bone-tired at work all day after working all weekend at the armory show. the late night waiting for packing materials that never arrived was admittedly made considerably more bearable after ariane's brother (allegedly) tapped the keg in the abandoned vip lounge. hearing the rumors, ch and i hotfooted it to the lounge which had the appearance of a refugee camp, complete with scruffy dudes sitting over piles of hoarded food that had been pulled from garbage cans. we weren't picky. we grabbed salads from the pile and stuck them under our arms and brought back 3 beers apiece. no forks, so we used the bright-red conde nast pencils as chopsticks. not bad at all, with scrounged cookies for dessert.
the worst bit was not being able to find a cabbie willing to take me home to bed-stuy from the piers. the first guy wouldn't even let me in and sped off when he heard where i was going. i banged my fist on his window as ag shouted "what you're doing is illegal, you know!" the second cabbie took me as far as the L at 3rd ave before begging off to go home and see his family. i tipped him badly in resentment.
the night before the roomies (with special guest: 20-year-old-daughter-of-my-former-sunday-school-teacher) caravaned it out to williamsburg with me for the gallery walk. they took it in remarkably good humor that i made two wrong turns for every right, and we still managed to make it to 3 galleries before they shut down at 11. at the last stop, jack the pelican presents, we caught some surprising performance art.
we were looking over some unremarkable installations in the main front room when the crowd pushed a large figure out. there was a guy hidden somewhere under the framework, a sort of gory red horse-figure and massive headdress, the face covered with stocking like a bank robber. his horse-front was supported on a wheel, and as he rolled it before him, shaking it, a single bell rang. it was like something out of a low-budget avant-guarde horror film, and it was headed right at us, or for the door as it turned out. it has already been my experience that walking around barefoot in new york is one of the only ways to get a second glance. it helps if you're also strapped into a massive gory horse thing and jingling a creepy bell. we watched him wander down the sidewalk trailed by a small parade of observers and photographers. back inside the gallery we found his buddy, a guy in gigantic blue getup seated in a throne and turning slowly this way and that. horseman returned unexpectedly, surprising the bejeesus out of me. the two settled cross legged across the room from each other. they each had a microwave. they went through a production slamming open the microwave doors and pulling out little plastic dishes. i had a better view of the blue one. he groped into a large glass urn for a handful of cottonballs and dropped them in the dish, which he topped with a ladleful of red syrup and popped back into the microwave. slam! ... ding! he pulled it out again and grabbed the handful of red cottony goo, slapped it on the floor a few times to work up the consistency, and chucked it at the red guy. he had a terrible arm, but the red guy got him square with globs of blue goo. after all his red snowballs fell well short of target, he put together a double handful, finally making a direct hit. the audience applauded.
a binder informed me that the red figure was a personification of xipe totec, who i remember from latin american art history class as a precolumbian god of springtime. every year a handsome young lad would be chosen to play the part of the god and don the flayed skin of some less fortunate dude. the living one was only somewhat luckier: the ritual involved wearing the skin until it rotted off of its own accord, the old and ugly skin gradually revealing a fresh young visage. little sculptures of him survive: eyes and a grinning mouth show through holes, like a mask.
happy springtime.