OK Day 7/ TX Day 0 - Huge Houses and Humorists
Today started with some coffee from Topeca Coffee, which was supposed to be one of the best coffee places in Tulsa. They might not be too great at spelling cities in Kansas, but they did make a damn fine cup of coffee.
My first stop for the day and the main reason I wanted to go back to Tulsa was because one of the most celebrated museums in the city hadn't been open earlier in the week. The Philbrook Museum is another former home of an Oil magnate, Waite Phillips, who happened to be the younger brother of Woolaroc's Frank Phillips. The home itself is an incredible work of art in the style of a large Italian Renaissance Villa, and now instead of housing oilmen it has one of the largest collections of fine art in state as well as an expansive formal garden with sculptures scattered throughout.
Immediately upon entering the museum, visitors were greeted with an explosions of swirling color as the main rotunda was outfitted with a special installation by an artist name Rachel Hayes that features a swirling mix of multicolored fabrics sewn together. It made for a pretty grand entrance, which was also helped by one of the funniest museum employees I've encountered in all my visits to museum front desks. She just had such exuberance for art and jokes from laffy taffy wrappers and that positivity was infectious.
The main special exhibit was called Museum Confidential, and featured a look into the behind the scenes workings of a museum and the curation process. This started with a floor to ceiling salon style display of works from the museum's collection that had been in storage and haven't been displayed in years for a myriad of reasons ranging from their condition to trends in popular art to just the preferences of the museum's current curators. Apparently, the average museum only ever shows about 5% their total collection, so this part of the exhibit was trying to let the other 95% shine. It made for a pretty mixed and wide ranging display featuring renaissance art side by side with pop art, impressionism, modernist works, and a few fairly recent contemporary pieces. I like that really wasn't much connecting any of the pieces so you never knew what you were going to get from painting to painting. I also liked that just because the art hadn't been ion display in a while didn't mean that there weren't some pretty names including Andy Warhol, Thomas Hart Benton, and Thomas Moran. There was even a gay cowboy!
My favorite pieces were: a pop art portrait of a big sausage fittingly called Big Sausage by Paul Caulfield; two paintings by Julian Opus called Ruth with Cigarette with one portrait being a fully detailed portrait and the other being abstracted to its simplest components; and a whimsical series of drawings called the Domestic Life of the Rainbow by Patrick Hughes that showed what rainbows are up to when they're not up in the sky or hanging with leprechauns.
Besides the paintings there were also a few sculptures including a funky bird shaped lamp by Ingo Maurer and a basket made out of shred's of paper like a hornet's nest by Kay Sekimachi, intended to show that art can take some less conventional forms.
The next piece, in a bit of playful curation, was intended to give a very literal behind the scenes peek at some art by displaying a painting just sort of in the the middle of the room with back exposed so you could see what the back of a painting looks like. It turns out it's not super exciting (although sometimes there can be some fun draft marks) but luckily the front of the art more than made up for it.
The next piece was called the Entombment of Christ and it was in the exhibit because it had been a rocky journey to finding out who had actually painted it because the initial information about the artist had been incorrect so it was intended to show how much work and research can go into curation once a piece of art is acquired.
The next bit was a fun bit of interactive hands-on curation. They had a series of paintings in a grid with one spot missing and visitors could vote on what painting they felt like fit most with with others At the end of every week that the exhibit is up, they put the voted on painting into the grid, rotate the paintings, take one out, and then put up new paintings to be voted on so that the curation of this particular section is constantly changing essentially based on the thematic free associations of random visitors. It was super cool. I voted on Temptation of Christ by the Devil by Felix Joseph Narrows (bottom right) and I think it makes a nice addition if I do say so myself.
The next section of the exhibit I checked out was a little shed-like struck that was actually a whole museum in miniature, with different small exhibits showcasing various kinds of miniature arts from vintage toys to Asian jade sculptures to medieval religious silver to Native american jewelry and more goofy Mudhead kachina dolls to some Victorian dinnerware. It was really cool way of focusing attention to items that you might otherwise overlook.
The last part of this exhibit was a large multi-part installation by the artist-in-residence Andy DuCett. The largest part was a fake Travel Agency based on the idea of art being a passport to different imaginary worlds. The walls of the agency were filled with alternating hotel keys and whimsical drawings, my favorite being of a grizzly bear winning a boxing match against a panda bear. Othe pars of it included an entire libray bookshelf and ladder, and a painting attached to a motor so that it was constantly spinning around in circle just to make you look at art in different ways.
From there it was into the museum's permanent collection, which takes up three floors of the villa so you could say it's pretty decently sized. The first gallery was of 19th century European and American paintings, featuring some beautiful landscapes and character studies of rural subjects as well as a few classic Biblical and mythological scenes.
My favorite painting here was a biblical scene capturing the bathing of Bathsheba because if you look in the background you can see a pervy King David watching her from his window which I got a real kick out of. It is true to the biblical story but without context it's just a funny addition snuck in the background.
After leaving this first gallery I got my first real look at the main hallway of the villa, and it was just magnificent. I can't imagine living in a place like that though. It's so beautiful for a museum, but for a house it just seems a tad over the top. It does go to show that these oil tycoons very literally lived like kings.
The next gallery was a real treat for me collecting some really gorgeous pieces from the turn of the century including some pretty big names like Picasso, Kandinsky, Raoul Dufy, Edouard Vuillard, and, one of my favorites, Man Ray. It was a nice survey of the movements within that time period with pieces reflecting impressionism, cubism, surrealism, and abstraction.
These paintings were complemented with some pretty excellent sculptures and ceramics including some Wedgwood china, which continues to blow my mind ever since I discovered it in Alabama (it's not from Alabama, it's just where I first saw it), and an amazing statue of a bull by Rosa Bonheur who was one of the few female sculptors to really break into the modernist movement and get acclaim.
The rest of this floor was temporarily closed off because some student filmmakers were working on a project so I went to the upstairs galleries. Before I even got all the way up the stairs though, I was blown away by how ornamental the stairwells were with medieval tapestries and stained glass making something as simple as going upstairs an artistic journey.
Once I actually got to the top of stairwell, I got another good luck at the rotunda and Rachel Hayes' work was even more impressive from this new vantage point.
The first gallery on this floor showcased some recent acquisitions of contemporary art by Native American artists, My favorite pieces were staged photograph by Wendy Red Star with herself, some cardboard skeletons, and a giant inflatable turkey arranged n positions similar to the Last Supper; a really spooky but pretty abstract landscape of deer overlooking swirling clouds and a rainbow by Robert. B. Montoya; and a lush photorealistic portrait of a young Pueblo family by Bert Geer Phillips.
The other chunk of recent acquisitions were highlighting female artists and I particularly liked this classic portrait by artist who's name I didn't think to write down, and a really hauntingly beautiful woodcut of a quiet Christmas Eve scene by Barbara Latham.
The next gallery was all western landscapes with beautiful big skies, rolling canyons, and verdant forests. The highlight here for me was a very rare painting by Thomas Moran that took a pretty radical political stance (as opposed to just capturing natural beauty) called the Slave Hunt, which showed escaping slaves as noble, scared human being and the hunters as fairly ominous and monstrous figures looming in the shadows. It's a shame that the fact that people shouldn't be hunted was ever considered a controversial opinion, but it does make for a stunning and dynamic painting.
The next gallery was dedicated to impressionism with some exceptional landscapes and character studies that really capture feelings and memories associated with their subjects in a way that I don't think more traditional representations would have. I was particularly drawn to the city and seascapes, because they reminded me a lot of my childhood and places I haven't seen in a quite a while.
My favorite pieces from this gallery was a really striking visual metaphor of a painting called Mother Earth Laid Bare by Alexander Hogue where the rolling plains gradually form the tragic form of a dying Mother Earth and a more sweet and touching maternal image in a really gorgeous abstract sculpture called Maternity by Hugo Robus.
Up next we had some more modernist and surrealist pieces so you know I couldn't have been happier. They had some great pieces by artists I've grown to love over this trip like Max Ernst, Jean Debuffet, Lionel Fenninger, and Milton Avery. I like how these paintings blend familiar and totally strange imagery to really get inside your brain.
The next gallery took things into the present day with some contemporary works. Naturally there were a lot of abstract pieces but the ones that struck me the most here were hyperrealistic pieces that totally blew my mind especially a painting of leaves by Mary Neumeth Mito that I could not believe was not a photograph and a ceramic sculpture by Marilyn Levine of an old beat up suitcase that was so fantastically rendered and textured like old leather that I never would have thought it was clay.
The next gallery highlighted one of my favorite artistic families, the Wyeths. From the perfectly rendered illustrations of grandpa N.C. to the achingly lonely water colors of my dude Andrew to the more vibrant and surrealist paintings of his son Jamie, those Wyeth boys just have amazing eyes for images that will suck you in.
The next gallery was big showcase of contemporary works in glass and ceramics. I always love seeing this stuff because even ancient ceramics blow me away in a pure "how did they do that sense" so seeing modern innovations in form and content within that field really knocks the old socks off. I like that, speaking very generally, modern pieces tend to go either in the direction of super simplified forms that abstract shapes and colors to their simplest essence or crazy complex designs that seem to defy all laws of physics. Either way I'm all in. I also liked that the gallery chose to highlight contemporary Chinese and Native American Ceramic artists as those two cultures have some of the richest histories of ceramic traditions so it's just awesom to see how're though both honored and evolved.
My favorites from this gallery were: a mind bending sculpture of a perfume bottle by William Carlson that seamlessly blended granite with custom blown and cut glass in way that I can't wrap my head around; a wonderful ceramic lattice-work bust by Norma Minkowitz; a very creepy and dreamlike sculpture of beads, wax, and glass called by Joyce J. Scott that looks like it came from Pee Wee Herman's nightmares; and really beautiful gravity defying minimalist clay sculpture by Yih Web Kuo called After Rainfall.
When I was done upstairs, the student filmmakers were still at it so I went down to check out the basement galleries. Again the simple journey down the flight of stairs proved to be a treat in its own right as I walked through the Phillips' music room with a vintage organ and some beautiful pillars, and in the stairwell there was a medieval coat of arms including a metal helmet for a horse which was a surprising thing to come across.
Across one wall of the basement galleries was a really powerful mural by Woody Crumbo, who actually won a highly competitive contest sponsored by the Phillips family, which means it actually predates the villa being used as a museum. Now that's a pretty great piece of curatorial luck to just have a great piece by an acclaimed artists already on the walls of the building.
The main basement gallery collected modern and contemporary works by Native American artists. Personally I liked anything surreal or with folkloric elements, because I love that dreamlike imagery and mythological creatures and I was not disappointed. For the more realism minded folks though, there was also some gorgeous landscapes and character studies. I read on the descriptions of one of these pieces an interesting point that had never occurred to me before, about how strange it is that a lot of museums have "American Art" wings that exclude works by Native Americans, implying very nonsensically that their works are somehow something other than American. I think galleries like this should which collects pieces from all through the 20th century should really make a case to anyone out there that to exclude these voices is to exclude a really rich vein of American creativity, craft, and talent.
Besides all these impressive paintings, there was also two large cases of contemporary Native American ceramics from all over the southwest, including some more of that amazing black on black pottery by Maria Martinez.
After the gallery I walked through the South-Western rooms, that Wait Phillips had wanted designed to celebrate his love of Southwestern art and architecture. There's not a lot of Italian villas that can claim to have Mexican inspired adobe lounges in the basement.
The last gallery in the basement was intended to showcase the sketching and draftsmanship that goes into a different art from all over the world and different time periods. Highlights for me included a hyperrealistic graphite drawing of an exacto knife by Shimon Okshteyn; an early work Benedetto Luti of Saint John the Evangelist; a sketch by the impressionist master Camille Pissaro; an early draft of the Mother Earth Laid Bare Painting on display upstairs; a print of the Death of Hector by Pietro Sala; and a sketch of a woman in ink on paper by an artist who's name I forgot to write down.
Finished up with the basement, I decided to enjoy the beautiful weather and take a stroll through the gardens. I'd have to say that both the view of and the view from villa were pretty breathtaking.
All throughout the gardens were some pretty astounding sculptures ranging pretty classic people and animals to abstract forms to surreal half-men half-bunnies to at least one sculpture made out of metal to very cleverly blend in with the other trees. I think something about the natural elements of the garden really takes each piece of art up to another level.
Other impressive features of the gardens were a stone grotto and a temple which I'm pretty sure none of the other yards in the neighborhood have.
Through the gardens around the side of the villa, there was a summer house with beautiful tile work and some formal gardens that I'm sure would have been very beautiful had it not been early March and they were in bloom.
At this point, the student filmmakers had finished up with their business so I was able to go back and see the first floor galleries I had missed on the first pass. The first thing that struck me here was how amazing the wall paper was, immersing visitors in an lyrical ancient Greek summer party.
The main galleries I had missed turned out to contain the museums collection of religious art from the Renaissance and medieval times. I think like I feel differently about this art then I'm supposed to at this point, because I find for the most part traditionally "good" representations of Christ kind of boring if only because I've seen literally hundreds of them so I tend to gravitate towards paintings that depict the more bizarre biblical scenes or feature any of the countless examples of early painters making really weird babies. Luckily I was not disappointed by this collection, and if you want those pretty religious scenes there was a good amount of those too.
In the halls of this wing, there were some really amazing fountains by Harriet Whitney Frismuth that were just bursting with joy and exuberance. I don't think any woman in the history of the world has ever looked that happy to be riding a giant fish, but that energy certainly put a smile on my face. I wonder if they actually made the model pose with a real fish?
All that was left to see was some room living rooms decorated with larger scale paintings including an amazing contemporary painting by Kehinde Wiley (who famously did Obama's portrait for the national gallery) and another peek at that funky antique pump organ.
After the museum, I got lunch at a place called Tally's Good Food Cafe, because you gotta think a place with Good Food in the title is gonna have to pretty solid. They absolutely delivered on their namesake, and it turned out to be a really fun retro diner right on historic Rt. 66, which feels like the perfect place for some Americana. I figured since it was my last day in Oklahoma I'd try that old standard, chicken fried steak one more time. I got the steak in sandwich form with fries and gravy. I think the other chicken fried steak I had was probably a higher quality piece of steak, but when it's all fried up like that you really don't care and it was still a pretty great lunch. The white gravy especially was a great addition that made both the sandwich and the fries extra tasty. To drink I asked for an iced coffee which they don't normally do, so they gave me hot coffee with ice which I almost immediately spilled everywhere. My waitress thought this was VERY funny.
My next stop was a museum dedicated to one of the most famous Oklahomans, Will Rogers. Nicknamed "Oklahoma's Favorite son", WIll was a humorist, an activist, a philanthropist, and a star of about every medium you could put him on, with a warmth, wit, and earnestness that spoke to most Americans and helped them keep their spirits up during the great Depression. I mostly knew him from his quotes about politics, but they were pretty great quotes so I was looking forward to learning more. This museum was also in a beautiful gigantic building, but it was built after Will's death as a memorial so it was more of an extravagant display of love than a pure extravagant display of Wealth (though Will certainly wasn't hurting for cash). The things that stuck out to me immediately upon pulling up the museum were some lovely stained glass windows of all the different (cowboy) hats Will wore and a very endearing marble statue of him having fallen asleep in a chair.
The first room in the museum was a gallery of different art that either belonged to Will or spoke to his life in someway. This started with some really charming paintings by Mike Wimmer that were made to be illustrations for a children's book about Will's life. It made for a nice whimsical entry point into the museum that captured a lot of real major moments in the man's life, but mre importantly it really captured the spirit of Will Rogers with paintings of him doing rope tricks on a porch to entertain children or one where he's literally lassoed the world and he's sitting on top of it. It was all very cute.
The big personal items in this room were Will's collection of saddles from around the world. He was not just an actor who played a cowboy, roping and riding were a large part of his life from his earliest days growing up on a ranch in Cherokee Nation Indian Territory and he only got into show business from performing real acts of stunt roping in Wild West shows. These saddles were amazing works of art in their own right with beautiful patterns in the leather and underlying cloths. The coolest saddle to me personally was the one from cowherds in Mongolia, because I always associate cowboys with being super American but of course they pop up wherever there are cows. I also thought it was very sweet of the museum curators to make a note that the Navajo saddle has some symbols that now resemble swastikas but they pre-date WWII and while the museum thinks it's an important piece to display because of how it pertains to Will's life and Western culture in general, but they do not condone the modern use of swastikas.
Lastly this room had a few more paintings of Will and western scenes that were not featured in any children's books, as well as sculptures by C.M. Russell, a personal friend and favorite artist of Will.
In the main lobby of the museum, the had a really powerful and beautiful statue of Will, hands pockets, smile half-cocked, with one of his most famous quotes "I never met a man I didn't like" chiseled along the base. It was one of the most charming monuments I've ever seen.
Through the doors of the main lobby there was a really spectacular view overlooking the town of Claremont and the Rogers family tomb, and when you turn back around the view back at the museum is nothing to scoff at either.
Back into the main museum galleries, there was some more artists' representations of Will capturing him dynamically roping a calf and also typing up a humor piece in a way that should be familiar to anyone who's ever watched their grandparents type. I love his writing, but he definitely looks a little less exciting making it.
The big ticket item here though was a portrait by Charles Bank Wilson commissioned for what would have been Will's 100th birthday that is both an amazing portrait of the man himself but also features swirling scenes from throughout his life that give a pretty great survey of the West as well.
The next gallery featured a brief overview of Will's family and early life. Will was born in 1879 so even if the photographs weren't of a famous subject the fact that they were capturing life up to and around the turn of the 20th century made them really awesome historical objects. I did not realize how much Cherokee culture was a part of Will's life, because he was pretty white-passing, but he was raised on Cherokee Nation lands and while both his parents were mixed-race they identified as Cherokee, and his mother's family actually ended up in Oklahoma as part of the forced migration along the Trail of Tears. This cultural heritage and upbringing certainly played no small role in shaping Will's late activism.
The room itself paid tribute Will's upbringing resembling a hunting lodge with tribal designs along ceiling and rafters. It was a neat little piece of architecture breaking away from the norms of the other rooms.
The next room (that I saw, this wouldn't be chronologically accurate with his life) focused on his radio career featuring both audio and the actual typed up and hand edited notes for his famous Bacon and Beans and Limousines speech that warmly and humorously encouraged the expansion of unemployment benefits during the Great Depression.
The next room was a recreation of what his study used to look like. I like that there was a guitar hanging over the bed, and a lot of discarded type notes because it gives me the impression that he was the kinda guy who always wanted something on hand in case he got an idea.
The next room featured set photos and posters from a selection of the 71 movies he made (50 silent films, 21 talkies). These were really fun bits of memorabilia, and again since I mainly knew about his writing, I had no idea what a huge movie star he had been. Very few silent film stars seem to have made the jump to sound at all let alone as successfully as he did (though I contend that while they were maligned at the time, Charlie Chaplin's talkies are actually very very good (and I suppose I should also contend that this is not a particularly controversial opinion among current critics but just one I feel strongly about)).
The next room was a gallery of the art that got Will famous in the first place, his stunt roping. He got to be really good at roping on ranches, and took it to the road in Wild West shows and circuses before breaking into Vaudeville after jumping out of the crowd and roping a steer that had broke loose in Madison Square Garden, saving the day and catching the attention of Willie Hammerstein a major New York theater producer. To make his act more interesting and to ease his own nerves about performing in large theaters, Will began riffing on current events while he performed his rope tricks developing a sort of Cowboy Court Jester persona he called the Ropin' Fool. After improvising a gentle roast of Woodrow Wilson while the president was in the audience to roars of laughter even from the Wilson himself, Will's fame as a skilled off the cuff humorist started to eclipse his fame as roper and his act really reached new heights. I liked that this gallery blended in some really nice artists' renderings of these days with actual archival photos from Will's acts and vaudeville in general, including some really impressive dancing numbers from Ziegfield's follies. There was also a video from a Broadway musical about Will Rogers' life starring Keith Carradine (The not Kill Bill Caradine) which gave a cool impression of what those shows might have actually looked like in motion. My favorite photos though were two that captured WIll's knack for preparing for act by reading the day's newspaper just sprawled out wherever he happened to be including on the footrest of a car or just on the ground and one photo of what looked a particularly impressive and amusing stunt where he rode a horse out onto a baseball diamond and got a lasso around the entire team.
The next room featured a timeline of major events in Will's life through absolutely stunning dioramas by an artist named Jo Mora. They trace Will's earliest days on the ranch and causing mischief with his lasso at school to his career in show business to his untimely plane crash. They also touched on his humanitarian efforts including visiting Nicaragua after a major earthquake and helping to organize relief efforts and encouraging radio listeners to donate money. It was a really sweet story and the craftsmanship and caer that went into all these recreations blew me away (I feel like if you read all my posts, I get blown away an awful lot, don't I? I should probably learn more phrases to express how cool this art is, but I also right most of these around 3 in the morning so we might be in an old dog new tricks situation)
The next room was a real treat to mer personally because it featured a TV playing one of Will's films that he starred in, wrote, and directed called The Ropin' Fool, a humorous silent film (now dubbed over with narration by Will's son) about a fool who just can't stop ropin'. It was meant to be a real showcase of the talent's that got him his start, and is also notable for innovating one of the first techniques for showing slow-motion film footage to capture the intricacies of the rope tricks that are sometimes too fast for the naked eye. The footage itself is completely incredible, because even when you see it in slow motion it's hard to figure out how he does half the tricks. I had honestly been a little unsure of how an act of rope tricks could gain someone even as charismatic as Will Rogers quite so much acclaim, but after seeing it in action I have to say it makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately the fancy camera trickery that made the slow motion possible was also hugely expensive, and even though the rope tricks and jokes are all really solid the film was considered a flop and might have been a sad casualty of the many silver age Hollywood films lost to ether if not for this memorial museum. There was also a small actual movie theater that played different rotating Will movies and archival footage, but by pure coincidence when I got there the theater was actually also showing The Ropin' Fool so even though I liked it, I didn't think I needed to see it again so soon.
In the basement of the museum, there was a children's play area that was designed to look like an Old West town to give the kids a little historical context while they were running around burning off energy. I was a little too old for it, but the entrance was so unintentionally spooky that I couldn't not see where that led.
The last exhibit not coincidentally was about Will's untimely death at the age of only 55 in a plane crash while on the way to Alaska to get new material for his Newspaper column. His death is real tragedy, but I'm sorry I have to say it, maybe it's not the most unexpected thing that can happen when you get in a plane piloted by a guy with an eye patch. I'm no aviation expert, but I assume depth perception helps.
Walking out of the museum, there was some more Will-themed art with a sweet stained glass window of him roping a rainbow in particular really tugging at the old heartstrings.
My last stop before bidding Oklahoma a fond farewell was to see a little shop called the Timberlake Rose Rock Museum that featured a large collection of one of Oklahoma's strangest geologic formations, naturally occurring rocks that any casual observer would assume had to be carved to look like rose petals. The likeness is simply uncanny!
With that and some fresh gas station coffee, I made the four hour drive to Denton, Texas where I had a tip from my comedian friend, James Curtis, a bourgeoning comedy scene was really taking off and there was at least two Sunday mics I could hit up. I got there a little early for the mic so I actually had some time to walk around which was nice because Denton is actually a really pretty college town and Texas is such a big state that I probably wouldn't be able to go back after tonight.
I decided to get some more non-gas station coffee, so I went to a place called West Oak Coffee which was a super hip and hipster-y college coffee bar. Lots of beards and laptops. They also specialized in coffee "cocktails". I got a special pomegranate espresso old fashioned which was a shot of espresso shaken over ice with a splash of pomegranate juice. It was very tasty in a way I wouldn't have imagined, and it was nice to just sit, sip, and people watch for a bit.
While I was walking around the town center, I passed a candy and novelty store that had a giant head in the front window. You know, normal candy store stuff.
Of the two mics James had mentioned, I decided to go to a mixed mic at an English-style Pub called The Abbey Underground because I couldn't tell from Facebook that the other just comedy mic was definitely happening. One advantage of this choice was that I ended up getting to have really great fish and chips with an excellent side of mushy peas, a very underrepresented side dish on this side of the pond.
The mic ended up being really fun. I was a little nervous because I never know how represented comedy is going to be at mixed open mics, but I wasn't the only comic there which was pretty comforting. It was still definitely weighted towards musicians and I was the first comic going up so I'd have to be the one to test the waters.
The crowd wasn't very large (it picked up a lot as the night went on though) and leaned a little on the older side, neither of which guarantees that they won't be interested but it doesn't usually bode well in my experience. They were very supportive and enthusiastic for the two musicians who went before me (two really solid folk rock acts) though so I was feeling a little more optimistic by the time I went up. This more optimistic outlook thankfully proved to be the correct one and the crowd was really attentive and down to laugh. I tried out some new material because I had a longer set to fill, and I was also trying to keep it all relatively clean partly as a challenge to myself and partly because I didn't want to alienate the room by going too dirty too early (not usually a risk with my comedy but it could happen) and spoiling their moods before the other comics go up. I suppose some comics would say you shouldn't change your material based on a crowd, but in this case it was really more of a politeness thing to the other performers than me trying to make assumptions about the crowd. It's important to do the best set you can and be true to yourself, but it's also nice to have some self-awareness about where you fit in the larger context of a show. Because it was less well-tried material, I fumbled some of it, but when the jokes landed the crowd laughed really big despite their small size and I think overall there were more hits than misses.
The comic after me was a really funny guy named Jordan Black, who had a real seasoned delivery and clearly he'd been doing this for a bit. He had a dark and absurdist style, with funny family stories alternated between really clever one liners. My two favorites were: "Some people cry because their dads didn't play catch with them. I cry because my dad played far too much catch with me" and "The hardest part of moving in with your girlfriend is abandoning your wife and children."
The next comic who went up was a younger comic named MIchael who had some really funny bits about being homeschooled. I particularly liked a surprising twist on a bit about a recent article saying that 92% of giraffes being gay: "92% of giraffes are gay. That means 92% of giraffes were homeschooled" I liked this joke because I didn't see it coming, and also because it reminded me of my favorite line from the movie Gladiator where an angry vendor yells the line "He sold me queer giraffes!" It's just not a sentence I was expecting to hear ever, let alone in a Best Picture winner.
After Michael's set, there were some more musicians and I started chatting with Jordan. He was a really nice guy, and he said he had just come from an open mic at a craft beer bottle shop called the Bearded Monk, which was winding down but he offered to walk me over and see if I could still get on.
We ended up missing the mic which was a little bit of a bummer, but the place had an insanely cool collection of weird and interesting local and imported beers. I ended up ordering a beer from the Texas Ale Project called The Caucasian White Russian Imperial Stout because it had the Dude from the Big Lebowski on the bottle art. It was one of the the creamiest, most well balanced yet flavor stouts, I've had so far and I loved it. Between the beer and some great conversations with Jordan about comedy, screen writing, and life in general it certainly wasn't a bad welcome to Texas.
Favorite Random Sightings: You Suck Vapes; OK Asian Market (sometimes the state's initials can seem like a downsell); Primate Jiujitsu (I hope it was just a name they thought sounded cool)
Regional Observations: Is it weird that I feel a little bummed out, I didn't see any tornadoes in Oklahoma? I feel like they must be way scarier in real life though.
Albums Listened To: Pura Vida Conspirancy by Gogol Bordello (great multinational gypsy punk); Pure Comedy by Father John Misty (not his most interesting album musically, but lyrically and vocally he's at the top of his game); Pussy Cats by Harry Nilsson (produced by John Lennon, a great album that nearly killed both the artists behind it because they were both at the height of the drug and booze bender days and they just brought out the worst in each other); Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines by Shabazz Palaces (super weird and funky part of a two album afro-futurist conceptual piece)
People's Favorite Jokes:
Why was the police officer in bed? He was undercover
Where do cows go to have fun? The moooovies
Oklahoma Superlatives:
Favorite Coffee: Pure taste- Coffee House on Cherry Street in Tulsa; Best All Around- The Red Cup in Oklahoma City.
Favorite Restaurant: Cheever's Cafe in Oklahoma City
Favorite Bar: The Fur Shop in Tulsa
Favorite Beer: Praire Artisan Ales Bomb!
Favorite Dessert: Rusty's Custard Factory in Norman
Favorite Open Mic: Looney Bin in Oklahoma City
Favorite Attraction: In a major city- National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, but if you're willing to drive a bit, I'd really recommend Woolaroc.
General Impression of the Comedy Scene: Really funny comics, very supportive community, but I wish for their sakes that they had more good venues to show off. Getting on at the Looney Bin is great, but it's so hit or miss that it would be nice for those comics if there were more chances in a week for that same kind of exposure and crowds to riff off.
Songs of the Day:
I’ve never seen such energy generated by a bunch of guys sitting down
This isn’t the best song on the album, but it will be forever stuck in my head
This is a trip