RI Day 2 - Good Art, Good Food, Good Friends, and Good Comedy in Rhode Island
Today was a bit rainy, so I decided to stay mainly indoors and do an art crawl. The closest (open) art museum to me, was the Newport Art Museum so that's where I headed.
To get myself mentally stimulated enough to comprehend art of any variety, I first stopped to get coffee. I went to Mags' Aussie Milk Bar in Newport and boy was I glad I did. Founded by an Australian couple, the cafe captures the spirit of Australian milk bars, which are intended to be community spots for good coffee, tea, snacks, and of course milk. It was cozy, and the staff were some of the friendliest baristas I've encountered and anyone following this knows I've seen a bunch. Wanting to get the full experience I ordered an Aussie Iced Coffee, which had ice cream, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. It was a bit more than I normally want in the morning, but damned if it wasn't delicious. I can't recommend the place enough if you're in the Newport area.
The art museum kept the energy going. The exhibits are housed in the Griswold House, which was one of the first houses build by Richard Morris Hunt who also built the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The house was really stunning, and the exhibits up while I was there were several rooms highlighting more modern and contemporary art from the museum's extensive collection. Everything was somehow connected to Newport or the surrounding areas and many of the artists either attended or taught at RISD or both. I was very excited to see some blown glass works by Dale Chihuly. He had had a big exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts when I was a kid and it always stuck with me.
Some other highlights for me were photographs by Aaron Siskind, works by Corita Kent (possibly the only person to simultaneously be a practicing nun and a successful pop artist, and a painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Here's a bunch of things (probably too many) that caught my eye:
Properly cultured like a good yogurt, I went to a nearby Irish bar that my dad had been raving about called Buskers. At his behest, I tried a special beer fusion they have called a Black Castle (Guinness and Newcastle Brown Ale) and the beef stew. Both were excellent. I don't usually like mixing things with Guinness but because the brown ale is already dark it just kinda added a richer nuttier flavor to the creamy black goodness of the Guinness. When I was I studying the Irish Language for a week in Donegal, I had at least four Guinnesses a night and I still haven't gotten sick of 'em. The beef stew was hearty as well and the icing on the cake (not to mix food metaphors) was that it came with Irish soda bread, which is just the perfect thing to clean up whatever broth is left over.
The next stop on my art crawl was the RISD museum. The museum is deceptively massive because it spans several buildings, and I got there only an hour and a half before closing so I was kinda rushing to try to at least get a cursory look at everything. The first exhibit I saw was a selection of current/recent students' works. If this showcase is any indication, there's a pretty talented batch of young artists across multiple media coming up.
The rest of the museum was a mix of contemporary art, ancient Greek and Egyptian Art, works from and inspired by Japanese tradition, and a preserved classical house. I liked a lot of the more modern stuff best, but the ancient sculptures and Japanese paintings were very impressive. I just can't get super into portraiture which is what most of the earlier European art entails. Maybe if I'd never seen a fat white guy before it'd blow my mind, but even when it's really objectively well done I just find it kinda dull. There's some more formal experimentation in the Renaissance stuff though which is when European art starts to pick up for me and get really cool. While I'm talking about things there that just don't do it for me, I can't understand why people love Rothko so much. I don't mind abstract art or minimalism, I don't even think he's bad, but I just don't get why he is so beloved. They had a whole exhibition of his work at the Harvard Art Museum one year, and it just fell on deaf eyes for me.
I think the thing that I had just a weirdly powerful reaction to was a sculpture called the Hand of God by Rodin. I don't think my photos do it justice because it absolutely blew me away.
For paintings, I think my favorite was a cubist painting called Mountaineers Attacked by Bears by Henri Victor Gabriel Le Fauconnier. I felt like cubism really clicked for me between looking at things here and at the Yale Art Gallery. I always liked it aesthetically, but I always had a tough time seeing multiple things in the same painting. I could never do those magic eye posters either.
I love that it's like a whole graphic novel in one frame
After the museum, I met my friend Olivia who is doing a graduate program in theater at Brown. We went to a place called the Malted Barley which is known for it's drinks and pretzels. I got an Augtober Fest by RI's own Foolproof. The beer was good, but the pretzels were really special. They do sandwiches on homemade pretzels, and Olivia and I both got the caprese sandwich, but I didn't take a picture because I am not so much of a millennial that I would interrupt a nice dinner conversation to do so. It was great seeing Olivia. We were on the same improv team in college, but she's a year older so I hadn't seen her in a while. I don't know any one else who's gone to school for acting, so it was really fascinating to here about what she's been up to. Every second year grad student has to do a lot of Shakespeare so if you're in the Providence area, she's going to be in shows of Twelfth Night and Loves Labor Lost starting in October. I'm sure she'd be a little embarrassed for me to pub for her, but Brown's theater department is partnered with Trinity Repertory Theater, a really great and world renowned Providence theater troupe, so I'd want to give them a shout out anyway even if I didn't personally know that she's great actress.
Soon though Olivia had to go back to rehearsals and I had to go to my open mic for the night. The mic was at a night club called Alchemy in downtown Providence. I guess that club space has been around for a long time, but under the name Alchemy it's pretty new. I'd never performed at a night club before, and it was a lot of fun. There was a house DJ who played comics on and off, and occasionally threw in a humorous sound cue to great effect.
The crowd (including the comics) was small but diverse and receptive. I'm so far getting a pretty friendly vibe to the RI scene, as the bartender from last night came out to this show to support the comics he's met, and he recognized me and started a conversation that lasted most of the time before the show started. Both he and tonight's bartender, seemed to have a genuine affection for the comics that they serve and watch and it was very cool to see that level of support outside of just other comics. The other comics were supportive too. One guy was going up for first time (or at least one of the earliest times) so he didn't know what the light meant and went over time, but everyone was cool about it and gave him a nice round of applause anyway to encourage him to keep coming back. You don't want to be too critical of new comedians, because of course they're not gonna be great, and I will say that while a lot of his material wasn't quite there yet, he had a stellar almost vaudevillian delivery. While I was watching him, I was thinking you'd have to be a pretty strong comedian to pull it off, but the idea of doing that kinda patter type delivery to intentionally bad jokes could be really funny.
In general, the comics were strong with material leaning toward darker areas. Lots of jokes about drugs and sex (sometimes at the same time) which might not be for everyone, but the material was pretty good in my opinion.
The host Nick Anthony started things strong with a solid set, and he was also super friendly and easy to talk to after the show which is always nice in a host. He also did something that I've seen a lot of hosts do, where he would just open himself up as a lightning rod for the comics (who I'm assuming he knew most of to be fair) to make fun of when they needed a quick saver or as an intro.
My favorite comedian of the night, EJ Edmonds, was someone who I think got bullied into going up by his friends. He's clearly a great comic, but I think he just wanted to drink and hang out tonight so he had nothing prepared and mostly riffed and did crowd work, but it was all just effortlessly funny. He even threw a few barbs my way, but I thought they were all genuinely funny ("You look like you still got lunchables in your back pocket") and I felt weirdly honored that he prefaced teasing me by saying he liked my set, so it was like a show of respect that he thought I could handle some light kidding. My favorite joke of his was about how he had five kids and he said "I've gotta be careful, it's like I've got uterus bluetooth". I don't know if that was ad libbed or one of his worked out bits, but I really dug it.
I also really liked the only female comic of the night, Vicki Porter. She had a really laid back delivery, and did some potentially risky bits about police brutality and race relations (not exactly light material) but with pretty silly angles and a big grin that let her pull it off.
Two comics I saw last night were also here Dennis Mello (who actually runs this mic) and Ian Michael Singleton. They both did some new stuff, and also worked on bits from last night (which I liked both times) but not exactly the same way, so i thought it was cool to get to see a bit of progression for works in progress.
My own set I think went pretty well. I repeated one bit about how I look young, because my dad said it was one of my stronger bits and he seemed like a pretty good stand in for a Rhode Islander having grown up basically on the MA/RI border. But for the most part, I just tried out a lot of short silly bits as opposed to my more extended bits, partly because I forgot to ask how much time I had and partly just to try something new. I think because it was a joke dense set even when things didn't totally land I was able to just blow on by to the next joke. Similarly to the first mic in CT, I felt like big punch lines tended to hit but some of the smaller in between jokes didn't do quite as well.
It can't have been too bad though, because a couple of the comics complimented me afterwards, It could just be that they're friendly and supportive (which they are), but I'm choosing to take that as nice big fat slice of validation, which god knows is mostly what any comic really wants. I hung out for a bit and chatted with a few of the comics, and I left the club feeling happy.
Favorite Random Sightings: Zeus Design, Chris Electric, "God Bless America Bingo Night" (god bless signs that aren't quite spaced right); Sea Whale Hotel (are there land whales, now?); Keenwah Organic Restaurant
Regional Observations: Maybe I'm seeing things, but it feels like on average people in RI are shorter than people in the other states I've been to. I feel like I'm the right height here.
Albums Listened To: Chim Chim's Badass Revenge by Fishbone (loose narrative album about an escaped research chimp seeking revenge with not so subtle subtext about race relations in America, Weird mix of everything from metal, funk, and ska to spoken word poetry, jazz and punk. Also a weird mix of high and low brow, with some lyrics just being totally scatalogical and juvenile while others being very philosophical and existential often in the same song. Definitely didn't love it at first but it grew on me); Chimes of Freedom: A Tribute to Bob Dylan by Various Artists; Chocolate and Cheese by Ween (i only just got into Ween but this is one of my new favorite records)
People's Favorite Jokes:
What's brown and sticky? A stick
A battery walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll give you a drink but don't you start anything"
A sandwich walks into a bar and the bartender says, "I'm sorry we don't serve food here."
Did you hear about the two fish in the tank? One said, "I'll fire the guns, you drive!"
What's brown and green, has four legs and six holes, and would kill you if it fell out of a truck? A pool table
That last one reminded me of one of my old favorites so here's a bonus: What's big and grey and would really hurt you if it fell out of a tree? A castle
8 Minutes of cool horn arrangements, childish poop euphemisms, and generally clever religious and social commentary. Not really like anything else. I'm thinking of doing a Song of the Day after doing this one and the one yesterday. Might be fun!
