OH Day 5- Famous Hot Dogs, Flowers, and Feminist Glass Blowing in Toledo.
I drove up to Toledo today. First I stopped at the Roosevelt Coffee House, the current winner of best Coffee Shop in Columbus. It's a nice like cafe, and the cool thing about them besides the delicious coffee is that big chunks of their profits go to support building wells and fighting poverty across the world.
Fueled up on caffeine and social justice, I made the two and half hour drive to Toledo no problem. My first stop was the botanical garden. The garden is filled with sculptures. flowers, and even a secret garden or two. It is a testament to how beautiful the area is that it was still enjoyable even on a cold, overcast fall day. I was particularly impressed by series of sculptures celebrating of African Femininity. Partly because they were objectively great sculptures, and partly because I think I falsely assumed Toledo would be pretty racially homogenous, so it was a pleasant surprise to see not just the presence of non-white cultures but a celebration of them.
After the natural beauty, I decided to take in some man made beauty at the Toledo Museum of Art. The museum is two buildings. The first building is more of a traditional museum of paintings and sculptures and the second building is all dedicated to glass blowing and blown glass art because one of the original founders of the museum was the head of the Libbey Glass Empire so it's a bit of local history,
Both buildings are totally free except for parking and on weekends they're open pretty late, which was really lucky for me. They also seem to have cool events not infrequently and there was a jazz concert going on later in the night when I visited.
One of the coolest things in the museum is also one of the first things you'll see when you walk in the main building. As Henri Matisse got older, it became harder for him to paint so he would make art using cut and pasted pieces of paper, and the museum happened to have a large mural he made that way prominently displayed.
On the main floor their were two wings, one modern and contemporary and one from antiquity up to impressionism.
I started in the modern and contemporary wing, which also housed the special exhibits. One of the special exhibits was a vast collection of Japanese Netsuke, small sculptures that initially served a similar purpose as belt buckles for kimonos, but then began to become more increasingly ornate and artistic.
The other big special exhibit was on early works of illustration done by great masters, namely Picasso and Matisse but others as well. Most of the books that they illustrated for happened to be works of classical mythology so it was really fascinating seeing these artists' inerpretation on mythological heroes and monsters.
Other highlights from this wing included a horrifying work for by Joan Miro that some other artist hung up in kid's nursery for some ungodly reason, a woman who sculpted an entire dinner party out of wood and various found objects using herself as a model for every guest, and a really cool Hopper.
On the other wing, the big highlight was an entire room that served as a recreation of a medieval monk's cloister. That's where they were setting up the jazz concert so I didn't get a great picture but it was really incredible.
As great as all of this was, the next building really blew me away. It actually won architectural awards for it's beautiful open space all glass design. The artwork was just as impressive as the building around it, with one room highlighting the art of glass blowing from it's humble origins to its more complex modern capacities. The special exhibit in this building was intended to highlight the works of female glass artists. I think it was great to see an effort made to highlight and encourage female artists, but the works would have been absolutely astounding even if they weren't progressive. Glassblowing at all seems esoteric to me at its simplest that what these women were able to do is nothing short of astounding.
After the art, I went to Tony Packo's which had been highly recommended. I got the MOAD which stands for Mother of All Dogs, and was easily the biggest hot dog I have ever seen. I've seen footlong hot dogs before, but this one was also fat like a sausage. It came with a bowl of chili, which was especially welcome on this kind of cold day, and a side of my choice. I got the Polish potato dumplings, which were another specialty and almost outshone the hot dog if we're being honest.
From there I made a quick pit stop at Rustbelt Coffee to refuel for my ride home. The coffee was great and The service was really friendly. I had a funny moment with one of the baristas when I asked if she knew any good jokes. She said, "Why? Are you trying to flirt with a girl?" I panicked and said "No, I was just asking" and then after a moment's thought, "Wait was that the wrong answer?" She just laughed and gave me my coffee. In the Graduate everyone always remembers the line "Mrs. Robinson, I think you're trying to seduce me' but the funnier line is the one right after that when Benjamin says, "You are, aren't you?" This moment felt like a much more wholesome version of that. I spend so much time asking that question and worrying that people will think of it as unsolicited flirting that it never even occurred to me there could be a chance that it might not be unwelcome flirting. I don't think I'm gonna try to push my luck on that one though.
Back in Columbus, I went to my last open mic of the week at a place called Ethel's Bar. It's a bar associated with the Short North Theater, so it was a a really sweet location that actually drew in the occasional passer by which is fairly uncommon at open mics. It also made for interesting crowd of younger people hanging out at a bar, and older people who got distracted on the way to the bathroom from Dream Girls.
Jameson Roger, who I'd seen at a few mics this week, was hosting tonight and again I thought he continued to stand out as really funny onstage, and completely friendly and welcoming offstage.
My favorite comic of the night was a guy named David Gamble. He had really good rapport with the crowd and strong pre-planned material as well. My favorite bit of his was about his fiance being mad at him for being bad with money. He said he went and bought her a $15,000 engagement ring and proposed. She said yes, but once the heat of the moment died down, she came up to him and said, "You can't afford this" So he said, "Well you already said yes, so we can't afford this".
I feel like my own set went pretty well, and it was great having a good audience to play off. After me though was one comic who was going up for the first time and doing a lot of drunk improvised rant based stuff, and then another guy who did an odd experimental set where he used a silly voice the entire time. I think these two back to back kind of scared off the audience, and I felt bad for the other comics who didn't get a chance to really have an audience to work off, and you could feel the wind get taken out of their sails.
Overall though, I'd say it was a really great mic and certainly not a bad end to the week in the Columbus scene.
Favorite Joke of the Night: Zack Lyons - "I've start dating a girl who's younger than me. I think she might be too young though. She knows all the state capitals."
Favorite Random Sightings: Grandpa's Cheese Barn; Christmas Forever!; Sham-pooch
Regional Observation: I feel like highways more toward the midwest have more rest areas than service plazas, while the northeast predominantly has service plazas. I didn't even know there was a difference until I started doing all this driving in new places.
Albums Listened To: Greatest Hits- Thin Lizzy; Greatest Hits- Steve Miller Band (Just Take the Money and Run and the Joker); Greatest Hits- Bob Dylan (just Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You); Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival; Green Suede Shoes by Black 47 (just the title track, I actually met the pipes player for the band when I was doing a language immersion course in Ireland); Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. by Bruce Springsteen (what a debut); Guilty 'Til Proved Innocent! by the Specials
People's Favorite Jokes:
Bill went to the doctor to get an annual check up. The doctor told him, "Bill, you're going to have to have stop masturbating." Bill asked , "Why?" The Doctor said, "Because I'm trying to give you a physical."
Song of the Day:
