1) My beautiful and brilliant and charming friend Linda has been in town for a Renaissance literature conference and just left this morning. You will think I am biased, but I have the *loveliest* friends, as I would say all the same things about my friend Mita who visited right before Linda. I am so proud of my friends. If they are any reflection on me, I must be a fabulous human being :-) Okay, not, but in all seriousness, I am very appreciative of and grateful to my friends. They are family-like to me. (For anyone who doesn’t know, I am not ashamed to tell you that my own sister has been in town from Seattle for a week and opted not to see me at all. I am not whining; I feel very lucky that I have women in my life who are like sisters.)
Linda introduced me to Alexander Calder, an artist who was part of the surrealism movement of the 20s and 30s. She suggested a visit to SFMOMA, where we saw the most captivating exhibit of his art, including a good selection of his mobiles, which I feel I would flail about and not do justice to in attempting to describe—-I guess you could loosely describe them as abstract, imaginative, sometimes somewhat whimsical kinetic sculptures--but they are beautiful and creepy sometimes and amusing all at once, as were some of his made-up “beasts” (with names like Devil Fish, Apple Monster, and Parasite). Folks who live around here, I hope you will get the chance to go see the exhibit. It’s there till May 21. The posters for it around town, at least the ones I’ve seen, are featuring a funny, odd piece of found-object art (I think) called “Wooden Bottle with Hairs,” but you also need to see the strange dangly mobiles and “stabiles” (some of which have parts that move, too, but which stand on the floor as opposed to hanging from wire). Trust me, you will want to steal one. I also really liked his wire sculptures “Acrobat,” “Fishbowl,” and “Hercules and the Lion.” I like it when art makes me stare and giggle.
We got reprimanded by a museum guard for trying to take a little shot on a cell phone, surreptitiously. Add one to my collection of museum guard reprimand anecdotes!
We also briefly perused the surrealist photography exhibit and saw some very cool pieces but were running out of energy at that point and so I feel I’d need to go back and see it again to do justice. And we went to the exhibit of photography from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, there till May 30, which Mark and I had been wanting to see for awhile. All in all, I will not pontificate but just say there are some exhibits well worth seeing at MOMA right now.
It was fun having Linda in town and introducing her to some of my good friends here; I will miss her! Excitingly, though, Amy and David and their daughter Adele are arriving today and I hope to see as much of them this week as possible.
2) Last night we went to an engagement party in Berkeley for Mark’s cousin Anna and her fiancé Ron-—very lovely, though we couldn’t stay as long as we wanted to, because we were headed right on to a show at the Time Out in Concord, where Mark played in two bands: first Destroyer, a KISS tribute band in which he is the guitarist Ace Frehley (I refuse to spell it as they do, "Desstroyer"--it's not right), then Wildside, a Motley Crue tribute band in which he is Vince Neil. I have a ton of pictures from the show and will probably display some of them shortly in another post. There was an enthusiastic crowd, which made me happy, and our friends John and Rachel and Tom and Rachelle were there. Yay for me! (Didn't have to lurk in the club alone.) Mark was a little disappointed in himself because as Ace, he tripped and fell backward onstage after getting tangled in some of the equipment cords. It didn’t help that he was wearing huge platform shoes. It in no way damaged the evening, however, in my opinion, and he was able to rebound beautifully in Wildside, all resplendent in a brand new pair of fake leather pants.
Because I’ve been so paranoid about exposing the baby to a lot of loud noise, and also because I don't drink anymore (obviously) and have a more limited ability to appreciate the joy of bars, my original plan was to hang out in a Starbucks around the corner and read my book, then go over to the show later and just see part of it. However, I was driven out of the Starbucks almost immediately by the presence of two insane and possibly tweaking men. They were busy harassing two unfortunate fifteen-year-old girls, who luckily had each other and cell phones and so were able (I think) to call their parents to come rescue them (the management of teenaged boys did nothing to help). Both of the tweaking men sat staring steadily at the two girls, sometimes silently (which was in itself very creepy), while at other times the more gregarious of the two chorused streams of bizarre and disturbing nonsense in their direction. The more normal of the two had approached them and learned that they were sophomores in high school, a theme that the crazier one took up, then began repeating, “They’re soft s’mores! They’re soft s’mores! They’re soft s’mores!” over and over and over again, punctuated by bursts of loud, hyena-like laughter. I thought about waiting till the girls’ parents showed up, but I decided to leave, because I was sure that when the two girls left, I would be their next target, as the only other woman (or person) in the creepy Starbucks. I would have nobody to call to rescue me and would have to walk alone in the dark from the Starbucks to the Time Out, very possibly pursued by these two men. I thought it was sad that my plan to read my book was derailed and that I had to flee the Starbucks to enjoy the comparatively much less creepy crowd at the BAR. It just isn’t right.
3) I am tired because I think I got two hours of sleep last night, at most. I know I have more to say but I am going to have to trail off for now.
