Streaming Consciousness: The Post-Birthday Edition

I began this post bitching about my Kid, and then about annoying couples, but decided to spare y'all the goth mom angst and just focus on the good birthday stuff instead.

...I let Balthazar accompany me to one of two museum visits I'd planned for the day. We went to The Whitney Museum on the upper east side of Manhattan, to check out two exhibits that are right up my alley: Sinister Pop and Dark and Deadpan: Pop in TV and the Movies. Both focused on Pop Art of/in the 60s, an era which rather fascinates me. (I'm especially into the surf culture—it's the ginchiest!) We sort of split up to check stuff out independently. By the time we reunited to grab a bite in the museum's cafe, I'd been thoroughly distracted from my earlier teen-induced upset by all the art and films and whatnot. I'd had a thoroughly engrossing art experience which, admittedly, made me think a whole lot more than I usually care to, but still, I enjoyed the stretching of my poor remaining gray cells. Balthazar and I had a nice meal together, talking about what we'd seen, what we'd enjoyed, what we hadn't, etc. Then he buggered off back home to hang out with his friends, which was fine with me, because...

...my next stop was the Museum of Sex on Fifth and 27th, so I could cheer myself up with some smut. They have their standard exhibits (one examines sex in the animal kingdom, which is very educational indeed and absolutely the right place to take your kids if you really want them to learn about the birds and the bees), as well as more ephemeral installations. Right now, there's Universe of Desire, (though the Web site claims it would be gone after Nov. 4), which examines what turns the world on as evidenced by activity on the World Wide Web, as well as other electronic media. (Makes one more inclined to launch "Private Browsing" or its nearest relative when surfing the Web, eh what?) I have to admit to averting my gaze on more than one occasion for fear of succumbing to the vapors, but mostly I was able to look at all the kink square in the...well, you know.

...the next day, Saturday, I took myself to the Elektra Theater (at Times Scare) to see Silence! The Musical. This "unauthorized parody of The Silence of the Lambs" was hi-larious. The music was ok, the best of which, for me, was Hannibal Lechter's sweeping anthem, If I Could Smell Her Cunt. The gal currently playing Clarice Starling, Pamela Bob, executed the role masterfully, a high point for me being her response to Jack Crawford when he told her to stay put while he and the other FBI menfolk went to collect Buffalo Bill. Remember that scene in the movie? I remember feeling outraged that, after all the work Starling did, she'd be denied the glory of catching the murderer. Well, in the musical, Starling expresses that outrage with a convincingly stupefied monologue that riffs on the words, "What the fuck?" to uproarious effect. Loved it. Go see it, if you can.

...finally, on Sunday I took myself to see Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins (neat little connection with the above, huh?) and Helen Mirren. It was a bit slow-moving, though enjoyable. I thought it would focus more on the quirks and foibles of making the film, but the emphasis seemed to be more on the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife Alma. After the film, I had to pick up the book upon which it was based, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello, as well as a honking huge book on pop art, Pop by Mark Francis & Hal Foster.

And that's about the extent of my birthday shenanigans. Please check back on New Year's Day for a topical post on facing the consequences of the previous night's revelry...