Weekend the Seventh

February 21st - 23rd, 2014

With my supervisor out of the office until Tuesday, I had a "chore list" to accomplish on Friday, which I did by around 4:15 or so, leaving me time to do some manuscript reading, and also raid the Take-Shelves on the fifth floor. Gotta keep up my book hoarding!

Later on Friday, I partook in another Meet Up with the Dinner and a Movie group--and some of the people I met at the last one were there, too! We saw Pompeii with Kit Harington. Kit Harington plays Jon Snow on Game of Thrones. I guess he got tired of the snow and wanted somewhere warm to shoot. Can't really get much warmer than a city buried under a volcano explosion. There he is from both of those respective sites. I think he looks better happier in the hotter climate, don't you? I think he's gonna be the next "Orlando Bloom," but maybe that's just me.

After the movie, we hit up another Italian place called Scarlatto. Pretty good, but I think I liked the other one better--although that could just be a difference in what I ordered. Prices were about the same. There were a surprising number of Europeans at this Meet Up, but what that meant was getting into a lengthy conversation with a Brit about Doctor Who, which is great. I apparently know more of the side characters than she does. Don't know if I should feel awesome or embarrassed...I'm gonna go with awesome...Yeah. I'll be happier with awesome! 

Saturday was a whole new bucket of fun--and it was GORGEOUS weather! Finally! Fifty-one degrees and sunny, and my roommate and I walked through Central Park on our way to the Met. 

Central Park seems to be the only place left in the city still hoarding snow, so the hills were still white but the walkways had enough rivulets that I almost wish I had on water shoes.

I've been to the Met a couple times before, and I've never made it past the third floor. I just can't manage to find a better way up, and then I get lost in places like Egypt or European Renaissance Paintings. At least Egypt has a bathroom. 

I wanted to find out where I might go to do some research on this guy Han van Meegeren who did Vermeer (among others) forgeries during the 1920s through WWII. I knew the Met has a library, but I didn't know how easily it could be accessed. Apparently pretty easy. I'll be back. 

In the meantime, I didn't mind meandering around the upper floors in a futile attempt to make it to the mythical place that is the roof, but instead found myself--HUZZAH!--suddenly surrounded by the Dutch masters of the Golden Age. AKA - Vermeer&Co. 

Okay. Check these out. One of the techniques Meegeren did was to make it look like the newly discovered "Vermeer" paintings were lost pieces of a series. Not as hard to convince people as it sounds, because the guy had his trademarks. On the right and the left -- those are both real Vermeers. The center girl with the pearl earring is a Han van Meegeren original. In hindsight, she looks like she's taunting us with a secret. Which, well, she sort of was. The Vermeer on the right is the one featured in the Met.

Another favorite inspiration of Meegeren's was Frans Hals. Frans Hals' The Smoker (left) is at the Met, and the other is Meegeren's allusion to the painting. I am quite far from an art historian or an expert or anything--I took AP Art History in high school but didn't take the AP exam because I didn't want to pay $80 for it to tell me what I didn't know. I appreciate art. As much as someone who can't remember all the names, eras, or most of the terminology can appreciate it, anyways. But. I can sort of acknowledge that these don't look like the same hand made them...but I also know that, in fact, they are not. Even still. What Meegeren was good at was manipulating the people around him into believing in what they want to see. Many of Meegeren's Vermeers were considered Vermeer being an artist way ahead of his time! ... I'm going to leave it to you to uncover why that is pitifully hilarious. 

Last thing I'm going to say about Meegeren is that one of the reasons he's one of the most significant forgers in history is that he's the only one to have succeeded in making up an entire period of his mask-artist's life that never existed. There was a hopeful rumor from ages past that Vermeer had a religious period of his life, but people hadn't found it yet. 

The Allegory of the Catholic Faith (left) is one Vermeer is said to have made, plausibly in response to his converting to Catholicism in a predominantly Protestant country in order for him to marry his wife. The Man and Woman at the Spinet (right) is Meegeren's. True, it's not religious--the religious "Vermeers" are way more obvious with Jesus front and center--but he copied enough of the style, not just from the same room of the first painting, but characters and stances and motifs from others of Vermeer's work as well. Sneaky devil, that Meegeren, and he was only sentenced for a year of prison, out of a maximum period of two years. And he was a fascist sympathizer and an opportunist of Nazi occupation during WWII when both of those things might as well have been a death sentence! Basically the guy was more charismatic than Tony Stark.

In finding the exit once more, my roommate and I headed back through Central Park towards the house--but not before getting a couple of good ol' fashioned New York City food cart pretzels!




And I thought this sign was funny. Get it? Cuz...cuz history. And BC. But also the subway. And...yeah. Whatever. I'm hilarious.

Speaking of hilarious, my high school buddy came to the city on Saturday night for a trance concert, which is pretty much dub-step for Dracula. The concert ended late, so while he was jammin' to the beat, I played some World of Darkness (an RPG, which stands for "role playing game," set in a post apocalyptic world, and you play with creativity in storytelling and dice. It's great.) with my house mates, then he came back and crashed.

When we were both among the living again--almost the following afternoon--we wanted to catch a matinee. My roommate and another housemate tagged along, and we ended up seeing--wait for it--50 Shades! The Musical which is a parody of 50 Shades of Grey which is a terrible raunchy book about abusive relationships and bondage. It's Twilight for lonely 30-year-olds and no vampires. The hunky, fit, mysterious, billionaire fetishist was parodied by a very expressive fat Asian man, and the story was mostly told from the perspective of three exaggerated lonely housewives in a book/drinking club. Frankly the whole performance reminded me of some of the things Starkid Productions have put on, like the Very Potter Musical. It was hysterically funny. Not for kids. And actually until the finale when one of the ushers carried his toddlers in the back, I am almost positive I was the youngest person in the audience. But that could just be that matinees tend to be for old people.

My friend and I split off after the show and meandered about the Nintendo Store. I am saddened that I no longer know what pretty much anything in there is unless it's old school like Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, or Pikachu. Oh well. Guess I'm old. Which must be why I went to a Sunday matinee for a bondage comedy musical. Huh.

To end it all, back at the house there was a pasta dinner waiting in the basement for all of us, and I got me some Jamba Juice. Fun fact: "juice" was my first word. You know why? Because it's freaking delicious and at least I can never be too old for juice.

...if I ever start drinking prune juice though, I want an intervention.