PA Day 4- Books, Blobs, and Bronze- Last Day In Philadelphia
I did another day of branching out of Philadelphia during the morning and making it back in time to see museums and open mics. I got my morning coffee and a light brunch at the highly-recommended Gryphon Cafe in Wayne. I had their ice coffee and a prosciutto sandwich. The coffee was very good, but the prosciutto was definitely the star of the meal. I'm a little biased in that I always like prosciutto but the cheese and bread they paired it with made it an exceptional sandwich. And easy on the eyes too.
From there I went to Phoenixville to see the Colonial Theater. Fans of terrible 50's B-Horror Movies will recognize it as the movie theater from the iconic film The Blob. For some reason I don't fully understand, that was one of my favorite movies growing (Does it surprise anyone that I was an odd kid?) and it was a real treat to get to see.
Here's the famous scene for anyone that happens to be completely without culture:
But like the Blob from Outer Space, I was not fated to stay long in Phoenixville, and I left to go see Baldwin's Book Barn in West Chester. An unassuming barn from the outside, this bookstore made it onto the Atlas Obscura list because of its labyrinthine structure on the inside. There's five floors, secret nooks, and crannies and basically ever bit of exposed surface area is covered in books. I resisted the urge to buy anything, but I loved it in there.
After that it was back to Philadelphia to see the Rodin Museum, the largest collection of Rodin's Sculptures outside of Paris. The museum is fairly small given it's more specialized nature, but it's always pay what you want which makes up for it. The sculptures are just incredible. Rodin really bridged the gap between classical sculpture art and changing modern sensibilities before e turn of the 20th century. He's probablt best known The Thinker, but his other works featured subjects ranging from the totally mundane to the fantastic. He also caused a bit of controversy for the lifelike sensuality he frequently captured, particularly one work that featured two women in a seemingly intimate embrace. Very taboo busting stuff, for the 1800s. I just think it's insane how much emotion he is able to capture in stone.
After the museum I realized there was at least one big Philly Tradition i had failed to take part in: The Cheesesteak. I went to a restaurant called Cleaver to get their acclaimed Philly Cheesesteak. I also saw that they had boozy milkshakes with local beer, Yards' Brawler. I honestly don't know which one I liked more. I did not, perhaps due to the milkshake, have the wherewithal to take a photograph of the sandwhich. But it was at least a foot long and just filled with prime sliced ribeye and melted cheese. I see why people like 'em.
While I sobered up from the milkshake and meat fatigue, I went to the Rosenbach Library. They are known for having some very rare works, including a manuscript for Ulysses as well as all of Maurice Sendak's drafts of Where the Wild Things Are. Unfortunately I didn't have time to take the full tour before the mic, but I did get to look at their special Halloween exhibit on original notes and manuscripts from Dracula and Frankenstein. I've never actually read either novel, but it's incredible how much they've pervaded popular culture for over a century. Frankenstein impresses me slightly more, because it basically created science fiction and was a huge step forward for people actually beginning to take female author's seriously.
Before the mic, I fueled up really quickly at Elixir Coffeehouse. The coffee was really good, and the space was very hip, but they were playing Red Hot Chili Pepper Sons the whole time and for reasons I can't quite put my finger on that kinda threw me off.
The mic was in a bar called the Raven's Lounge, which was rally cool and seemed like a pretty popular hang out spot. Before the open mic there was a small showcase which I thought was pretty fun. I hadn't actually seen many of the comics from the showcase earlier in the week so it was definitely nice to see even more of the scene.
I thought the host Rachael Fogletto was particularly funny. She did a really clever bit about how growing up she was a goth kid, but also took tap lessons and how different those two groups are. She also had the rally great line "Philadelphia can be a rough town. Have you ever seen an ATM that looked like it wanted to rob you?"
My favorite performer in the showcase was a guy I had seen around a few times name Bill Reick. His material has a dark edge to it (some of his funniest material was also about suicide) but he had a really loose and silly delivery to it that made it all work in a fun way. Probably my favorite joke of his was maybe the goofiest one, but I think because it was surrounded by darker more commentary based stuff it just stood out more: "I had to fill my tires with air so I pulled into a gas station thinking it would cost maybe a quarter. It turns out it was $1.75 to fill up my tires! I guess that's just the price of inflation."
The other cool thing about the showcase was that it ended with a parody music act called the Flannel Chucks. They were different than the previous musical acts I'd seen on my trip, because they did their own music live rather than using karaoke tracks, and they were also really good singers and players so even if the songs weren't particularly funny they were still nice to listen to. I honestly don't know how funny they were because the mic-ing wasn't great, so a lot of the lyrics were hard to make it out, but what I heard seemed funny and it was just a lot of fun to watch.
After the showcase was the open mic, which all the other comics told me was the biggest one in the state. They weren't kidding, I ended up leaving after the first half because it was already close to midnight so I imagine the mic probably went until at least 1 in the morning.
Luckily, because I was there early and also because I helped flier to promote the show, I got a pretty nice time slot, but I'm sure it must have been hard being in the second half because the audience was definitely fading by the end of the first chunk. This is not to say that the comics were bad. Again they were all pretty consistently funny, there just seems to always be a point in the night where the audience hits a wall. It's different for every mic, but I think it happens no matter how good the batch of comics are.
My favorite comic of the half I saw was a guy name Aaron Abramowitz. He did some good material that would have been hard to pull off had he been less confident in it. A silly story about smoking pot with his mom starts off very stilly, but veered into some incest jokes without losing the audience which was pretty impressive. My favorite line of his was "My Parents are named Arnold and DIerdre. They sound like two dusty yamakas"
My own set went well though I timed it a little wrong, because I got a really big laugh but then still had about a minute left. None of the other material could quite live up to that punch line, so I should have ordered the jokes differently, but you live and you learn, and it was still a solid set.
Favorite Random Sightings: City of Bubbly Love; So Fun! Yogurt; Fuzzy Butts Pet Store
Regional Observations: Highway Exit Signs outside of Philadelphia still use quarter and half miles so I have even less clue what the unsimplified tenths are about in Philly.
Albums Listened To: FishScale by Ghostface Killah; Fistful of Peril by Czarface; Five Score and Seven Years Ago by Relient K (Just Crayons Can Melt On Us for All I Care); Five to Two by Westbound Train (good old Boston Boys); Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes (still lovely after almost 10 years); Flower Boy by Tyler, the Creator (One of the best albums of the year so far, which I never would have expected)
People's Favorite Jokes:
Me, Myself, and I
Three guys are jumping out of a plane. They're told that they'll turn into whatever the first thing they say is when they jump. The first guys jumps and says, "I want to be a bird." He turns into a bird and flies away. The next guy jumps, and says "I want to be a fish". He turns into a fish, lands in the sea and swims away. The next guy jumps, and says, "Oh shit"
Song of the Day:
