Wishing For More Steps

We got dinner at the Penn Brewery. They make excellent beer. They tend to mostly make lighter beers. Pilsners, wheat beers, IPA’s, and amber lagers are their thing. I drink almost exclusively stouts, porters, and occasionally barley wines. I don’t match my beers to my food. I drink dark beer with everything. I can drink lighter beers, I just prefer not to if it can be avoided. So I got a pilsner. Even a well-made pilsner tastes like fizzy sweat. This one wasn’t too bad. The food at this place is the real draw. The food is awesome and the portions are huge. The air was cool and bright, so we sat outside in the courtyard. The courtyard is nestled in an alcove between two buildings. It’s filled with long, picnic-style tables. Excellent ambiance, beautiful evening. I ate way too much and had two beers. It was great. There were lots of people coming, going, and eating. I didn’t pay much attention. When we were just about done, a woman and her man walked in. They both looked to be close to 40, but not quite. They weren’t too remarkable, except for the fact that she had the most incredible ass I’d ever seen in my life. It wasn’t too muscular, or too fat. It was the perfect balance of the two. There should have been a blue ribbon on it. That’s a difficult balance to hit. If a woman’s ass is too muscular it’s not quite right. If it’s too flat or flabby, it’s not right either. This ass looked like a perfect handful. It looked firm, heavy, round, and low-slung. She obviously wasn’t wearing any underwear. Strangely, she was wearing kakis. You don’t often see hot-looking asses in kakis. This one was an exception. They were skin-tight, like they had been airbrushed onto her. Spandex khakis, maybe? Is there such a thing? The shape of her ass was simply magnificent. Better than the food, beer, or combination of the two. I stopped chewing. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only man there gawking blatantly at this woman’s ass. I’m pretty sure every other straight man there was doing the same thing. I didn’t even make an attempt at subtlety. My whole head, neck and shoulders turned to watch her walk by. I didn’t feel too bad about being that obvious. When you parade around an ass like that in tight pants, it would seem apparent that you want it looked at. They must not have liked the picnic tables in the courtyard, because moments later they walked back past, into the building to go eat inside. She walked up the steps, and I watched again. It was even better this time. I only wished there were more steps.

My Dental Hygienist and My Dentist Both Hate Me

My dental hygienist hates me. Every time I go, the same woman always cleans my teeth. I’m always on time, clean, and polite. And she always treats me like a walking, flaming turd. I don’t get it. I must be a pretty easy patient. She’s generally nondescript, probably in her mid to late 30s, Caucasian. She doesn’t look great. She doesn’t look bad. She looks okay. Really elaborate hairstyle and too much makeup. There are pictures of her kids all over the room. Always has the oldies station playing on the radio. My teeth are normally pretty good. No real problems, just a little staining from all the coffee. I guess that’s somewhat tedious to scrape off, but I’m very little trouble beyond that. Then she leaves, and the dentist shows up. The dentist is really hot. She must be fresh out of school, late 20s, blond, beautiful face, really slender body. The dentist outfit that she wears isn’t very revealing at all. So I can’t tell anything specific about her shape, other than that she’s tall and thin. She doesn’t seem to like me at all either. I’m always a polite, very quiet, easy patient. What else can I do? Generally I love it when hot young women put their fingers in my mouth, but she’s totally removed any joy from it. But like any bad relationship, I just keep coming back.

Punk Semantics

Yesterday I did the most grungy, poorly organized, unprofessional art show I’ve done in the nine years that I’ve been showing my art. It was the 37th one I’d ever done. To contextualize, I’ve shown my art in abandoned buildings before, once in an abandoned building that was condemned shortly thereafter. I’ve even shown in a barn in Ohio once. When I applied for this show (which was to feature both art and music, with live bands), I knew that it wasn’t going to be at the Guggenheim, but I assumed that it would be a professional, organized event. In the week preceding the hanging of the show, my wife’s punk/DIY craft group happened to have their monthly meeting at the place where the show would be. When she returned from the meeting, she suggested that I withdraw from the show. She explained that it was a fantastic space, and that the people who owned and ran the space were wonderful, friendly, professional people, but that there was no actual wall space (“Like…where paintings would go.”). There were giant windows on all the walls, and she said that off to the side, there was a maze of cubicle walls that looked suspiciously like they were being arranged for an art show. Assuming the quality of the people owning and running the place, and given my working ideology of being willing to show anywhere, I figured I’d proceed. I’m not a snob. I’m a man of my word. If I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it. I won’t back out simply because it’s not what I had hoped it would be. Certainly, given my wife’s testimony, the owner of the space and his crew would turn out to be flexible, reasonable people, and we could work something out to get the work up professionally. The only flaw in my reasoning was the assumption that the owner of the space and the person organizing the show were the same individual. They weren’t. I arrived at the show with a healthy supply of paintings and a willingness to hang as much or as little work as necessary. I immediately met the show’s organizer, with whom I had been corresponding via email during the preceding week. My wife’s inference proved correct. The art was destined for the cubicle walls. The space would be a fantastic place to house site-specific installation art or a giant floor sculpture. There was, however, nowhere appropriate to hang paintings. When I asked about a few of the limited spots where there was usable wall space, I was told that we couldn’t use the walls. The art had to go into the cubicles. I didn’t flinch. I said, “Ok, will I be able to drive nails into the cubicles? I’ll need to hang my work with something.” He responded, “No, you can’t use nails. You can either use tape, thumb tacks, or the chains strung over the tops of the walls.” My work is physically very heavy, and I expressed concern over the cubicle walls’ ability to support my work on such a chain, as it wasn’t firmly tethered to anything. He suggested moving a table over, and propping my work up on the table, leaning against the wall. At this point my wife interjected, like a trained attack dog, that that would be tacky, and that we weren’t going to be displaying my work that way. I love her for that. She’s always willing to be forceful and frank on my behalf when I’m being too diplomatic and polite. He said, “Hey, this is a punk DIY-type event. This is all we’ve got to work with.” I could plainly see the futility of arguing any further. I said, “All right,” and proceeded to orchestrate a solution with the chains, hanging my smallest, lightest pieces as best I could, given the circumstances. They didn’t look great. They didn’t look bad. They looked like really great work, hung using poor means in the wrong environment. None of the other artists had hung their work yet, other than the “curator.” There was no further conversation between me and him, as he was far more interested in setting up for the bands. It was obvious that this show was essentially about the music, and the visual art was simply an afterthought. I really didn’t care. Any exposure is good exposure, and the one thing it seemed this guy did correctly was promote. He did lots of advertising. I had also heard that they had had quite a crowd the last time they did one of these. So that was adequate incentive to swallow some pride. What bothered me was his statement that “Hey, this is a punk/DIY-type event...” That struck me as an incredibly lazy statement. The word “punk” was never intended as a synonym for the words “shitty,” “unprofessional,” “lazy,” or “half-assed.” It irked me that this guy would degrade the word “punk” by using it as an excuse for his laziness, complacency, and lack of self-respect or respect for others. “Punk,” as I understand it, is about a rejection of mainstream values. It’s about dissenting opinion, and art and music which are egalitarian rather than elitist in nature. That does not in anyway imply that “punk” needs to be held together with duct tape and/or eschew any sort of polish or sense of professionalism in order to abide by those ideals. His remark seemed incredibly self-serving and lazy to me. I got over it. The next day I attended the event. He avoided me and I avoided him. Everybody else, without exception, was very friendly. It was generally a good time, though it was incredibly hot and humid. It took about five minutes to sweat through my clothes. The rest of the work there was at best uninteresting, at worst terrible. It was generally high school quality, unfocused, impatient, undisciplined work, acrylic paint on cardboard. It was art without convictions or feelings. As best I could tell, I was the only real artist there, with the exception of Rick. I wasn’t wild about his work, but he knew what he was doing, put in the hours, and he cared about the details. He cared about his work and it showed. He cut no corners. The curator’s work was god-awful, hipster, cartoony, safe, pointless indoor graffiti. That’s what’s big now, and that’s why he’s doing it. It’s art for people unwilling to dig beyond their current understanding and honestly explore. The most amusing facet of the event was a great big fat Italian kid. He looked like was about 5’ 10” and 280 pounds of lard. He was at least three different types of trash all at once. He was probably about 20 years old, and already had a poorly executed, faded American flag tattoo on his forearm, as well as some other bad tattoos that I couldn’t even interpret. I recognized another as a cross, though only by its shape, rather than its details. He was wearing what must have been 20 pounds of fake gold and diamond jewelry around his neck and on his fingers. He paced the floor with his hands folded in mock piety like a he was trying to evoke “fat-mafia-hitman-in-training.” He wanted so desperately to be from Brookyln, but he just wasn’t. I’m Italian, and I fucking hate that shit. I have no respect whatsoever for the goofy, macho, goombah stereotypes. He was standing near some pretty terrible-looking art. It looked like somebody’s half-assed attempt at mimicking Jean-Michael Basquiat. Though it was bad, it looked sufficiently sincere to grab my attention. It had potential. I approached him and asked if it was his. He replied, “No. I’m not the artist. I’m his agent.” With great effort, I managed not to burst into laughter and shoot beer out of my nose. I made polite chit-chat for a few moments and then retreated. Later, I saw him talking with the guy who must have been “the artist.” He was slightly less insane, but no less corny. He might have been 5’ 8” and 110 pounds when soaking wet. It seemed like his agent wasn’t so much his agent as he was his bouncer. “The artist” was wearing giant golden aviator sunglasses that faded from dark brown at the top to nearly clear at the bottom. They each evoked some terrible hybrid of Elvis Presley, Burt Reynolds, and Liberace. He was as pale as a ghost, and wearing a polo shirt with a popped collar. They sat around posing on the couches. It only took about an hour before I had seen enough.

We left for the South Side to eat a late dinner and see some friends. The wait was too long at Piper’s Pub, our eatery of choice. Instead, we hit the City Grill. We had never been there before, and thought it couldn’t be bad. It wasn’t. The food was very good, though the beer selection was weak. The ambiance of the place, however, was terrible. It radiated “old man bar.” The bartender was pretty cool. He looked to be about 50 and was obviously a career bartender. That’s a rare thing, and cool to find. When we first sat down the place wasn’t very full or loud, but he shouted all communications at the top of his lungs. You could tell it was done automatically, out of habit, as he obviously didn’t have any trouble hearing me when I ordered. A guy who looked like Jeanne-Claude Van Damme, but fat, older and meaner, walked in with his cronies. They sat down at the bar. I sat at a corner seat, and my wife sat immediately to my left. There were four vacant seats to her left. There were five guys in Van Damme’s crew, including Van Damme himself. Nobody seemed to want to take the seat next to my wife, though. So three of them sat and two stood. We both thought this was pretty funny. Strangely, there was a bachelorette party going on way in the back, at a giant table comprised of many smaller tables. I’m not sure what a bunch of cute young 20-something girls were doing having their bachelorette party in this old man bar, but there they were. At one point, while they were doing shots, they all giggled and waved to the Van Damme crew. Van Damme and his cronies all smiled and waved back excitedly. The girls laughed louder, and I wondered if the old guys realized they were being mocked. Not all insanity is wild. This was the sad, pathetic persuasion. In that moment I both pitied and lamented those old men, as I know that I will invariably be one of them, eventually. The bar was depressing and we moved on down the street to the Lava Lounge, where our friend Greg tends bar. He was there, and so was Katie. They’re great. The place was a little too crowded for my taste, but we had fun. By the time we left, Greg was hammered. If he hadn’t had so many friends there with him when we left, I would have been concerned for him. When we left it was raining, and neither one of us was even buzzed. On the ride home, we got stuck in traffic resulting from some late night road construction. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, though, as we enjoyed the air conditioning, Motorhead, and absence of smoke.

Earlier this afternoon, I returned to the show space to pick up my work. It was all still intact, and I was grateful that nothing had been sacrificed in the show except any sense of pride that I had had going into it.

Monster Truck at the Library

My wife and I both read a lot. I like to buy my books because I’m shallow, and I like to collect and own them. Seeing them all lined up on a shelf confirms for me, in my simple male mind, that I have an intellect – or at least the illusion of one. She, on the other hand, is content to sign them out of the library, read them, and return them when done. She also fails to see the virtues of Motorhead, so nothing she says can be taken all that seriously. Recently, she returned from the library, glowing red and bubbling with giddy laughter. As she came through the door she blurted out, “There was a monster truck at the library!” Based upon her account of the event, it sounded like your basic pickup truck with a lift-kit, giant off-road tires, and the off-road lights on top. It sounded thoroughly ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the fact that it was left running and unattended while its driver was inside the library. She said that as she entered the library, it was immediately apparent who owned the truck. There was a big burly guy at the counter signing out books on automotive maintenance. She said he had a whole lot of piercings in his face, a Steelers shirt, and bad tattoos. I asked, “Tattoos of what?” She said he had one of those terrible tribal arm bands, with an Italy boot above it. I cringed. Italy tattoos are one of the many banes of my existence. They’re tacky. I look plenty Italian without a fucking tattoo on my arm to make it official. It reminded me of the San Rocco festival my family had attended the previous week. It’s the second weekend of August every year. I’m originally from Aliquippa, and a huge portion of Aliquippa is comprised of Italians from Patrica, Italy. When they came over in the 1930s to work in the steel mills, they brought the San Rocco festival with them. It’s generally a little goofy, but a good time nonetheless. There’s lots of great food and G-rated family fun. Regardless, at the closing ceremony of the thing, they pass out all of these little Italian flags for everybody to wave while the band plays some traditional Italian music. It’s all in good fun, but I don’t like flag waving of any kind. It really doesn’t matter what country it is, if you’re waving a flag, you’re probably an asshole. Nationalism is poisonous. It divides people and creates conflict were there isn’t any. Flag waving is how the Nazis happened. A friend of mine was telling me about his recent trip to England, where he saw a car with two flapping Union Jacks fixed to the roof, which made him think to himself, “Ah, they have hillbillies in England too.” This all made me want to go find the guy who had left his giant truck running parked in front of the library and explain to him that nobody in Italy drives monster trucks.

Toothpaste

The tube of toothpaste in my wife’s medicine cabinet looks like a murder victim. She squeezes it from the middle, and kind of twists it to get more out as it gets emptier. The current tube is contorted, bulging in some places and flat in others. It’s dirty with whatever sort of fine dirt accumulates on things in women’s bathrooms, and the cap is blown wide open. It’s not just open. It’s open in such a way that it never is going to be closed again. There are caked blobs of dried paste frozen in mid-gush clinging to its gaping mouth. Behind its head, stuck to the back of the medicine cabinet wall, there’s a stray blob of dried toothpaste. How’d that get there? It looks like somebody shot the tube in the face and blew its brains out the back of its head, onto the wall.