On Friday, I met up with friends David Barr Kirtley and Amy Tibbetts in Manhattan for a little museum action. We met up outside Penn Station, then trekked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art via subway. In the subway, we had a little adventure, as Dave and I tried to figure out our subway maps; a moment of indecision kept us from boarding the train we should have taken immediately (the C train), so we needlessly changed trains a few times, but in the end, we arrived where we’d originally intended. The stop left us off near the entrance of Central Park, and the museum is on the other side of the park, so we took a leisurely stroll through the park to get there.
The museum was pretty awesome. I didn’t realize all of what was at the Met, or else I might have gone there earlier. For some reason, I thought it was just paintings. In fact, there’s so much other than paintings, we didn’t even get around to really seeing any. Well, except for when Dave speed-walked us through a wing of paintings on our way to another exhibit, so we didn’t really get a chance to stop and look at them. Though Dave seemed intent on doing a lot of speed-walking; for a smart guy, he displayed surprisingly little tolerance for a museum pace which would actually, you know, allow you to appreciate the artifacts and perhaps learn something. I suppose we’re just lucky that no one has listened to his idea of making a museum in which you can rollerblade or jog through it. Well, that might be kind of cool, actually; it’s got to be more interesting than rollerblading or jogging around the block.
One instance of our speed-walking was right at the very start as we went through the Egyptian exhibit, though we at least had a good reason: we were looking for the bathrooms. However, our pace did not deter me from snapping some pictures along the way (click on the above picture to see the complete photoset). You’re not allowed to use a flash in the museum, because the light can damage the artifacts apparently, but I got some great pictures anyway. Sadly, I didn’t check my camera’s batteries, and I quickly ran out of power, and the stupid gift shop doesn’t sell batteries (no doubt because they want you to buy their crappy disposable cameras). Later, I was thinking that I should have asked other museum-goers with cameras if they had any batteries to spare, but I didn’t, so these few pics are all the evidence I have of my trip.
What I really would have liked to photograph was some of the cool armor and weapons we got to see. (And if I was thinking, I would have tried to photograph the informational plaques beside each of the objects I took pictures of.) Oh, well; next time. Truth be told, there’s so much to see at the Met that you can’t see it all in one day anyway, so it’s just another excuse to go back.
After the museum, we headed out to dinner with Andrea Kail (who just made her first fiction sale, to Fantasy Magazine), Dave’s Odyssey classmate Rob Bland, and Carol Pinchefsky and her husband, Peter.
Things learned on Friday: (1a) tattoos located on the lower back are known as “tramp stamps”; (1b) when a woman’s g-string is visible above the top of her pants, that is called a “whale tail”; (2) the way to impress Hollywood moguls is to drop by their studios with your optionable stories in hand, making a grand entrance on top of a papier mache dragon; (3) museum gift shops are evil.
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