Schmaltz Across Texas, Part Two

It's so nice 'n' romantic to keep a little mystery in the relationship.

Our first morning in Houston, Cheez was indeed mystified by me.

Specifically by my comprehensive knowledge of the lyrics of every song played on 97.1 FM Country Legends, the radio station I found on our rental car radio.

Okay, maybe hearing your girlfriend belt out the Oak Ridge Boys' Tryin' To Love Two Women isn't exactly romantic. But when your full up on the Hyatt's continental breakfast, it puts you in the mood for something.

First stop of the day: the Rothko Chapel.

Which I have to admit, had me kind of confused.

Mostly because:

1) I could figure out where all the Rothkos were;

and

2) I didn't understand why they need so many acoustic panels in such a small room.

So yes, I wasn't much of a fan of the Rothkos.

Although I'll grant you that it's better than what they usually mean when they say We have a Jew hanging in our Catholic church.

Being a wandering, rather than a hanging, Jew, I was ready to ramble over to the Menil Collection, one of those lovely museums where rich people put all their stuff on public display for the edification of the masses.

It was indeed very edifying.

There was a three-foot-tall wood carving of a humanoid figure with long red hair.

It looks like one of those Hawaiian totems I said.

Or like a leprechaun Cheez said.

I squinted at the curatorial tag. Turns out, we were both right. Memorial figure from New Ireland, Melanesia it said.

How edifying is that? If it weren't for the Menils of Houston, I would never have learned there was any place to get a pint of Guinness and a plate of boiled cabbage is all of Oceania.

The Menil also had a large exhibit of Surrealist works on display. But we hurried through that gallery. Surrealism doesn't really melt my butter I noted to Cheez although I guess it does melt my clock.

Next stop: the Museum of Fine Arts. Which was a focal point for our Texas trip, actually. Because they were having an exhibit of Moon Art.

Again, edifying. Such as footage of Mission Control during the moon launch. That is so amazing said Cheez, who has loved lunar landings ever since those long childhood days he spent reading old National Geographic magazines at his grandparents' house (note: Labrador is not a vacation paradise for nine-year-old boys. Or anyone).

You mean, that we really sent people to the moon and back? I asked.

No, that the guys who worked at Mission Control could smoke RIGHT AT THEIR DESKS! he answered.

Other learnings: eighteenth-century telescopes were made of cardboard. We had just bought a kaleidoscope for Cheez's nephew, on which we squandered an extra eight bucks to get a metal rather than a cardboard specimen. Turns out, we were robbed. We could have had a more authentic ocular device if we'd started with the core from a tube of toilet paper.

We also watched this lovely 1902 French film, La Voyage Dans La Lune



It was no Panic in Year Zero, but still it was the second best film of the trip so far.

Doougie Rocker, PhD and Little Lord Portleroy had to wander off and leave us, because we were spending way too much time in the moon exhibit. Indeed, it soon became clear that though they are dear friends, we were not entirely perfectly matched traveling buddies, being as they are the sort of people that believe vacation should be leisurely and relaxing. Whereas I believe it should be crammed full of as much nuttiness as possible.

Thus, after the museum closed, we agreed to all return to the Hyatt and freshen up before dinner. At which point Cheez and I doubled back to the Menil compound to see the separately housed Dan Flavin exhibit.

Can we take pictures in here? I asked the guard.

You're not supposed to he answered but I can't be following people all through the building watching what they're doing.

Given that it was 6 pm on a Sunday night and we were the only people in the entire facility, I realized he was not going to be taxing himself on our account.

So here, without further ado, is the Flavin exhibit:
Unless of course you who are reading this happen to be a lawyer employed on behalf of the Menil Collection, in which case those brightly colored lights you're seeing are just part of the fabulous decor of Tan Tan, the Vietnamese restaurant where we had dinner.


After a long day of fine art, who doesn't want to unwind with a refreshing Salt Plum Soda?

Which, in case you're wondering, is a small bottle of soda water, which is brought to the table and then poured by the patron into a glass that contains a salted plum.

Be sure to stir vigorously to distribute the salty plum flavor evenly!

After eating a ginormous amount of delicious, deep-fried delights, we wandered around the neighborhood, taking in the neon-lit sights.

The adjacent strip malls offered everything you could possibly ever want or need, from fashion to housewares to groceries to law enforcement.

We couldn't quite figure out why Johnny Law needed quite so much wattage, until we wandered into the Asian grocery store and spotted this sign:
In one form or another, this sign is ubiquitous throughout Texas.

What a helpful reminder to bring only your LICENSED weapons with you when you run out to the store for that oh-so-adorably packaged squid or anchovy snack.
And so ended day two in Texas, with Oak Ridge Boys tunes in my head, art of all sorts amazing our eyes, and visions of salt plums dancing in my belly.

Shmaltz Across Texas, Part 1

My squeeze the Cheez and I always say we have so much fun together, we could go on vacation in a paper bag and still have a great time.

This winter, we didn't go for some little lunch sack. We headed for a full on shopping bag, the shmancy kind with those little ropey built-in handles.

It's was a big bag we vacationed in. A big bag called TEXAS.

So big, we couldn't take it on all by ourselves, so we invited some pals to join us. No, not Miss Ellie and JR, I meant a couple of real live actual friends:

1. Doougie Rocker, PhD, everyone's favorite Riot Grrrl/Classics Professor

2. Doougie's honey, Little Lord Portleroy

As Little Lord P noted, we were ideally suited for this journey, representing North, South, East, and West. To wit: Cheez as the Northerly Canuck; me as that exemplum of east coast, a New Yorker; Doougie as a native of the westward Oregon Territories; and Little Lord P heading up the South, having been raised in the Ozarks in a Doomsday cult that supported itself by BeDazzling the concert costumes of Elvis Presley.

And to think, people believe the South is more f*ed up than other regions.

Anyhow, we set off not to mess with Texas but to mesmerized by it. Cheez and I spent eight years in LA. We thought we'd seen all there was to see of the delicate intersection between big wads of cash and really tacky taste. But Rodeo Drive has got nothing on rodeo gaudy.

I just asked Cheez for an illustrative example. He answered I think that $170 leopard and rhinestone belt we saw in the store in San Antonio certainly counts as Texas Tacky.

Actually, I disagree. I think it just counts as proof that Texas has so few Jews, people actually pay retail.

So here is a recap of some highlights of the trip. I'm sorry if the recap is long(horn). Texas is big. There is an awful lot for me to mock.

Day 1: Complimentary breakfast at the hotel:

A Texas-sized vat of deep fried pig.

And to think I said this was a goyim-heavy state.

With that much bacon, it's more a heavy goyim state.

Much to Doougie's despair, Little Lord P immediately embraced the Texan belief that everything is better with bacon. Even yogurt.

Once we had filled up, we headed out to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. It's a gorgeous building filled with memorable pieces.

Such as this room-sized sculpture . . .

made out of mint-green candies.

We're big fans of found-object art. But this was our first exposure to found-in-the-bottom-of-some-grandma's-pocketbook art. If the sculptor had thrown in a tissue with a blotch of coral-pink lipstick on it and a bus transfer from 1962, it would have been perfect.

After leaving the museum, we happened

upon a once beautiful but now somewhat rundown art deco building.

We snuck inside to investigate.

We made our way through ornate halls, poking into side rooms

littered with old box fans and duct tape-mended couches, until

at last we passed through giant doors labeled "coliseum," and discovered that we were inside the rodeo dome.

And that, although there was no one else around, the soundsystem was playing full blast. And that the song it was blasting was Barracuda.

Because nothing says rodeo like decaying art deco and false rumors of lesbian love.

And speaking of girls who like horses, our next stop was the Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Highlights included the following quotes from Hall of Famers:

Who'd want a husband when you could have this wonderful horse? Mitzi Riley

Of course, when you do as many things as I do, it takes a lot of outfits. Fern Sawyer

Basically, anyplace you can be down on marriage and up on outfits, is my paradise. I celebrated by galloping over to the gift-shop and purchasing myself a sweet little filly of a cowgirl hat, which to Doougie's mortification I insisted on wearing just about every place else we went in Texas.

Full up on Fort Worth, we headed to Houston, checked into the Hyatt, and spent the evening watching Panic in Year Zero, which I can say without a doubt is the finest film about nuclear holocaust directed by and starring Ray Milland and co-starring Frankie Avalon that I have ever seen.

And that was just day 1.

More Texas-sized tales of terrific travel to come, I promise. Until then, settle back with some yogurt-coated bacon, and dream of all the open prairie has to offer . . . even if they are selling it at retail.

If You Make It Out of Ironic Materials, They Will Come. And Buy It. Maybe Buy Two, If You Will Cut a Deal.

Get out your glue guns, hipsters. It's the most Portlandish time of the year.

Gray and rainy and Craftywonderland!

For all my out of town readers, Craftywonderland is, well, it's a wonderland of craft. Or more precisely, a Convention Center hall of hand-crafted wonders you can purchase to support some local artiste's PBR habit.

One of the hottest items was the Portland Bingo set.

Actually so popular that it sold out at Craftywonderland, (though it will soon be available for purchase at Powells).

Still, I was inspired enough I figured I'd play my own game of Portland Bingo as I made my way among the crafty wares.

What to wear to the next kale sale down at the vegan co-op?

Organic cotton and hemp stretch denim!

(Warning, could lead to one of those embarrassing Honey, I smoked my stretch pants incidents.)

Speaking of functional objects out of favorite substances:

Duct tape wallets.

So Portland. So Portland 2004, actually. Been there, stored my PBR money in that, as the hipsters say.

But wait, here's something new:

Duct tape flasks.

For when you're a little too suave to swill down a can of PBR, yet still feel the need to keep your booze in a metal container.

Notice that both the duct tape wallets and the duct tape flasks come in the ever popular mustache style.

Because the FREE SQUARE on Portland Crafty Bingo must surely be the facial hair frenzy.

Keep Portland Beard cards.

Fabric Mustache flags

Mustache ring

(note macaroni ring included only as scale indicator, not for sale)

Mustache shotglass

(for when you need to pour something out of your mustache duct tape flask to toast the bride and groom as they exchange their mustache rings)

Here's a nice enviro-friendly art form:

Recycled skateboard jewelry

Sort of a hair-of-the-dog potential here, what with slipping a skateboard bangle on that arm you've just broken doing a Wallplant that came out looking like one of my dying houseplants.

Christmas is coming up, so no surprise that the crafters are ready for Old Saint Nick.

Or perhaps that's more Old Milwaukee, given its hipster cred.

Others hadn't forgotten that Jesus is the Reason for the Season.

Our friend Rachel B. picked up some hedgehog notecards for her stepmother, who apparently loves all things hedgehog. Alas, it's a pity Rachel didn't see this in time.

Because nothing says, Happy Birthday Prince of Peace like the hedgehog brass knuckles.

If only her stepmother were actually a man, she might have picked up this lovely set of gay man's fantasy potholders.

Potholders were in surprising profusion at Craftywonderland. Though as Cheez observed, they did not seem to hold the kind of pot the majority of the crowd seemed most familiar with.

Among my favorite items were the beautiful old suit jackets that had been remade into what I like to think of as Portland's sartorial take on the mullet.

Business up front

Hoodie in the back

There was a lot of working with recycled materials. Old Sony Walkmans made into bookends. Old books made into journals. Old beer caps made into

well, I actually have no idea what that is they were made into. But dude has figured out how to deduct his beer purchases as business supplies, that's pretty artful right there.

And for those of you who are ready to ditch your old-fangled duct tape wallet, may I recommend the latest in nostalgic materials recycled into a moneymaker, er I mean money holder:

The lawnchair webbing wallets. Note that the display stand included actual photos of lawn chairs

presumably because the twenty-somethings cramming the sale had no firsthand knowledge of such things.

It does make you think. What 70s decor item can't be recrafted as 2010 fashion, when you get right down to it. Those plastic covers my parents still have on their sofa? Peekaboo robe to go with the shag bikini cut out of the living floor treatment. Stick a fondue pot on your head and call it macaronimaniac, as the old song says.

They really had decked the convention hall with boughs of 70s nostalgia. This lovely velvet painting of an AMC Pacer, for example, was going for $100.

Which is probably more than the Kelly Blue Book value of the Pacer itself.

The ultimate Portland moment, though, was when I spied this vendor on the crafty kids aisle:

Yes, at nine years old, he's already sporting the airbrushed trucker's cap, churning out ironic artwork, and exuding aloofness at the presence of shoppers.

Best of all, just moments after I snapped this shot, he began unconsciously playing air guitar to the song blasting out of the nearest speaker. Which, in the true spirit of the holiday season, was Don't Fear the Reaper.

A lovely sentiment, though perhaps not as apt as the one of which I had to remind our pal Cynthia and her daughter Jackson, who were fleeing the Convention Center after being traumatized by the Craftywonderland crowd: Don't Fear the Hipster.

PDX v NYC, a Catty Analysis

I love New York. It's the sort of place where you can hear a resident assert, This is the cultural capital of the world with no hesitation. And no irony.

Even if that person has never lived anywhere except New York and Waltham, Mass. Not to diss the fine cultural assets of Middlesex County (sorry, typo there . . . should have been asset singular), but maybe a broader perspective is in order.

Sure, New York has Broadway theaters, the Whitney, MOMA, Carnegie Hall, countless galleries, and of course the Met of the opera persuasion and the Met of art museum persuasion (not to mention the Mets of baseball playing persuasion).

In a week, I saw work by Jenny Holzer, Chuck Close, Pablo Picasso, Claes Oldenberg, Sophie Calle, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, and zillions of others. My feet hurt just thinking about all that art I shlepped around seeing.

And my throat hurts just thinking about all the friends in NYC I told about seeing it. On account of they never get a chance to cash in all that cultural capital for themselves. Because their time is spent elsewhere.
Like standing on line to get into the Trader Joe's.

Now, no one is mistaking Portland for the cultural capital of the world (well, no one who hasn't also mistaken an architectural landmark for a good place to put a minor league baseball stadium, a car turning right for a car turning left, and a seventeen-year-old for a consenting adult).

But still, I want to proclaim the glory of the arts in Portland, even at the risk of sounding like a rube from the provinces. Or a reporter from the New York Times.

Because everyone in Portland is a freaking artist. We may not have the Algonquin Hotel, but still, any friend of Dorothy (Parker) can be moved by my musings in the new Portland Queer anthology. My squeeze the Cheez is singing in the flash choir. The neighbor who was caring for our cats while we were in New York? She was also frantically finishing up the paintings for her first demi-solo show. The gallery had actually offered her a solo show but she didn't have time to do enough work to fill the space; apparently showing an empty kibble tub and a well-scooped litter box did not suffice as art.

But, you may be thinking, the artistic endeavors of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Perhaps you're wondering about the rest of the city, the public servants and the transportation advocates and the newshounds and the like. Can they too really all be artistes?

Keep your hat on, Humphrey, and cast your peepers on this:


Yes, that's Metro President David Bragdon, Bicycle Transportation Alliance Executive Director Scott Bricker, Oregonian reporter Peter Ames Carlin, Deputy Secretary of State Barry Pack, and (er, I don't know what he does for a living and I forgot to bring the program home so I can't check) James Harrison, donning cat toys on their heads and dancing to the choreography of the inimitable Linda Austin at Cabaret Boris and Natasha at Performance Works Northwest.

For a bunch of guys with no dance training and only two rehearsals, they were pretty good. But what made the evening purrfect was the festival of feliness fineness known as Cattitude.

Transgenderd.
Transpecies.
And apparently big fans of transfats.




This is what it looks like when doves cry. And the audience laughs so hard they nearly pee their pants canary bird yellow.

I'm going to quit my day job and follow them, like people used to follow the Dead I remarked to a fellow audience member.

Then I remembered I don't have a day job. Because I live in Portland, the where-we-work-just-enough-to-support-our-creative-endeavors capital of the world.

Art Lovers, Unite! And Then, Disperse!

There's someone I'd like you to meet.

I'll call him The Silver Fox.

He's South African.  Ex-military. 

But he's got his sensitive side.  

The day that photograph was taken, he was on a romantic weekend away with his wife.  They'd left their three kids with a babysitter overnight, and were planning to take in the opera, then stay in a fancy hotel.

One more thing about the Silver Fox:  I'm sleeping with him.

Oh, don't be so shocked.  My squeeze the Cheez knows all about it.  In fact, Cheez is sleeping with him too.

Fear not—we haven't gotten caught up in the Twisted Triangle of Polyamory/Star Trek Convetions/Society for Creative Anachronisms.

We just went to the art museum.

Well, actually we went twice.  The first time was in November, for our annual SFMOMA visit, as part of our annual Thanksgiving sojourn to San Francisco.

The museum had an exhibit called The Art of Participation.  It included a re-creation of a piece by Jochen Gerz entitled The Gift, in which museum visitors could pose for a photographic portrait, which would then be hung in the museum gallery for the duration of the exhibition.  

Which, being the attention hound I am, I was totally excited to do.

So were almost 2000 other people.  They didn't all get their pictures taken that same afternoon, but still Cheez and I waited for about 20 minutes for our turn, chatting away with the people in front of us on the line.

And then we came home to Portland.

And then my brother and I were supposed to go to Mexico, the frequent flyer-ticket being his "let's get out of the gray Pacific Northwest winter for some Vitamin D-enriched tequila" birthday gift to me.  

Except he flaked out and the trip never happened.  Which means: 

1.  my brother may not quite be dead to me (yet), but he is definitely on the No-Fly-List with me.  

2.  I needed some fun in the sun.

So the Cheez and I decided we would go to California for a week.

Where we managed to personally end a two-year drought by bringing in rain 5 days out of 7.

We also managed to personally attend the closing event of The Gift, in which anyone who had their photograph taken got one of the photographs to take home, personally presented by Gerz himself.

Normally Jews have a general aversion to taking gifts from Germans.  But luckily, I got over it.

It was an amazing scene, somewhere between one and two thousand people lined up, waiting to get their pictures.

Which was a source of some consternation, because quite a few of the people in line thought they were waiting to get the photograph of themselves.  

Thereby demonstrating that Americans are suffering from an epidemic of:

1. inability to read a single page of information (i.e., the invitation to the closing event, which explained the project in full)

2. such a deep lack of appreciation for art, that they cannot imagine wanting to own a portrait of anyone but themselves

And this among SFMOMA patrons.  Who you'd hope would be a little more interested in fine art than their own fifteen minutes of fame.   But apparently even modern-day Rembrandts can't stack up in the age of Reality TV.

Still, I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if the mouth turned out to not be my loud Jewish one.  

Really, most people thought it was cool to get a portrait of a random stranger.  Here's some Supersized-Swede displaying "his" portrait to us, as we waited our turns to get ours.

No way that could be him, not even in the Walk on the Wildest Side of Lou Reed's imagination.

For the rest of the afternoon, the portraits were everywhere.

Dining together like old friends in the Museum cafe.

Carefully filed away in the coat-check.  Be sure to keep your claim ticket, because now that you've been randomly given that photo, you want to be sure to get the right one back.

Caught up in spontaneous sidewalk converations.

Shlepped home along the city streets.

People quickly became attached to whomever they'd received.  

Mine is great one guy told us, holding the picture up so we could see it.  I can't even tell if it's a male or a female.

Just call it Kim Cheez suggested.

I stood outside the museum taking pictures of just a few of a thousand-plus people leaving with their pictures.  

Who'd you get? I asked this woman as she was walking by.  

She looked down at the picture in her hand.  

Then up at me.  

Then she turned the picture around so I could see it. 

I got you! she said. 
And she did!  We screamed.  Must have been pretty loudly, because Cheez had wandered around the block to make a phone call, and he heard us.

So now a piece of me is living in Burlingame, California.  

We have no idea where the Cheez's picture ended up.  

With all do respect to Benjamin Franklin, we do not hang together, so surely we must hang separately.

And the Silver Fox is here in Dutchboy, propped up on Cheez's dresser waiting for us to hang him on our bedroom wall.  

I was pretty thrilled when Jochen Gerz handed him to me, because he happens to be the person who got his picture taken right before me and the Cheez way back in November - the person we were chatting with while we waited, which is why I know his whole life story.  

Except for a few details.

Like his name.  And where he lives.

It's all the mystery of a one-night stand, except that now we're living together.

That's a heckuva finale to a week spent traveling around the Bay Area, seeing a lot of wonderful art and making some new friends.  

All because we decided to go back for the closing of the Gift.

Thereby proving that art is the greatest gift of all.

Or at least way better than the promise of a frequent flier ticket that never actually materializes.