Dean, May, and I all tried to attend a show at Southpaw, an absurdly convenient Brooklyn music venue, only to find tickets, which had been available for months, were suddenly sold out.
    Ended up cooking up dinner at home, drinking heavily, and watching The Magnificent Seven. You know, the moment one person makes a Brokeback Mountain joke, nearly half the lines in a traditional Western start sounding sexually ambiguous.
    Not the concert we were hoping for, but a good time was had by all.

Sunday: Sold Out

    May and I attempted to see the Darwin exhibit at the Natural History Museum only to find it too was sold out.
    I remember reading an article about the exhibit when it was first launched back in September. This article claimed that some 51% of Americans did not believe in evolution. And, yet, the remaining 49%, not even a full half of the damn population, managed to sell out the exhibit.

Sunday: Still Sold Out

    Retreating from the failure to get into the Darwin show, I convinced May that we should swing by Macy's. It didn't take much convincing. May is one of the least materialistic people I know. She likes nice things, but in a sort of pragmatic way. She feels that if you've got to get something, then you should buy for quality. Though, this is only when you must buy something. When the need is not there, then you don't buy. She's not one for clutter, really.
    Macy's is the one exception to this rule. May freakin' loves Macy's. Perhaps it is the size and scope of it. Perhaps it is the way that Macy's, like some consumer arcology, seems to offer everything you could possibly need and want, and, in doing so, becomes the closest thing one could possibly build to an economic model based on unconditional love – Macy's does not judge, it loves and offers. There's also an element of the carnivalesque in Macy's. People are getting their faces painted at make-up counters. Folks are offering to spray you with impossible scents found nowhere in nature – the impossible and they're just giving it away.
    In this context, even the endless barrage of advertisements becomes more amusing to May than annoying. She laughed at, for example, P. Diddy's efforts to interest her in his new scent: "Unforgivable."
    She opined that male underwear models, no matter how steamy, always strike her as a little goofy. They look to her as if they simply forgot either to put on their pants or take off their tighty-whiteys. The former gives the impression of a man going, "Hey, nice to see you. Have you seen my pants around?" The latter gives much the same feel as somebody trying to seduce you without removing their socks – it makes the rest of their nakedness look awkward. Either conclusion strikes her as comical.

    The goal of the trip was slippers. I have been wearing the same pair of slippers for six years. They are dead, but I refuse to let them go. They're the Pet Semetary slippers.

    Guess what? They've were fuckin' out of fucking slippers. Slippers were sold out.

Monday: MoMA

    May had to work President's Day, so I decided to find a museum that doesn't ticket for specific exhibits and decided I would go to the "one ticket gets you the whole show" MoMA. The primary exhibit was a Munch extravaganza. I was not all that interested in Munch, to be honest. He ranks, along with a handful of others (Dali, Van Gogh, etc.), as one of those unfortunates that have been permanently damaged due to their over exposure. I'm too used to them serving as irrelevant design element on coffee mugs and t-shirts to look at the original and not feel like I'm in the presence of something made to end up a umbrella or museum shop tie. I know this isn't the artist's fault, but that doesn't change the fact when I see "Starry Night" or the "The Persistence of Time," I feel like I'm in the presence of some college student's taped-up dorm-room poster and not a great work of art.
    I was excited, however, by the idea that I was not going to be turned away at the door. So long as they were letting folks in the museum, the show couldn't sell out.

    As an aside, throughout the course of the show I heard a good fifteen to twenty different folks approach security guards and ask where "The Scream" was. The guards would explain that it was stolen. They would go on to explain that it was not stolen from the MoMA, apparently the next most common question. I heard several guards go through the spiel and I'm wondering if they have a prepared response.

    The show turned out to be fine. Not a favorite, but worth the trip. I felt the less advertised but excellent show on modern etching, called the "Compulsive Line," was actually a better show. Several prints from artists who have specialized in the medium and excellent pieces from figures known for their work in other forms.