NC Day 2- Capital Cities, Contemporary Art, and Clean Comedy
Today started out in Pittsboro, NC. I stayed the night (and most of the coming nights) at the house of my dad's friend from college and her husband. I just spent the morning having coffee and chatting with them which was nice. It was fun getting to hear about my dad as a young man, and also talk a little music and politics. They also recommended the club I was gonna try to go to tonight so that was good to know that it had a seal of approval.
When I did hit the road, I decided to check out the capital which was not too far away so it was nice having a little bit less of a drive after the past couple days. When I first got to Raleigh, I had some more coffee and a light lunch at a really nice cafe called the Morning Times. For food, I got a turkey and cheese sandwich with apples in it. The apples were cooked, which I actually wasn't too crazy about texturally. I liked the flavor, but when I ordered the sandwich I was picturing some nice crunchy green apples but I can't really fault a restaurant for not living up to my imagination and just giving me a pretty good sandwich. It was also just a nice place to sit and do some writing, and I thought that the staff was super friendly.
After lunch, I walked around downtown Raleigh a little bit, but there wasn't a whole ton see besides businesses and restaurants. Then I took a drive up to the NC Museum of Art which was really cool, and free which was even better. The NCMA is also notable for having one of the largest free Sculpture Trails in the country so you can take in quite a good bit of art without even going inside. Plus the grounds are lovely on their own.
The Museum itself is split between two buildings. One Building had all the special exhibits, while the other housed the permanent collections. I started with the special exhibits. The first one I saw was on contemporary and ancient African Art. I particularly liked the different masks and costumes used in different tribal rituals, but the real standout was the truly massive chalk drawing (30ft by 18 ft) by a Nigerian-American artist named Victor Ekpuk. It was staggering.
My other favorite of the special exhibitions was entitled We've Met Before by Andrea Donnelly, and featured really impressive and haunting pictures made with specially hand woven and died cloths. I'd never really seen anything like them before.
I left the building with the special exhibitions and transitioned to the permanent collections building. Upon entering, I was greeted by a shocking and beautiful cotnemporary installation called the Doors of Jerusalem by Jaume Plensa, consisting of three large internally lit stainless steel sculptures of kneeling men with biblical writings carved into them mounted on pillars. A very surreal entrance.
The main wing of the permanent collections were different European and American art movements from medieval times up to impressionism and post-impressionism. Unsurprisingly the big highlight for me was a sort of indoor courtyard filled with different Rodin Sculptures, but I also really loved a painting by Thomas Moran entitled poetically “Fiercely the red sun descending/Burned his way along the heavens”
Unfortunately the contemporary wing of the permanent collections, was under construction while I was there, but I did love the collection of modern art. The distinction between modern and contemporary is a little ambiguous to me personally. I think it has to do with 20th century vs. 21st but either way the wing that was available to me I really enjoyed. My personal favorites were an oil painting by David Park entitled Bus Stop, an Andrew Wyeth painting called Weather Side, and a large surrealist painting by called The Emperor by David Salle.
After the art museum, I went to check out the (also free) NC Museum of Natural Sciences. It was close to closing time so I only got a brief overview, but there was a lot to see. I personally like their mineral displays and whale skeletons best, but I didn't actually have that much time to read anything interesting about anything if I wanted to see everything. Still, all and all for a a free museum you could do a hell of a lot worse and they had a planetarium that looked really cool if I had planned ahead better and timed my visit to line up with a showing. I've had remarkable luck just stumbling from city to city so far, so it can't be too surprising every once and a while when it doesn't quite line up.
After the museum, I got some more coffee at a place called Liquid State which was closer to where the open mic would be. Liquid State is a really hip combination coffee shop and wine and beer bar. The coffee was really good and the atmosphere was very cozy. I think though because I was going there later in the day that they were mostly transitioning to the wine and beer portion of their menu, so they seemed surprised that I wanted coffee. I wouldn't call the service rude, but they just seemed very confused by me. Maybe I was mumbling or kinda tired from need for coffee. I'm sure asking them if they knew any good jokes didn't exactly help make me seem like a normal person.
After my coffee, I walked to the Goodnight's Comedy Club to sign up for the show. There had been sign ups online the night before, which I hadn't realized, so there would only be a few spots raffled off the day of. I wasn't sure if I'd get to perform, but I figured since it was supposed to be a nice club I'd put my name in anyway.
After I put my name in, I got dinner nearby while I waited. I went to a place called the Remedy Diner which specializes in vegetarian alternatives to traditional diner fare (with all the classics still there for the omnivores). I got something called the Groovy Train which had fried broccoli, goat cheese, avocado, spinach, roasted red peppers, and balsamic on a delicious pita roll. It was really good, and a refreshing break from my very meat heavy diet. Who knew food could be so green? To compliment it, I got a local Blood Orange Wheat Beer from New Sarum Brewing, which was kind of strange but not bad by any means. Draft beers were also half off because of happy hour, so it was nice and cost effective to boot.
I got lucky and did manage to get one of the raffle spots so I stuck around. Because Goodnight's is a real comedy club, the stage and bar area were a lot nicer than I'm used to from just bar shows. Tonight's mic also had a fun gimmick where all the comics had to be totally clean or they'd black out the stage and move on to the next comic. It gave everything a sense of higher stakes, and some poor comics got blacked out so much earlier than they expected because they weren't expecting certain topics or words to not fly under the clean banner. One guy got out after one sentence because he said "Goddamn it's good to be here"
In general, it was a really good night. There was a lot of performers and a kind of small audience so the energy in the room kind of waxed and waned but for the most part the crowd was pretty supportive and the comics were really funny.
Some lines I really enjoyed:
Wolfgang Hunter "My dad never did AA but he fell down 12 steps once."
Micah Hanner - "Who answers the phone amber alerts? You're kid's lost? Well we're all lost in this world of confusion"
Jason Zaremba - "I saw a pair of glasses left on the floor of a bathroom stall. My only explanation for that is that someone was pooping and they squeezed so hard it gave them sight"
Nick Cartwright- "I started fighting with my girlfriend in a restaurant, and I knew people were watching us like they watch the new girl making their burrito at Chipotle. Like, 'ugh that's totally gonna fall apart in the car'"
The Headliner (who's name I unfortunately forgot) - "I saw an add for a car sale on Columbus Day that said 'Find your inner explorer' It would be weird if we did that for other kind of racist holidays, like 'It's Andrew Jackson's Birthday all the Jeep Cherokees must go!'"
My own set went pretty well, and I had a fun time kind of playing with the audience about the whole clean thing where I'd just use really obvious substitutes for dirty words (like "witch" instead of "bitch") and then immediately address how I was too crafty to get the black out. It was very silly and loose but it seemed to go over well.
Favorite Random Sightings: Irregardless Cafe, Free Smells!, Snoopy's Hot Dogs, Hangover Grill
Regional Observations: As far as chains I'm not used to in Mass, I've seen way more Jimmy Johns since crossing the Mason-Dixon.
Albums Listened To: Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium by Rage Against the Machine (just I'm Housin' and Sleep Now in the Fire but the audio quality was oddly bad); Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast by Van Morrison (amazing live performances of very songs that were very mediocre on their original albums because the 80s were terrible); Live at the Harlem Square Club by Sam Cooke (just Chain Gang and Having a Party); Live at the Troubadour by the Horrible Crowes
People's Favorite Jokes:
What does a mermaid use to wash her tail?
Tide
Songs of the Day:
it's not the exact live recording but it'll do
His voice is exactly the same as Katie Perry's
