Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Best Dying Days of Summer

Up until Sunday night, I thought classes started on Tuesday. But thanks to the sort of argument I'm always happy to lose, I found out that classes were to begin on Wednesday, and I don't have Wednesday classes this year, so that meant I had an extra two days of summer! How did I spend them? As well as I could.

Originally I was going to try to fill Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with as much mad crazy awesomeness as possible and have a blow-out post on each day, but the excitement sort of tapered, and now they're all going to be in one post that I will subdivide into fake mini-posts. Okay?

Best Solitary Journey Into the Incredible

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Monday I woke up and decided to adventure. To seriously adventure. So I set out to fulfil my year plus long dream of visiting the Dia Beacon museum. A trip to Grand Central and an 80 minute train ride later and there I was, in Beacon New York, right up alongside the Hudson River, hiking up to the Dia Beacon.

The Dia Beacon is run by the same folks (the Dia folks, actually) that run the Earth Room and Broken Kilometer in Soho (and other insane installations found throughout the United States) and it's the 300,000 sq/ft clearing house of all their greatest insanity. Just imagine an old box factory of enormous size filled with installations of the most insane variety and you've got the Dia Beacon. Unfortunately, it's the sort of museum where you aren't allowed to take photos, so I've very little to show of my trip . . . but it's probably all for the best, because were I to show you photos of what I saw Monday afternoon you'd either die of despair from not being able to see these things yourself right away or just call your computer a liar for showing you such unbelievable images.

But, seriously, browse their website, it'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Something overheard at the Beacon as an old fellow in a Navy baseball cap entered the room full of white on white canvases (one of the more "mundane" Dia Beacon exhibits): "Here we go . . . this is cool . . . look at this! This is waiting for something. They're going to put something on this. This can't be it."

Also, there were "Don't Touch the Artwork" signs everywhere . . . which made sense, of course, especially in the room with the huge piles of broken glass.

The Dia Beacon was the sort of place where I couldn't decide if I wanted to keep it a secret all to myself, or share it with everyone in the world.

Also, don't get the cheese sandwich.

Best Mystery of the Hudson

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Someone please tell me the tale of this ruined castle I saw from the train on my way to and from the museum.

Best Fake-Cafe Rio Night

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Monday night the Bowens had Utah ex-pats over to attempt to replicate the taste of the Beloved Cafe Rio we all left behind when we came to New York. The result? Everyone pitched in and put forth a magnificent effort and the end product was pretty dang great . . . especially thanks to Karisa's off-the-hook Fake Cafe Rio salad dressings.

Best Tuesday Afternoon Indulgence

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Tuesday I had plans to do all sorts of things in the city but it was SO humid I quickly lost my resolve. So instead I had some refreshing freshly fried Corn Dogs and returned to 15B to do some end of the summer cleaning. That night I saw a French crime drama that was mostly about pianos and then bought a coffee table book about Mexican Wrestling.

Best Graffiti Confusion

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In this NeckFace age, one really can't tell if a piece is just sloppy and ugly or if it's serious.

Best Wednesday That I Pretended Wasn't a School Day

Yeah, as much as I wanted it to be another vacation day, you have to have already read before you go to law classes for the first time so I did a lot of reading and book buying today. And I'm doing some more reading when this post is done. But I also grabbed some great looking books from the library for my Utah trip. (Utah trip? Yeah, I'm headed out tomorrow night. It's gonna be the best.) Also, in Washington Square Park they were pan handling for CBGBs.

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You know what I think of Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers' financial woes? I'd be a lot more concerned if they actually booked good bands these days.

Best Unrelated Bonus

Here's a direct link to the new Franz Ferdinand video. It's good. Amber and Mitch are in it . . . somewhere.

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