Sunday, August 3, 2008

Not-so-open house and some fun museums...

So... anyone want to guess how many neighbors came to the open house?

I'll give you a hint... zero. Yes, zero, which is kind of weak, but what are you going to do?

Lisa and I had a blast anyway. Also, an old friend from high school who is going to Columbia now came by and we basically all just hang out and drank all night... it was tons of fun.

Some highlights from the evening include:

* repairing the Atari and rocking some insane Warlords and Combat action
* calling my friend in Colorado and asking him to pretend he was Meatloaf on speaker phone to help me win some sort of bet... he was pretty darned confused
* Watched Captain EO, of course (Part 1 on YouTube, Part 2 on YouTube)
* Rocked to the soundtracks from both Dirty Dancing and Footloose

Those are just a few of the random highlights from the well-behaved evening that lacked debauchery of all kinds. I swear it.

After waking up Sunday, none to early I assure you, Lisa and I walked to The Cloisters which is right near my apartment.

Put simply, it is a museum focused on medieval art... but the twist is that the museum itself is built from parts of monasteries torn down in France (and I think one in Austria too). Yup, J.D. Rockefeller Jr. was just plain rich enough that in the '30s he was able to afford to tear down precious history in France, ship it to Manhattan, harvest his favorite parts and have his own monastery built.

It gave me a special sense of pride to know that the museum I was enjoying in my neighborhood was built at the expense of history elsewhere.

Also, many of the sculptures and statues are missing arms and forearms, like the "Figure of a King" below. All I could think of when I saw each one was "they could rectify the situation with some chainsaws, a la Ash in Army of Darkness. Word?...


"Say hello to the twenty-first century!"


I bet if that king had chainsaws for arms, nobody would give him crap for being a cheapskate and bringing Myrrh anymore... nobody would mess with him at all.

Maybe they could put him at the entrance of the museum to scare people into donating more money on the way in. The admission is a "suggested" donation of $20... but thats of course suggested, right? As we were paying, a guy tried to walk in without a donation and he was accosted by the guards who curtly explained that he had better pay some sort of donation or go back from whence he came.

So after the Cloisters, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they're doing this crazy special exhibition - Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. It was pretty strange to say the least. They took classic superheroes, like Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, etc... and had crazy designers make outfits "inspired" by each hero. You know, the kind of designer clothes that nobody could ever possibly wear... at least not since the '80s.

This stuff was just off the wall... but it was vaguely entertaining and pretty funny to stroll through the exhibit. Plus, they did have some original costumes on display too, like a Batman costume from The Dark Knight and a Spider-Man costume from the recent movies.

They didn't allow pictures at all (the guards seemed angry to be there), so these are taken from around the Internet.

Spidey's outfits were some of the less ridiculous of the bunch.


These are a couple of the outfits "inspired" by Wonder Woman's costume (the Lynda Carter one from the '70s). In case you were wondering, yes - those are indeed Coke cans on tops of the heads. I actually burst out laughing when I saw these ones. I shouldn't be allowed in some museums.


Iron Man was another who got the fashion treatment. I swear, apparently all of these outfits were worn by models on the runway at some point... weird.


Imagine wearing this Batman-inspired gem to a job interview... or maybe the airport?...

Who needs hands anyway, right?


This Hulk-inspired mess would turn some heads...

Apparently Hulk symbolizes masculinity in its purest form, so the designer figured he would add a big protruding penis to the outfit. I might try this one on a casual Friday at the office.

If you follow this link and look around, you can actually click on the comic book covers and look at a whole lot more of the crazy outfits.

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