Glitter and Macaroni

Remember a couple entries ago when I mentioned that I don't know anything about anything? Yeah, and a couple before that when I mentioned I had no class? Right, cool. Keep those thoughts in your head and then imagine me at the Spanish Art Exhibit at the Guggenheim today.

I know zero, absolutely, about art. I don't know who paints what, I don't know what pictures are supposed to represent, and I especially can't tell the difference between what's good and what sucks.

Actually, I should give myself a little credit. I know some things. I can identify Rothko because it's just a bunch of stupid squares. Picasso's pretty obvious. I know him because I always see his work and want to say "Ah, miss, your eye. Your eye is drooping again, shall I show you to the ladies room?" But that's it.

So today, I'm walking up the giant seashell looking at the nice pictures and reading the walls along the way, and I'm trying my super hardest to think of something intelligent to notice, but all my brain did was categorize them into two main groups and a couple subgroups.

The main groups were "Paintings that Look Like Something" and "Paintings that Only Sorta Look Like Something." Within the latter group, each work was either "Looks Like a Person" or "Looks like a Food, Sheep's Skull, or Nothing." Within the first group ("Paintings that Look Like Something"), it was either "Contains Exposed Breasts and/or Midgets" or "Doesn't."

As you can expect, the only things I thought of to say were along the lines of "She's totally falling out of her top" or "Wow, that's a lot of grapes" or "Man, imagine sitting for 8 hours while someone paints you and then having it look like that." I mostly kept my thoughts to myself.

So, try as I might, I learned absolutely nothing about Spanish art today. And of course, there were tons of people around me who were all "Yes, clearly Picasso was employing this technique" and "Hmmm, indeed, it would seem that this is a new paradigm for Cotán" and "Hobbity-hob-hob-hob..." so that made me feel real good.

It wasn't the exhibit's fault. They had some prime information on the walls, though I sadly had no context through which to interpret it. Don't get me wrong, some of the pieces were really great to look at, and I had a really nice time, but as we walked through, I thought more and more how I'd probably be better of with a nice rubber ball or maybe a four-piece jigsaw puzzle with a duck on it.

Because I know about ducks. They say 'quack' and waddle around. I can relate to that.

Putting the ass in class

I have no class.

No matter how many art shows I attend (zero so far) and how many obscure Baroque trio sonatas I can recognize by ear (like, 2) I'm really coming to realize that I have about as much class as a toddler with a plastic martini glass. I can shop well and stand up straight with my pinky out as much as I want, but when really put to the test, I always find myself knocking something over, making gross faces at food I don't recognize, and laughing during somber performances.

It all stems from one of two things: 1) my awkward gangliness, or 2) my inability to keep things to myself. I'm not ashamed of either because they both manage to garner me attention when I want it, but then it comes to being mistaken for a spoiled rich kid of the proverbial "belle" of some proverbial "ball", I'm afraid I'll always come up short.

For example, on a date last June after asking a waiter what foie gras was (which I've asked a million times because I can never remember), he told me, and I reponded with "Ugh, gross, people eat that?" "Yes", he said. And I: "Do YOU eat that?" He: "Sure." "Oh, ok. Yeah." The successful lawyer I was out with never called me back. I have still not eaten foie gras.

But I'm working on it. Monday evening, I went for drinks at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel by Colombus Circle. The bar was super cute (that picture on the website doesn't really make it look that way, but it is) and had this awesome view and was filled with people who made three times my salary when they were half my age. This is the perfect setting for Standing Out and Making an Idiot of Myself. So I fought it. When we walked off the elevator, I resisted the urge to blurt out "It stinks in here, man!", which it did. In practice, my restraint resulted in me simply saying it at a lower decibel level. The drink I ordered was the Jade Blossom, some sort of green tea martini (because I like green tea bubble teas). When it came, I was thrilled that it was fancy enough to have an orchid floating in it, which was this total novelty to me. "Whoa,sweet, check it out, there's a flower in it!" I was told I could eat it, which was totally out of the question for me ("Sick, who eats flowers?"), but I spent the rest of the evening tilting my glass back far enough so I could stick my nose in it as I sipped my drink. When my companion for the evening was in the bathroom, this practice resulted in my spilling half the martini on my pants, but I didn't tell anyone.

My next big challenge will be in March when I attend the premiere of Die ägyptische Helena, this Strauss opera that Deborah Voight is singing. I'm pretty sure the seats will be fantastic, and I'm gonna by a new jacket for the event, which will probably be preceeded by some sort of fancy dinner. My previous responses to seeing Deborah Voight walk onto a stage have been "Christ!" and "Whoa baby!" and "Sweet fancy Moses!", and none of those have been live. So we're gonna see how well I can fit in with the other people who will all be thinking the same thing, but keeping it in their heads. But if she has a flower in her hair, I can't guarantee I won't get up on stage and start sniffing her.