SC Day 2 - Lasers, Laughs, and Lovely Rita Meter Maid
I started out today by getting coffee and brunch at perhaps the best named cafe yet: Immaculate Consumption. The service, coffee, and food completely lived up to the promise of that name. I ordered a turkey avocado pita wrap. It came with a side of pasta that had just been gently tossed in oil, balsamic, and cheese. It was also warm not gross pasta salad cold. I don't much care for pasta salad if the fact that I've been making fun of mayonnaise in over 15 states isn't a dead give away. This was absolutely delicious though. Combined with the coffee, I couldn't ask for a better way to get going in the morning.
After brunch, I made the most of a beautiful day and walked around downtown Columbia. While I was walking, I couldn't help but notice a terrifically terrifying statue on the side of the street called Lovely Rita, which was actually made with old parking meters. I'm sure that face is exactly what Paul McCartney was envisioning.
My first stop in my strolling around was the Columbia Museum of Art. The museum was currently undergoing pretty extensive renovations so there was only one big exhibit, but it was a doozy. It was all about Henri Matisse, Jazz, and Poetry. I've seen a decent number of Matisse works around the country, but this exhibit was highlighting his work making art books. Matisse wanted to create books that were objects of art on every level not just the illustrations. The exhibit showcased four books Matisse made. The first two books were relatively similar, highlighting works of two poets Matisse loved personally. The first poet was Stephane Mallarme, a symbolist poet, whose sketch-like poems Matisse chose to compliment with very sparse impressionistic illustrations in black pen on bright white paper. In a similar color scheme but a very different art style, the next book featured poems by medieval poet Charles D'Orleans that he wrote as a prisoner of war. Matisse's work on these illustrations features echoes of medieval art and a slightly more grand representational style. It should also be noted that for all of these books Matisse handwrote every poem as well.
After these two poem books, Matisse wanted to completely flip the script for his next book, a retelling of the Greek myth of Pasiphae. In the story, Poseidon gets mad at King Minos so he tricks his wife into banging a giant bull, and that's how we got the minotaur. As one does. I can't read French, but I assume Matisse wrote it out more lyrically than I did. He also inverted the color scheme for this book from the poetry books, by using black backgrounds with white lines for the illustrations to simulate the style of Grecian urns. A weird, but very cool stylistic choice for Matisse was to just use a dark blue cover for the book and then never use the color again.
The last art book was also my favorite and a total swerve from in content and style. Rather than literature or poetry Matisse chose to try capture the spirit of jazz music in book form. Rather than drawing, Matisse made the illustrations from different cut out pieces of brightly colored paper. For him this was to capture the vibrancy and improvisational sytle of jazz. The things he came up with are so wild and fun, and the gallery was piping in jazz music the whole time to create a real immersive experience.
Besides Matisse, the only other gallery open was the Orientation Gallery. I think the name comes from the fact that when they do tours that's where they start the orientation process. Since I wasn't being oriented towards anything, I'm not totally sure I was supposed to be in there, but It was so amazing because the whole room was painted on every wall by an artist name Christian Thee to look like you had just entered a secret garden.
Right outside the museum was a giant sculpture by the same artist who made the giant fire extinguisher from yesterday, Blue Sky. This sculpture is called the Never Bust Chain and features a giant chain connecting two buildings.
I saw one more work massive work by Blue Sky, which was actually in the same plaza as the Fire Extinguisher. Looking at it now, it's hard to believe I missed it, but this work entitled Tunnelvision is a very futuristic wormhole into another world.
My next stop was walking through Finlay Park, a beautiful park near downtown Columbia with its own waterfall and stream. I really had the perfect weather for it.
After the park, I went to the South Carolina State Museum. It was open late on Tuesdays and discounted too things that really appealed to me. The museum was four floors and encompasses a wide array of different collections and artifacts. My cashier suggested that I start on the top floor and work my way down so I did just that.
The very top floor was all about history, specifically of the South Carolina region from the colonial period up through reconstruction. My favorite part of this collection was a complete replica of an old one-room school house. I thought this was both a really cool slice of history and also an absolutely horrifying approach to education, albeit one made out of necessity. There's no way you can have every age group in the same room and they're all actually learning.
Also on the top floor was a special traveling exhibit that I wasn't allowed to photograph about the first astronaut from South Carolina, Charles Duke. It was pretty cool to get to see an actual space suit that someone wore into space. That was one of the claims to fame in my little small town that we actually had a local boy become an astronaut. It didn't spur me into really learning anything about space, but it did give me a little tinge of nostalgia to be there.
The other special collection on the top floor was really amazing, and featured a collection of historic telescopes including what is very likely the oldest fully intact telescope made in America. These were both amazing as historical artifacts and also pretty impressive works of art.
One tiny little exhibit also on the top floor was all about South Carolina during the World Wars, and the thing that I was really impressed by that I hadn't seen in any other military exhibits was works of art that soldiers had made by carving and engraving former missile casings.
The next floor was all about the rise of technology and transportation in the region starting with Native American tribes up to the modern age. Probably the coolest parts of this floor were also the ones I photographed the least for whatever reason. One of these sections was on the history of wood working in the area, and it just blew me away because it's probably the oldest material we've worked with and its still so versatile and useful. I also think seeing a really well carved piece of wood is so elegant, which is pretty geeky. Even geekier was my other favorite exhibit on this floor which was all about lasers. The Nobel Prize winning physicist, Charles H. Townes, who invented the laser was from South Carolina so the city was really proud of their lasers.
The next floor was all natural history featuring some cool fossils, minerals, and models of prehistoric animals including a super dopey looking precursor to the armadillo that I just loved.
There was some problem with the heating in the main art section of the museum which would have been the bottom floor but the little catwalk near the planetarium had a cute little smattering of local arts and crafts.
Outside the museum, I learned that South Carolina has a real problem with Hobbit Infestations.
For dinner, I went somewhere recommended by my Air BnB host called the War Mouth. Everything on the menu looked great, but after much deliberating with my waiter we decided I should have the Carolina Barbecue Plate. All the meat was super fresh and cooked in a big beautiful smoke pit in the back of the restaurant. The plate came with big slices of pork, Carolina gold rice, pork hash, bread, and cracklings. The barbecue sauce had a bit of a vinegar tinge so as succulent and perfectly cooked as the main pork was, it wasn't actually my favorite thing on the plate. That would go to the hash which had more of the spiced savory BBQ flavor I know and love. The cracklings also caught me off guard because they were easily the least aesthetically appealing but they were salty, crunchy, and perfect. I washed it all down with the Southbound Stout, which was tasty but probably contributed to my next delicious mistake. I had to order the house pie, which bourbon and vanilla cream on a pecan and nilla wafer crust. I make no exaggeration when I say this is far and away the best pie I've ever had, and one of my favorite things I've ever eaten.
After dinner, it was time for the open mic. Or so I thought. I actually got to the bar, which was called Art Bar, about an hour and a half too early because I misread the information online. The bar itself was great with plenty of cool namesake art around. In particular, I was a big fan of the robot Santas.
As cool as the bar was, the wait would have been pretty rough if I hadn't bumped into a few of the comics who were also there early. Joe Coughlin, Patrick Fowler, Topher Riddle and Mattias Salvo, a bunch of guys who were all in an improv troupe together were hanging out sharing a few drinks and playing a weird game I'd never seen before. They had a bunch of dice with random images on them that you'd roll and then based on the random images. I was just watching them fascinated, and they were nice enough to ask me join without any hesitation. I ended up playing that dice game, and then getting up on the stage and playing a few rounds of improv games with them until it was time for the mic to start. It was an absolute blast to do improv again, which I haven't done much since college, and these guys were just so nice and welcoming to me which was a real auspicious start to the night of comedy.
The mic itself kept that funny energy going, and it was one of my favorites so far.
Some of my favorite lines:
Joe Coughlin: Hope is terrible. Hope is why waterboarding works.
Adam Cook: I'm from God's country, which I guess means God loves meth.
Zlata Cass: I have an 8 year old and he's just like his daddy. He has a neck tattoo and doesn't pay rent.
One of the funniest comics of the night was a woman named Jenn Snyder, but the funniest thing she did was a bit about how when she gets high her eyes get really small. It had me almost on the floor laughing, but it was so visual that I don't think I can translate why it worked so well.
My favorite joke of the night was by Topher Riddle - "I was at a Chinese restaurant, and I think the waitress meant to ask me if I was all done, but she accidentally made me feel like a Godzilla monster because she just walked up to me and said "Will nothing satisfy you?"
I felt like my own set went pretty well. I was really loose and silly from all the improv and I think it helped a lot. All my big punchlines landed and it was one of the most comfortable I've felt on stage.
One of the other big things about this night is that it was also the night Roy Moore did not become the senator of Alabama, and everyone in the bar started clapping, crying, and hugging each other because they were all so happy and surprised and surprised at how surprised they were about it.
During the mic, I sat with one of the guys from the improv troupe, Topher. He and his friend Ally were playing a game on her phone. I was just sitting there drinking, but they were also nice enough to invite me to play along. In general this bar and this mic was one of the friendliest I've been to in the country.
The friendliness continued well after the mic, and I spent over an hour after the mic was over just hanging out and talking to the other comics and Ally. I didn't want to leave, but it was getting late and I had hoped to do some writing so I started to head out. Ally teased me for not making the most of the trip and staying out a bit later. I asked what there was to do around Columbia at that hour, and somehow got to making the joke that the Carolinas had the lowest density of strip clubs I'd seen since crossing the Mason Dixon (see Regional Observations). Ally perked up and said that her roommate tended bar at a strip club and if I had never been to one before it was an important part of being in the south. I wasn't super interested in going to a strip club, so I just started heading back to my Air BnB.
About halfway back, I realized what any idiot should have known in that when a girl asks if you want to go to a strip club with her she probably would also just want to hang out at someplace that wasn't a strip club, and that I might never see this person I had enjoyed hanging out with again so perhaps writing could wait a little bit. There is an old Groucho Marx line "I would never want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member" which is both a great one liner and also a good summation of my own brand of social awkwardness in that I always just forget that people might actually want my company. I messaged Ally, and was happy to find out that I had not missed her and that non-strip club drinks would work just as well.
We met up at a local place called Bar None. It was a perfect small town bar even if Columbia isn't exactly a small town. The rowdy college kids mostly kept out, and it felt like everyone there knew and liked each other which made for a really fun and inviting environment. We hung out for hours sharing stories and meeting lots of people throughout the night. Eventually we got to a point where a combination of comfort and a hint of tipsiness led to us both saying "Alright, screw it, let's go to the strip club after all".
I think the suggestion was said mostly in jest, but in comedy you always have to commit to the bit which is how we ended up at the Platinum at 3:48 in the morning. I know the exact time because we had exactly 12 minutes before they closed. The upside of this was that they let us go in without a cover; the downside of this was that we were at a strip club 12 minutes before they were closing. It was hilarious and surreal. There was one other person there, and nobody was dancing but we did see a few naked people with duffel bags slung over their arms heading to the changing room. Ally went to the bathroom which was next to the changing room, I asked her what that was like and her wonderful quote summed everything up pretty nicely "It was very sad and naked".
After twelve minutes of this, the club closed so we left and said our goodbyes. I can't say that my first time in a strip club really won me over, but it was a fun adventure for the night and I felt like I'd have a story and made a friend that I'd never forget. It was definitely worth being a little behind on my blog. I don't think I've ever been more glad that someone asked me if I wanted to play a game on their phone.
Favorite Random Sightings: Trout Coins; Southern Squeezed; Miss Cocky Boutique; Bland Quartz
Regional Observations: The Carolinas definitely have the lowest density of strip clubs I've seen since crossing the Mason Dixon. I'm not sure if there are actually more of them down South or if they just advertise more aggressively.
Albums Listened To: Lost Between by Ethan Tucker (I saw him open up for Jimmy Cliff at the House of Blues, just him and an acoustic guitar and he completely owned the stage. This is a good album but it doesn't really capture what an impressive performer he was in person); Lost Time by Taco Cat (Really fun feminist punk band)
People's Favorite Jokes: Nobody told me any today so here's one from the internet:
There was once a blonde woman on a plane to Detroit. She was in the economy class, but after takeoff, she saw an empty seat in first class and moved there. An attendant saw her and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, but you have a ticket for economy class, not first. You cannot stay here." The blonde replied, "I can and I will." The attendant told the copilot, who came and talked to the woman. "Ma'am, we really can't have you staying in this seat, your ticket was for economy." "You can't make me move." The copilot told the captain, who tried to talk her out of the seat but it didn't work. Finally, a man who had heard what had been going on told the attendant to let him have a go at getting the woman out of the seat because he was married to a blonde too, so he knew how to deal with her. After a quick chat with her, she moved. The shocked attendant asked him how he did it. The man replied, "I told her first class wasn't going to Detroit."
Songs of the Day:
