There's always dancing involved when S and I meet up, even when the plan is to see the Will Cotton exhibit on its last day at the Mary Boone Gallery and view the exhibit about lunch at the New York Public Library. Really, everything in life comes down to dancing, right? Right.
So there I was again in New York City's sweltering 95+ degree summer, walking to Rockefeller Center to meet S. I meandered at what was a pretty slow pace for me so as to not wind up a huge sweaty mess as has been my typical look lately. By the time I got to Rock Plaza, I was only half-sweaty, and after I found a nice bench in the plaza's shade to read while I waited, I was even less sweaty than that.
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| A view from a bench |
To make my day complete early, a family decided to sit on either side of me on the bench. I was kind of in the middle, but that's because I sat between two sets of folks who had walked away. When this family arrived, they didn't give me time to say, hey do you want me to move? They just sat on either side of me and decided the best way to go about things was to make the daughter pass things to her dad across me.
Surprisingly, in this particular situation, it was the parents who were annoying me more than the child. The child had an aura about her that seemed to say, this is really dumb and I feel really silly doing this. Thank you, child-person, I wish more were like you.
S arrived and we slowly walked up 5th. She pointed out that this was the same gallery we'd come to when we first saw a Will Cotton exhibit. I was like, I hope it's not the same stuff. She said, probably not because that was before he got all recognized from Katy Perry.
Explanation: Will Cotton is an artist who creates pieces involving S's favorite thing, candy. His paintings are huge and they display candy houses, candy villages, chocolate desserts, and people with candy and treats somehow intertwined with them. He became the artistic guru of Katy Perry around the time she started spraying whipped cream out of her boobies. Now everyone knows Will Cotton. Well, maybe not everyone, but more people.
In the gallery, S found a brochure and thumbed through it. The guy at the desk was like, yeah that's glued to the desk. S asked if he had more. He said, No but I can give you one of these, one per person I'm allowed. He handed her a thin, hard-covered book that promotes their downtown gallery. (He did not attempt to give me one because, I suppose, S and I count as one person?). The artist was not Will Cotton. It was Francesco Clemente. S said Thank you and we headed into the gallery. Then immediately she tried to pawn it off on me. I was like, I don't want to carry that around!, holding up my very heavy bag containing my very heavy water bottle and very heavy book that I've been reading for the past few weeks and still am not halfway through (it's almost 1000 pages--and hard cover--as S indicated, Light reading).
Our battle of the book no one wants ended quickly as she walked around pretty much in awe of the paintings. They are really stunning. We also found a smaller room that displayed five foot tall towers of ceramic cakes. Again, stunning. I'd post a few pictures of them right now only we weren't allowed to take pictures because of copyright.
Okay, I actually have pictures. Just because we weren't allowed to didn't mean I wasn't going to. However, I'm not going to post them because that's just not right. I took them mostly for the thrill of not being allowed to take them, not to infringe upon the rights of an artist. You're welcome, Will Cotton.
On our way out of the gallery, the guy at the desk asked if I'd be interested in a copy of the Francesco Clemente book. I gave him a quick No thanks, and we went down the hall to the other gallery. There, we found naked photographs of mostly children that was actually really uncomfortable. It's one thing to have old footage of naked children running around in a backyard on family reels. It's another to have them kind of posing. Creeeeeeeeepppppppyyyyyyyyyyyy. But then we also saw more semi-naked photos of supermodels from the early 1990s. It was a weird exhibit and we left rather quickly.
The exhibit S wanted to see at the library was called Lunch Hour NYC and displayed menus, pictures, and artifacts all about lunch. For some reason, the one fact that sticks out for me is that the term "power lunch" was first used in 1979 in an article in Esquire. Why is that important to me? I don't know. But now I know it in case it's ever on Jeopardy!.
At first, we thought everyone was breaking the rules because they were taking pictures. Then I re-read the sign and found that no flash photography was permitted, so we could take pictures. That was good because I was sticky and sweaty from the long walk from the gallery to the library and I didn't feel like scribbling down notes as I usually do for later poetic use. Instead, I took some pictures of stuff I could use poetically including something about where Jack Kerouac began writing On The Road and some songs on a 50's diner juke box--not an authentic listing even though the machine itself was authentic. The songs were all food-related in some way.
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| My "going to the food co-op in Park Slope" look |
That was about the time S took out her phone to start taking pictures of her own, which is also when she asked, Hey did I text you or did you text me or something?Remember how my bag was really heavy? Heavy and bulky. So that everything in it was really squished, including my cell phone. My cell phone some how became unlocked. It somehow did the following:
1. Texted S about 6 times.
2. Texted AV about 17 times.
3. Made AV my top favorite contact and added her as the only person on my default contact list.
This sent S into a frenzied state of laughing as I re-counted how many times it sent a blank text to someone. See? Multitasking is my specialty.
Soon after the laughing fit and a visit to the store to see the cool merch related to lunch (I wanted one of everything because everything was so friggin kitschy), we headed out to M&M World. Apparently, the Ms. Brown M&M was going to be taken down and S wanted a picture with her. Once she told me, I wanted a picture too.
However, when we got there (after a few more blocks of avoiding scary characters in Times Square--and by characters I don't mean crazy people, I mean people dressed up as Woody from Toy Story and Captain America, and Minnie Mouse--so maybe I do mean crazy people), we found out that the figure had been taken down the night before. Boooooo!
On the upside, though, S asked one of the gals there she knows if they could do showtime. Showtime? Now this is a job requirement I can get behind and I wish I had it at my job. They call all the staff to the middle of the floor and they line dance. How amazingly awesome is that???!!!! S was like, you have to dance. I was like, I don't know it. She was like, Trust me. Pretty much after the first wall, I knew the dance. It was not difficult.
By the time we'd walked to 42nd Street, I wanted to lie down and sleep forever because it was about 100000 degrees out at that point and we were yet again weaving between Mickey Mouse and Sponge Bob, having already seen a very sad looking SpiderMan outside of M&M World--seriously, he was like my height and the M&M could have taken him in one shot. Still, I made it back to Penn without incident. As promised, since S carried the Francesco Clemente book for the day, I took it from her and took it home. She was like, You like books. I was like, I like books I choose. She insisted I like all books. Not true, but I do enjoy FREE, which is the kind of day we had and the kind of book it was, so I took it and settled in for the ride home.
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