Date 47: Past, present, and future
This is a long story, but it ends well.
Click through to the extended entry to read more.
This is a long story, but it ends well.
Click through to the extended entry to read more.
Lush art and lush ice cream make for a good day in the city.
Continue reading "Date 46: Sleeping Beauty, Small Destructions, and ice cream" »
Taking your date somewhere to impress her with your skills is one thing, but taking her somewhere where her skills can impress you might be even cooler.
While on the lookout for low-effort date options at the tail end of littlestar's schooling (which is now, blissfully, complete), I noticed that the Cantor Center had a potentially cool-sounding exhibit titled "From Pop to Modern." The content sounded interesting enough, and the promise of commentary not just from a curator but also from the artists and the people donating the work suggested it would be the kind of out-of-the-ordinary museum-going experience littlestar might appreciate. I also had the ulterior motive I hinted at above, as littlestar's background in art makes museums about a thousand times better. It's not just that she knows the artists and the surrounding history, although she does, but she can also comment on which things are easier or harder to do, and let me know just how impressive some of the work really is.
At the same time, she's not taken by everything, and that certainly adds to the overall charm of the experience.
We paused at the entrance to spend some time with the crazy sculpture that looks very much like it's a giant horse made of driftwood, but instead is a giant horse made of metal pieces that were molded off of driftwood and then painted very realistically to look like driftwood. Seriously, we hung out and started at that thing for quite a while. It's good to be able to share your amazement at how much something can look like driftwood with someone.
Once we found our way to the Pop to Modern Exhibit itself, we quickly acquainted ourselves with the color scheme that actually divided the art-associated commentary into four categories - curator, artist, donating individual, and student response. As it happens, you really only need to pay attention to the first and sometimes the second one, but the third and fourth were, well, interesting.
Recalling that littlestar is not necessarily automatically taken by all art, one might not be surprised that we spent a lot of time at this exhibit in a solid state of bemusement, especially when the more underperforming pieces were accompanied by glowing, and slightly overblown, praise by the people who did the donating (or the one student who thought a questionable sculptor was one of the greats of the last century). It's fun to stop in front of a giant, brown canvas and have her share your lack of engagement with it.
Eventually, we settled down in front of the work of the shockingly talented Peter Milton. I think we both could have spent even longer there, being in turns amazed by the images themselves and the process and imagination behind them. For us, this was the major reward of the trip together, and we spent a long time pointing things out, reading the explanations together, and being generally and comprehensively amazed.
Afterward, we escaped from the various silly pieces filled with the happy hum of this good stuff (and a few other things that were also pretty cool) and wandered off to have some dinner.
Being done with school has not yet equated to "not being busy" for littlestar, so we are not yet hewing off to distant reaches on dates (also, we're going to be doing enough traveling in the immediate future for non-date purposes that that might be a touch excessive anyway). Instead, we actually have time to go to a gym together, which is nice.
And no, visits to the gym do not count as dates.
However, at the gym one of the trainers enthusiastically recommended a local restaurant that I'd once lived within two blocks of, but had yet to sample - Bangkok Spoon. An enthusiastic recommendation for a kind of food we like was motivation enough, and our next date was set.
The restaurant is a nice little family place, which makes it homey and cute in an entirely positive way. The menu looked pretty good, and we settled on a green curry fried rice and something else (I admit I forget the specifics of this date's food, as we've since taken people there and gone again ourselves).
The food was really reminiscent of the food we'd shared on our trip to Thailand last year, and that was lovely. It was neither too sweet nor too rich, and as we ate we talked about that shared vacation, and things like riding an elephant (which is both exciting and scary) and eating food at the night market. We also both agreed we need to go back when we can, to visit friends we made there and maybe see the monkey temple this time (last time, it was the fish temple).
Littlestar and I both love good food (honestly, I picked up a lot of my real appreciation for food from her), but this date was more than a nice meal; it was a reminder of a trip we shared that can feel like a long time ago after a very full year.
But it is a good restaurant, too.