It's only been two months since we did Kaleidoscope. It's very awesome, and if you find yourself in the vicinity of Crown Center on a Saturday and have kids with you, check it out.
It's free, but you go get your tickets for the next session and then have time to kill. If you show up at 1:05 for the 1:10 session, forget it. Though there's probably a 'next session' you can get tickets for. Then you can walk around Crown Center, ride the bubble elevators in the Westin and whatnot.
You only get 40 minutes, but it's still a great trip.
Actually, this time, 40 minutes was plenty. Last time I took the honyocks here, it seemed like we'd just gotten in there, but this time Mo started to whine with a few minutes to go.
I asked her what was wrong, and she just said, 'Coat.'
Em said she was okay with going, so we headed out with two minutes to spare. Then I found out what the whining was about.
Mo wanted to go to Wonderscope. This was what we did after Kaleidoscope last time. So I'm standing in Hall's, a store designed to make single Dads leading their kids to and from Kaleidoscope feel out of place (I mean, really, who the hell shops there? Paris and Nicole?), and my autistic ten year old is having a meltdown after a trip to one of the coolest places a kid can go.
On the one hand, what a drag. On the other, that day we did both Kaleidoscope and Wonderscope, topped it off with a dinner at a buffet, she really loved that day. It was a memory so delicious she wanted to repeat it, and her angst was that she wanted to get to that cool next step.
One of those happy and sad moments. Because while I'm more impressed with Kaleidoscope than Wonderscope, the latter lacks the corporate backing of the Greeting Card Industrial Complex, and so has resorted to charging admission. Reasonable admission to be sure, but such a junket is simply not in my budget right now. Not to bore you with the details of my checkbook, but between my change of jobs, and the inscrutible child support guidelines of Kansas (I now make 10% less, and my ex makes something like 2-1/2 times as much as she did when it was set, the net result being that my child support went up $3), my budget no longer balances.
I don't mean my budget is tight. I mean, in that by the time you add up the non-negotiables: mortgage, child support, gasoline to get to a job that's 28 miles away instead of 2, heat, electric, water, etc., you've exceeded my total take home pay. $18 to get into Wonderscope is just not happening. This is not something you explain to a kid, not just because Mo's understanding of money is limited to whether or not I'll put a quarter in a gumball machine, but because there is no way to tell a kid that child support is literally bankrupting you.
It's not the kid's fault: it is the fault of idiot politicians and the bureaucrats they abet, who think rich kids need more food, clothes and shelter than poor kids. The reason my child support didn't go down is I'm now responsible for a smaller percentage of a bigger total. I guess I'm lucky my ex didn't get an evem better job, my support might have gone up even more.
But I already had a plan. The Kemper Museum, which we hadn't been to in a long time, is also free to the public. So we did that.
Em took a picture of an O'Keefe she wanted you to see. And I took pictures of the kids by art I love and hate.
The thing with modern art, sometimes it seems like something anyone could do. I mean, if you give me a 96" by 108" canvass and a set of oils, I could probably put color on in splatters, blocks or splotches. It would be fun, too. So how to pick the guy you hang in a museum versus the guy you report to the homeowners association for creating an eyesore?
I understand seminal works. I love Jackson Pollock, violent drunk that he ways, but once you have a Pollock and maybe a Rothko, everything is possible. So what is remarkable about a guy who learned from Pollock or Rothko?
Like, remember the Matrix sequels? The sucked because once you know nothing is impossible, nothing is amazing.
I have the same beef with John Cage: if all sound is music, at some point there is no such thing as genius. On some level, it reduces Coltrane, The Pogues, Beethoven, etc., to all being just one of the infinite number of monkeys trying combinations at random.
Still, I like this stuff. I'd hang it in my living room if I could afford to. I don't like every abstract painting, but some of them (like the Hans Hoffman in the background behind my honyocks and the Dan Christensen) evoke emotion.
I don't even pretend to understand it. I saw a painting there I thought was obviously a pelican's beak dipping into the water. Cool. But when I looked at the information card, it said, 'Coral Wedge.'
Whatever. Other paintings only evoke a feeling that any jerk could do that. I'm not sure what the dividing point is, really.
I even liked this big orange piece of plywood with one hole punched in it and another burned into it. The medium info was along the lines of 'plywood and paint with pyrotechnic display and farm implement.'
I'm also conflicted when I see photos I could easily have taken, both technically and in terms of what I'd want to shoot. Like this guy.
They also had Jennifer Steinkamp on exhibit. She does these PowerPoint presentations (or computerized slideshows of some sort) that project onto walls. I don't get her titles (one of them was a field of flowers that waved, titled 'Jimmy Carter.'), but it's cool to see.
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