I have about eight minutes to write this post before the bell rings; let’s see how well I do. I am in love with the Cuisine du Soleil, a new establishment on Route 66 in Northampton. I pass by there every day on my way to my temp job. My frequent jaunts there got me an invite to their invite-only grand opening event. Ooh la la! Alas, I was in New York so I couldn’t make it.
The best things to get there are the Gus and Paul’s breads (although I haven’t been to the new ‘breadery’ on State St, Greg speaks very highly of it), pate, tapanades and their special dishes in the glass case by the register. These change daily, but always include a fresh salad and at least one quiche. Today, I got a slice of the kale, potato and onion quiche. Although it was $4.99, she did give me a big slice.
Dung bunnies, decaying chocolate rabbits, rotted bananas, Dieter Roth was one crazy mofo. His exhibition at the MoMA in Queens is worth a gander, though. Roth was born in Germany but spent most of his life travelling between Switzerland and Iceland (he married an Icelandic woman and his family lived in Reykjavik). Throughout his life, Roth, who died in 1998, dabbled in all sorts of conceptual motifs: geometric art, bookmaking, postcards organic art, poetry and sound throughout his life. The last room of his exhibit was full of re-created work spaces and studios, complete with working radios. A study in the accoutrements of daily life.
Most of his pieces, even those found in the room showcasing his geometric era work, had an element of studied chaos. What happens if I smear banana on a canvas and mount it to glass? What if I fashion this wheel out of wood and find a way to keep it perpetually spinning? What if I wrap sausage scraps in tinfoil and put them in a wooden box? What if I turn my students’ bad English-German translations into pieces of art? Each room of the exhibit space takes you through a different experimental stage of his art and life. If you get a chance to see it, take it.
Hey, if you’re stopped at the tollbooth on Henry Hudson Parkway and a guy in the other lane asks your passenger to roll down his window and then says, “Your tire’s falling off,” do not panic. That guy is suffering from a wild case of hyperbole.
Turns out it was a hubcap coming loose and not the entire wheel. Thank the lord jesus christ for that. But, that guy changed the course of our entire trip - we ended up taking the first exit off Henry Hudson (Dyckman) and never went back to the parkway. We stopped the car just to make sure it wasn’t our wheel falling off and then hit Manhattan, taking Broadway all the way down to the Lower East Side. Well, at one point we ended up on another avenue, but you know, I can’t remember which one, so we’ll leave it at that. Traffic was brutal, but we didn’t care. I thought it would be fun to show TIRH nearly the entire length of the west side of the island. Plus, we amused ourselves by wondering who is that famous guy in the first-class taxi cab? and contemplated asking a friendly passerby (they waved at us a lot!!!) “Which way does Broome go?” but then feared the answer would be, “Back and forth, you idiot!” along with a demonstration of the fine domestic method of sweeping.
Thus our introduction to Manhattan as a couple was TIRH making silly jokes and me swearing at traffic. Excellent.
more to come. . .
UPDATE: TIRH, here is a link to your blog since I reference you so many times. And please feel free to write about these events. I almost feel badly that I stole the broom story AND the tire story in one fell swoop.
daily life | sighclub April 26, 2004 | 
Comments (0) 
