Grilled up some BBQ chicken and sweet corn that would have made any KC BBQ joint jealous. Really.

On the way to pick up Madeline for our evening plans...

A quick detour through the Plaza...

Passed some construction work areas with great signs!

   Took in some art at the Nelson: a small (under 3' high) model "Dendroid" from artist Roxy Payne. The main event, a film called "The Wolf and the Medallion" is detailed in another post... 
   Not pictured: the fried tofu with awesome sauce, and chicken with black bean sauce at Blue Koi. And it was, in fact, AWESOME. Had a great talk with Madel... it was fun to catch up and talk about our travels.
   And that led to the inevitable stop at Glace´ for some refreshment from the heat (it was still over 90 degrees at 10 pm). Many others had the same idea: there was a line out the door! So we grabbed 3 pints from the case to go...

   And we took them back to Wayne & Diane's place to share. Goat cheese & wildflower honey; fresh mint chocolate chip, and honey sesame. (All were good; the sesame was too subtle. The goat cheese still holds the title as my favorite.)

Fantasy 4th of July Weekend

My weekend, in a few adjectives:

Fun.

Indulgent.

Sweaty.

Magical.

Creative.

Delicious.

Extraordinary.

   I had an amazingly awesome Fourth of July weekend: charcuterie, wine, cheese and tapas at Extra Virgin. Fireworks on the lawn of Liberty Memorial. A heaping helping of Oklahoma Joe's BBQ. An afternoon at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Dinner at Justus Drugstore and a chat with the chef. I slept in every day. Watched the first seven stunning episodes of Mad Men (finally!), as well as the unapologetically sweet, wonderful and sentimental Cinema Paradiso. Walked at Shawnee Mission Park with the pups (despite the intense heat and humidity). Co-created two delicious homemade amoeba-shaped pizzas and drank too much good wine.

   All in all, it was a fantasy weekend with someone very cool, so I guess I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when I woke up this morning feeling melancholy that it was coming to an end. But I guess I have to return to reality: the cold slap in the face of a lawn to be mowed, house cleaning and a pile of laundry, and a 5:45 am wake up call for work tomorrow.   Can't wait 'til the next time...

   Top that off with Kristin getting engaged yesterday, and an impending visit to see Kelley and her sure-to-be enormous belly in LA, as well as the chance to represent my work at the Gallery 1988. Life is awesome.

Happy.

Sparkly.

Adorable.

Only in Kansas City...

   ...Can you get the greatest-ever gourmet ice cream from Christopher Elbow's Glacé, and sit outside on the patio enjoying the perfect weather (and letting your Shiba Inu lick the bowls... they dig the goat cheese and honey, as well as the salted pretzel varieties):

   Then head over to the Nelson-Atkins for a cool-slash-creepy walk around the sculpture garden at night, with the reflection of the classical architecture in the pools, the Bloch building glowing from within, the Oldenburg Shuttlecocks, and the grove of gingkos:

   Then catch the end of Macbeth being performed live at Southmoreland Park. The funny story behind this shot is that we were walking along the south side of the museum and were approached by two friendly but very drunk young guys on bikes. We chatted a bit and then moved on. As we approached the museum, we heard what sounded like a bunch of loud teenagers chanting and holding a seance. It sounded especially creepy in the dark. Dad & Lindsey ventured a little closer to investigate, and discovered that it was simply a theater in the park production! So we stopped for a bit to watch the end. The stage, lights, and smoke effects were great—definitely worth returning to see the whole show!

   Between all this and the annual Dog-n-Jog event, and the always-awesome brunch at Eggtc., today has been absolutely packed...

Stationery Show & more!

I met John for breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and then we headed out on the shuttle bus to the Javitts center for the Stationery Show. The Javitts center was interesting, architecturally-speaking, and the show itself was immense, though everyone told me it has been much larger in previous years, a sign of the times:

This shot illustrates my camera's zoom power. Can you find this dude in the photo above?

After the show, John had to fly back to Kansas City. So we took the shuttle back to the hotel, he left, and I struck out on my own to see the Kuniyoshi show (read all about it in my other post).

After leaving the Japan Society, I was thrilled to hear that Derek was successful in securing dinner reservations for our gang: me, Derek & Dan, and Julie & Erika from Smilebox. We met at Rosa Mexicano in Union Square. We had a blast, and a great meal, too! We all went our separate ways after dinner. And rather than go right to bed as a wise tired person would have done, I visited Times Square again. I saw the "Theater for One" that Pam Kelley told us about; she had a chance to experience it, but I arrived too late to catch it each night. Rats! You can read the NY Times article, and the NY Post. It closed May 23.

I noticed a crowd staring up at this huge screen & I thought, "Man, those guys sure love American Eagle!" But it turned out that they were displaying people's photos on it. Made a little more sense.

MOMA: A WOW!

Following my jaunt in the park, I met up with John & we went to MoMA, expressly to see the Tim Burton exhibition that Marita told us about. It was gone. But we didn't know that until we had bought tickets & entered the "special exhibition" space on the 6th floor. And boy, was it special. It was a bunch of live re-performances of work by Marina Abramović entitled, "The Artist Is Present." Well, she wasn't present, as luck would have it. But there were a ton of other naked performers doing strange things: running at full speed into solid walls, screaming at each other with their faces 1/4" apart, standing back-to-back with their hair knotted together. Oh yes, this was art. If you like to see naked women crucified high up on a gallery wall, or lying on a large cross-shaped block of ice, this is for you. If you like looking at a grisly photo of bloody bones on the wall, then turning to find a big pile of them picked clean, this is for you. If you like stuff that is normal, this probably isn't for you. Fortunately, they had other art as well. I had never noticed the dog lying under the table in this Picasso. You won't notice it in my photo, either, since it's so @%#*! dark:

Wonder how much force it would take to knock one over?

You try it, kid:

Clearly this artist doesn't know how to spell.

I couldn't read a single one!

When Kristin becomes an ophthalmologist I'm totally buying these for her. Or will more likely steal them from the museum since I don't have that kind of cash. Maybe if I could paint like this I'd have more money. I hate my life.

If your ham looks like that, 

stab it in the eye & lay off the Absinthe:

Please, sir, you're blocking the Pollack!

That sculpture looks like a wiry monster

sneaking up on those two with claws ready:

He'll grab them while they're distracted
by this painting as bright as the sun:

A tapestry embroidered with the names

of the 1000 longest rivers in the world.

Boringest tapestry ever:

Yep, that's a flag all right.

Gotta love the Warhols:

Looks like they made that chick from Iron Man into soup:

Fun way to display photographs. Of naked people.

Which you can see up on the 6th floor.

But these are more attractive than those were:

I like the tiger face in this one by Joan Miró. 

But good lord, Miró, what are you trying to say here?

That's a lot of circles!

Wooden cutouts of SCUBA divers.

I'd be much less nervous doing SCUBA without the water:

Hey, I think I recognize this place:

If you look really closely you can see me & John
in the tiny bus, waving as we leave MoMA.

I could make fun of art for hours. What a blast!