GA Day 4- Surf 'n' Turf, Sesame Street, and Sensational Art
Today started with my cousin and I desperately trying to figure out how the shower worked in our Air BnB. Air BnB has been such a big part of my life during this trip that it's always funny to see how odd just being in a stranger's houses is to other people.
My cousin did eventually figure out the shower, which might be his most impressive accomplishment, and all cleaned up we went out to get our coffee for the morning. We went to Dancing Goats Coffee Bar in Midtown, Atlanta. The day was so cold that I ended up going against my basic instincts and got a hot coffee. My cousin did the correct Massachusetts thing and got an iced coffee. I think he made the right choice, but I still liked the hot version, and the actual coffee shop was a great cozy place to get a reprieve from the bitter wind.
With coffee in tow, we went back to the Little Five Points to see all the hip shops in the light of day. We stopped at famous independent shop called the Junkman's Daughter. Originally owned by the actual daughter of a junkman, the shop started as a place to sell bizarre trinkets from her father's collection, and has since expanded to sell all kinds of eclectic things ranging from clothes to art to smokeware. The posters and prints were definitely my favorite part of the store, featuring works by different local artists that mashed up classical art styles with random pieces of pop culture. If art is supposed to make you feel things, then to me this is high art. Also the artists were almost assuredly very high.
Also how can you not love a place that sells "Genuine Dino Poop Fossils"?
The funky art train kept rolling with lunch at the Folk Art Restaurant just outside the Little Five Points. The walls were completely decked out with weird, wonderful local paintings, and the food might qualify as art in its own right. I got one of the best fried chicken sandwiches I've ever had. Perfect balance of crispy and tender, and it came with collard green cole slaw and flat top macaroni and cheese. I don't know what it is about getting mac and cheese as a side in the south but so far it has never been a bad idea yet.
After lunch, I dropped my cousin off at the airport so he could go back to basic training. The traffic was a lot better than when I got picked up last night so I got in and out of there very easily and resumed my weird solitary life of museums and comedy.
My first stop was the High Museum of Art. While it's all one museum, the High is actually spread out over three buildings attached by sky bridges. The central building, called the Wieland Pavilion was where you had to buy admission tickets, so that's the building I started with. The thing you really couldn't help but notice when you walked in was definitely the giant fruit.
On the basement level of the Wieland Pavilion was a special collection celebrating the works of painter and poet, Ashley Bryan. Bryan's works, both visual and literary, are noted for their celebrations of nature and diversity and their blending of traditional African art styles with modernist influences. It wasn't a huge gallery, but I thought it was really lovely.
The basement level also housed the museum's traditional African art. It was also a relatively small collection, but I loved al the ornamental masks, headdresses, and puppets used in various traditional rituals. The mask in the top right hand corner below is nearly 5 feet tall on its own, so the skill and grace needed to wear something like that at all. let alone perform dances in it totally astounds me.
The special exhibit on the next floor of the Wieland was really amazing. It was called Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design. The exhibit focused on contemporary art from all over Africa, and examined how Modern trends in designing fashion and furniture and African art have shaped, influenced, and grown with one another. My favorites by far were the elaborately staged photographs by an Belgian-Beninese artist named Fabrice Monteiro. The museum had his series entitled The Prophecy which featured post-apocalyptic backdrops photographed almost like fashion ads. My favorite of these featured a woman made up to look an oil-covered sea monster carefully perched on some rocks to look as if she was emerging from the sea while an oil ship sank in the background. It would be a beautiful painting, but the fact that he captured it all with real backgrounds and people blows my mind. Other highlights for me included the Harmony Chair by Goncalo Mabunda which was a chair made entirely from handguns and grenades to create something welcoming and comfortable out of things intended for violence, political cartoons by South African artist Anton Kannemeyer AKA Joe Dog, and photocollages for the Ikire Jones clothing created by Wale Oyejide and artist Olalekan Jeyifous that imagine a stylish and futuristic world still inspired by traditional elements for their Africa 2081 AD seires.
While those were my favorites, the whole exhibition featured some really stunning works of human creativity and craftsmanship:
After making my way through that collection, I hopped over to one of the other two buildings of the museum. This one was called the Stent Family Wing, and was more of a traditional look at the museum's permenant collection. A beautiful spiral staircase in the center took you from Early European and American art (14-19th Centuries) on one floor up to turn of the century American Art and sculpture on the next floor, and more contemporary and modern American and European art on the top floor. My big take away from this wing though was that not all sculptures have to be flattering:
Do you think he still bought it when it was done?
My favorites from this wing included an unfinished painting by Mary Cassatt showcasing both her talent at painting and her impressive draftsmanship; a series of bus paintings by Kay Hassan on actual recycled scraps of billboards; a haunting landscape with a small sad scene transpiring by Thomas Cole; a big painting of a dog by artist named Katz (first name Alex); a highspeed photo of a bullet going through a banana by Harold E. Edgarton; A sort of abstracted portrait by Milton Avery called Sally with Skull ; a funny little abstract face by artist whose name I forgot to write down, a modernist beach scene by B. J. O. Nordfeldt; photographs of the post-civil war destruction in the South by George N. Barnard; a stunning seascape by Frederic Bazille; a hilariously serious portrait of a young boy and his rocking horse posed like a real jockey and horse by William James Hubard; and a really lovely allegorical painting by Luc-Olivier Merson where a farmer or possibly death tips his hat to the Virgin Mary.
Another big highlight of the Stent Family Wing for me was their collection of folk art, primarily by local legend, Howard Finster, a baptist minister who was told by God to start spreading the Gospel through paintings. He took to it despite not having any formal training, and his bizarre figures and scrawling gospels had enough folksy charm to lead to him making album covers for both R.E.M and Talking Heads which is about as mainstream and popular as alternative art could get in the 80s.
I then crossed my first skybridge back to the top floor of the Wieland Pavilion, which featured the museum's main contemporary art collection. Like most contemporary wings, there was a good mix of the bizarre and abstract and some very genuinely good representational works. Not to imply that the bizarre and abstract isn't genuinely good, I just wouldn't be able to tell since that's a lot more subjective than whether a tree looks like a tree.
Right before the skybridge to the last of the three buildings, there was a special collection of photography during the civil rights movements. It wasn't a particularly large exhibit but it was pretty powerful to see the monumental historical moments and figures captured in beautiful black and white. The photos below of Coretta Scott King and MLK really stood out to me, and it's nice to see Coretta getting equal billing with her husband, because as amazing as he was, she never stopped fighting injustices and inequalities after his death and I don't think she gets nearly enough credit for all of her hard work.
The last building of the museum is called the Ann Cox Chambers Wing and featured a career retrospective of an artist named Al Taylor across all three of its floors. Taylor's career spanned 30 years and included works across many different media, including sculpture, print-making, and painting. Some of it was a little too out there for me, but I liked that he always had a healthy dollop of humor with his work. I particularly enjoyed his work from a series about trying to create art that simulated the puddles made by a cat pissing on his prints, as well as fake blueprints for a machine that could remove these said piss stains. I am big fan of anything that is willing to go totally low-brow and high-brow at the same time.
These quotes from Al Taylor were honestly my favorite part of the exhibit though:
After this I went to a very different kind of museum all together, The Center for Puppetry Arts. I have no idea why Atlanta is the hot bed of puppetry but I was so happy to stumble into it. I absolutely loved this place. The first thing I went right to see was a whole wing dedicated to Jim Henson. Sesame Street and the Muppets have been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. Their anarchic joy and willingness to go for every kind of joke from the corniest pun to brilliant deconstructions of the fabrics of storytelling never cease to amaze and amuse me. They're definitely in my top ten biggest comedic influences, and I had such a goofy perpetual grin the whole time I was there. They had real a Rowlf, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy, Big Bird, and of course Kermit, as well as pieces from later Henson productions like Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal. I was in heaven.
The next wing of the museum was a walk through through history of puppetry and puppet traditions around the world. It didn't have that joyful nostalgia of the Henson wing, but it was really fascinating to see puppets from around 1200 AD. Other highlights for me include a mask from the Broadway lion king, stop motion puppets from Gumby and the Corpse Bride, Punch and Judy puppets from England, and water puppets from Vietnam.
Lastly they had a special exhibit on puppets from India. World history and geography are probably two of my weakest academic subjects so I always forget what a massive and massively diverse country India is, so it shouldn't have been surprising how diverse the different puppetry traditions were from different regions of India. I particularly was impressed by the two dimensional paper puppets and story boxes which were little wooden boxes with different movable panels that would be opened to correspond with different events during a narrated story. I don't know if that's technically puppetry but it was still pretty darn cool.
After the museum, I needed to recharge by getting coffee at Dr. Bombay's Underwater Tea Party, largely because I couldn't resist that kooky name. It was a homey little cafe with books lining the walls and umbrellas hanging from the ceiling. It made for a nice place to sit and write, and I was able to get iced coffee with an extra shot of espresso in it which made me really happy and was probably necessary for the rest of the day. Plus a chunk of all their proceeds went to charity which is always a nice bonus.
After my coffee, I went to a bar my friend Mike recommended called Sister Louisa's Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium, or Church for short. The bar is delightfully sacrilegious with all kinds of church themed art also intermingled with lots of Pee Wee Herman dolls for some reason that isn't quite clear. I was into it though. And of course there are ping pong tables upstairs and a nun doll with a massive strap-on tucked under her habit hanging from the ceiling (she spins around, I wasn't intentionally looking). I had the Athena Berliner-Weisse from Creature Comforts. It was tart but also pretty full bodied for a sour beer so I really liked it, and I ended up having a really nice conversation about North Carolina with one of the other customers who'd just moved to the ATL from there.
After the bar, I was walking to my car when I saw a sign on the side of the road advertising $5 crab legs so I cleared my schedule and went to Cafe Circa. Apparently they only even have crab legs at all let alone for this hell of a deal on Thursdays, so I was very lucky to see the sign when I did. I was expecting the legs to be barely defrosted at these prices but not only had they had been lightly steamed but they were also really nicely seasoned with old bay to make for a perfect snack.
After the crabs, I continued my impromptu surf'n'turf by going to Fat Matt's Rib Shack. I got a rib sandwich for $6.95 which was my second hell of a deal for the night. The bones were still in the ribs though so I don't really get how it could be eaten as a sandwich, but as a quarter slab with two pieces of bread to clean up the sauce, it was incredible. The meat was great, but really the sauce was the star of the show, and it was some of the best barbecue sauce I've had so far.
After dinner, I went to the Relapse Theater where the mic would be. I could tell from the horrifying art on the wall that I was gonna love it there:
It actually was a really great venue, with a great stage and a pretty expansive beer selection. Two big selling points for me. One beer they had that surprised me was a white IPA from Three Taverns Brewery. I'd never had anything like that before, but the bartender suggested it as an IPA for people who don't like IPAs and I'd have to say I was impressed by it.
I had originally intended to do two mics this night signing up for this one and then running off to do an earlier mic in Decatur, but they were actually doing a storytelling mic before the comedy mic and the host very sweetly bullied me into putting my name into the lottery for the storytelling so I stuck around.
My name never got drawn for the story telling but I really enjoyed just sitting and listening to everyone's story. The stories were all really funny, and because the host had free reign to interrupt and joke with the storyteller so the whole show had a really loose conversational vibe. Things started with a great shaggy dog story from a comic named Joe Kelly, who I really liked when I saw him at the open mic last night, about a time he far too high. Other highlights for me were a really cute story by the bartender who was also a comic named Chris about his grandfather, and a story by a comic named Kite Helm about the first time she tried to get birth control from her doctor. She wanted it for acne, but thought for some reason the doctor wouldn't give it to her if she said that's why she wanted the pills, so she tried to lie about what she thought would be a normal sex life, and hilariously overdid it. I think she said she'd had 12 sexual partners based off a statistic in the commercial, and then her mom fainted. It was such a wonderfully teenage mistake to make.
After the story telling mic, came the comedy mic. There were a lot of names on the list but the audience was good and attentive well into the night which made me really happy. My favorite comic of the night was a guy named Andrew Right because his material was my kind of blend of really clever and super silly. He opened with "I have the mouth of a sailor. By which I mean I swear a lot (slight pause) when I'm blowing sailors." His best bit, to me, though was a really long and dark bit about a gay porn star committing suicide, but it's all in the misdirection of the story telling and the way he acted it out that trying to write it out wouldn't do it justice. I thought it was kinda brilliant though.
Some other highlights for me:
Blake Dale- "Does anyone here like buying weed? *applause* None of you should have clapped. I didn't say smoking, I said buying. That's the worst part"
Steph (didn't catch the last name)- I was so poor my mom used to have me go as a Price is Right Contestant for Halloween each year. She'd slap a nametag on me and go to people's doors before me and yell "Come on down!"
Frank (he only went by one name)- I was reading an article where they said "This veterinarian works with animals" I don't think they needed to specify that.
My own set went pretty well. I tried mostly new material because I had a good feeling about it and I had a hunch this audience would be into it. My hunch proved correct, and so I'll probably try to work that new stuff into my material rotation so that if it keeps doing well, I might do that instead of other jokes I'm a little tired of personally. It's always such a great feeling when you think something's funny, but you have no idea how it'll work on stage, and everything just sort of clicks. That's not to say there aren't parts to tighten up, but just knowing that my comedy brain hasn't totally run out of steam yet is pretty comforting.
Favorite Random Sightings: Kale Me Crazy; Babalu; A pest control ad that read "The last color bugs see" kinda intense
Regional Observation: If you're looking for somewhere in Atlanta and you say it's on Peachtree Street, people will just laugh because there are roughly a million different Peachtree related street names in the city. I don't know how anybody finds anything.
Albums Listened To: Medium Rare by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones; Melissa's CD by Various Artists (My friend Melissa made me a mixed CD in high school one year for Christmas. It was really nice, but for better and for worst it is a mixed CD of what a high school girl would like in the early 2010s, and my little cousin thought it was hilarious that this was our morning soundtrack while I driving him to go to basic training); Melody Freaks by Velvet Crush (just Seen Better Days); Mermaid Avenue by Billy Bragg & Wilco (Billy Bragg and Wilco playing Woody Guthrie songs, what's not to love? It's a hipster folk-punk triple threat); Mighty by the Planet Smashers
People's Favorite Jokes:
Why do brides wear white? So the dish washer matches the stove (some context on this one: the flamboyantly gay barista who told it to me said that he's the only guy that works at the coffee shop so he just learned a bunch of sexist jokes to annoy his coworkers and they all love him so it's not as bad as someone saying that one without a hint of irony)
Songs of the Day:
Some delightfully Boston behind the scenes footage
My favorite song from the mixed CD. Everything about this set design is so funny to me. The outfits, the giant HOT CHOCOLATE, how far away the keyboardist and guitarist are from everyone else. Pure art.
