The Leviathan Laments, part 1
I failed to achieve total boredom last night, but at times I did catch the fleeting impression that beneath all the merriment and energy of the crowd, my old friend lurked in the swallowing depths, waiting for sailors to tumble over the side and into the warm, black water.
Nonetheless, I had a pretty good time going out by myself, and I now follow the blogger's greatest calling, which is to tell everyone what he did with his friends and acquaintances over the weekend, supplementing it with photos. Ah, well, I have no photos. I hope my words will prove illustrative enough. And I'll try not to employ an affected diction in describing the evening, but I'll most likely fail.
First, I had to take A. to school, where she is indentured to a very difficult set design project -- or rather, a difficult and strong-willed but clearly incompetent director -- that has demanded her attention every night since, pretty much, last November. So, I took her to the performing arts center (a discussion on sewer problems of which will appear in an upcoming issue of the Pitch, penned reluctantly by yours truly) then headed to the art opening of my friend Alexi. I wandered through the labryinthine corridors of Leedyville, passing some uninteresting travel photography, some bourgeois baby boomers behaving boorishly in front of mixed media installations ("Can you tell me what this means? Wuh, huh. 'Cause nobody's been able to tell me what this means!"), a roomful of rather over-priced-even-by-artist-standards abstract ceramic knick-knacks, and into the Opie gallery, where Alexi stood under his baby-mobile-like candy World War II bombers birthing strings of candy bombs (not really candy but candy-looking) and amid his painted ceramic tile wall installations with which I was very impressed. I've promised to buy one from him someday. It was a small, but well-attended opening, his first on a First Friday, if I'm not mistaken. A mock cheerleading squad from the Kansas City Art Institute (which is singularly responsible for infestation of young artists and old rich squares who come to First Fridays out of some impulse to sample youthful culture) that calls themselves Rah! Booty appeared in the small space and proceeded to perform "a cheer," some bit of doggerel about experiencing auto-erotic pleasure while riding a horse. They were clad in white hoodies, pink skirts and tights, and were all very pale and shockingly young-looking, which gave the effect that they had all just learned to curse and invent innuendo and were tremendously eager to display their skill. The most enthusiastic performer was a boy with dark curly hair, who may well have been throwing himself fully into the performance to alleviate the pain of his recent breakup with his Gap-employed boyfriend.
The opening closed at 9, which is when most galleries shut down on First Friday, so I drove to the East Crossroads area (the district's frustratingly spread out and walking is too inconvenient even for me) to get a drink at a new pizza joint called Grinders, which was co-founded by a local celebrity sculptor named Stretch, who is something like the Pauly Shore of the Kansas City art scene. I ended up instead at the Farm gallery, across the street, where an opening was still going on and outside of which I recognized a few acquaintances drinking beer from plastic cups and smoking.
A word on beer: We have a fine local brewery called Boulevard that sometimes donates kegs to charity events and ALWAYS sells kegs, probably at discounted rates, to gallery owners. Far from merely a social lubricant, beer has become the very lifeblood of gallery opening nights. Obviously, this creates myriad problems, foremost of which is the practice of only viewing art one night a month with no intention whatsoever of buying anything but only to drink free beer and entertain some vague and at heart unimportant notion of "supporting art."
Anyway, I talked to these acquaintances, all members of the book club I force myself to attend every Sunday in the smoking lounge of McCoy's, where almost all of them work. My suspicion that this book club was little more than a laid-back social clique was fully realized. I learned from one of them that the general manager of McCoy's was name-dropped by his former roommate, actor and KU-grad Paul Rudd, in the movie Anchorman. I haven't seen this film, but I understand that at one point Rudd is improvising on assigning names to his gonads and briefly dubs his left testicle "James Westphal." Now, the GM of McCoy's proudly goes by the nickname "Ol' Leftnut."
I talked to these people a bit, had a Boulevard beer (I don't deny my complicity in the problem!), and the only other thing worth mentioning was what one of the McCoysians did to a video installation. Two small TVs atop pedestals, their screens facing each other, two feet apart, one showing a woman eating, the other a man, both cut off just below the chin. The effect is an approximation of standing and watching a couple have dinner who are either not interested or refusing to talk to each other. After the McCoysians and I discussed this "piece" -- which, by the way, was on sale for $800 -- for a few moments, one of them reached and turned off the woman's monitor, then turned it back on. "James!" I yelled at the man (not the testicle-namesake James, another), "what are you doing!?" "I just turned it off, that's all," he said (I think he was drunk). "No, you turned off art!" I cried, lapsing immediately into irony, my attempt at rebuke failing completely and belying my embarrassment to be seen with someone who would do something so obnoxious.
The McCoysians went off to meet someone's younger brother, and I declined to accompany them because I felt like staying downtown. I stood across the street from Grinders, wondering what to do, when I caught sight of the trademark day-glo orange backpack of a coworker in the window of the crowded restaurant. ...
What will happen next to our phlegmatic hero?
Nonetheless, I had a pretty good time going out by myself, and I now follow the blogger's greatest calling, which is to tell everyone what he did with his friends and acquaintances over the weekend, supplementing it with photos. Ah, well, I have no photos. I hope my words will prove illustrative enough. And I'll try not to employ an affected diction in describing the evening, but I'll most likely fail.
First, I had to take A. to school, where she is indentured to a very difficult set design project -- or rather, a difficult and strong-willed but clearly incompetent director -- that has demanded her attention every night since, pretty much, last November. So, I took her to the performing arts center (a discussion on sewer problems of which will appear in an upcoming issue of the Pitch, penned reluctantly by yours truly) then headed to the art opening of my friend Alexi. I wandered through the labryinthine corridors of Leedyville, passing some uninteresting travel photography, some bourgeois baby boomers behaving boorishly in front of mixed media installations ("Can you tell me what this means? Wuh, huh. 'Cause nobody's been able to tell me what this means!"), a roomful of rather over-priced-even-by-artist-standards abstract ceramic knick-knacks, and into the Opie gallery, where Alexi stood under his baby-mobile-like candy World War II bombers birthing strings of candy bombs (not really candy but candy-looking) and amid his painted ceramic tile wall installations with which I was very impressed. I've promised to buy one from him someday. It was a small, but well-attended opening, his first on a First Friday, if I'm not mistaken. A mock cheerleading squad from the Kansas City Art Institute (which is singularly responsible for infestation of young artists and old rich squares who come to First Fridays out of some impulse to sample youthful culture) that calls themselves Rah! Booty appeared in the small space and proceeded to perform "a cheer," some bit of doggerel about experiencing auto-erotic pleasure while riding a horse. They were clad in white hoodies, pink skirts and tights, and were all very pale and shockingly young-looking, which gave the effect that they had all just learned to curse and invent innuendo and were tremendously eager to display their skill. The most enthusiastic performer was a boy with dark curly hair, who may well have been throwing himself fully into the performance to alleviate the pain of his recent breakup with his Gap-employed boyfriend.
The opening closed at 9, which is when most galleries shut down on First Friday, so I drove to the East Crossroads area (the district's frustratingly spread out and walking is too inconvenient even for me) to get a drink at a new pizza joint called Grinders, which was co-founded by a local celebrity sculptor named Stretch, who is something like the Pauly Shore of the Kansas City art scene. I ended up instead at the Farm gallery, across the street, where an opening was still going on and outside of which I recognized a few acquaintances drinking beer from plastic cups and smoking.
A word on beer: We have a fine local brewery called Boulevard that sometimes donates kegs to charity events and ALWAYS sells kegs, probably at discounted rates, to gallery owners. Far from merely a social lubricant, beer has become the very lifeblood of gallery opening nights. Obviously, this creates myriad problems, foremost of which is the practice of only viewing art one night a month with no intention whatsoever of buying anything but only to drink free beer and entertain some vague and at heart unimportant notion of "supporting art."
Anyway, I talked to these acquaintances, all members of the book club I force myself to attend every Sunday in the smoking lounge of McCoy's, where almost all of them work. My suspicion that this book club was little more than a laid-back social clique was fully realized. I learned from one of them that the general manager of McCoy's was name-dropped by his former roommate, actor and KU-grad Paul Rudd, in the movie Anchorman. I haven't seen this film, but I understand that at one point Rudd is improvising on assigning names to his gonads and briefly dubs his left testicle "James Westphal." Now, the GM of McCoy's proudly goes by the nickname "Ol' Leftnut."
I talked to these people a bit, had a Boulevard beer (I don't deny my complicity in the problem!), and the only other thing worth mentioning was what one of the McCoysians did to a video installation. Two small TVs atop pedestals, their screens facing each other, two feet apart, one showing a woman eating, the other a man, both cut off just below the chin. The effect is an approximation of standing and watching a couple have dinner who are either not interested or refusing to talk to each other. After the McCoysians and I discussed this "piece" -- which, by the way, was on sale for $800 -- for a few moments, one of them reached and turned off the woman's monitor, then turned it back on. "James!" I yelled at the man (not the testicle-namesake James, another), "what are you doing!?" "I just turned it off, that's all," he said (I think he was drunk). "No, you turned off art!" I cried, lapsing immediately into irony, my attempt at rebuke failing completely and belying my embarrassment to be seen with someone who would do something so obnoxious.
The McCoysians went off to meet someone's younger brother, and I declined to accompany them because I felt like staying downtown. I stood across the street from Grinders, wondering what to do, when I caught sight of the trademark day-glo orange backpack of a coworker in the window of the crowded restaurant. ...
What will happen next to our phlegmatic hero?