My legs are killing me right now, but otherwise I'm feeling damn great. Today (Friday) has been a long day, but a COMPLETELY enjoyable day it has been. Why so great you ask? I went downtown to the MOCA and checked out a couple of damn cool exhibitions. My first stop was Little Tokyo, home to the MOCA's Geffen Contemporary. Which you can, I guess, call a satellite annex of the main MOCA museum a few blocks west. The main focus of my excursion was an exhibition called "Ecstasy: In and About Altered States." The whole exhibition turned out to be super. I walked around the huge warehouse finding each work of art to be more interesting than the last. I found an artist that I had never heard of before, his name is Glenn Brown. His work is so damn cool. Even though there isn't any photography allowed in the exhibit hall I had to take the following picture. Not just because I wanted an example of his work, but also to protest any and all places that restrict photography.  My picture sure doesn't do his work justice. The work looks like it was made of liquid yarn, flowing and soft. I almost wanted to touch it to make sure that it wasn't sewn rather than painted. Another thing I found interesting and amusing is the fact that it looks like his works are painted on old tabletops. Each one of the "frames" was really not a frame at all, but a tabletop. I loved that twist to his work. I'm going to have to see more of this stuff. There were about eight of his works there. The next cool thing, and the place I think everyone wanted to see, was the work entitled "Upside-Down Mushroom Room." Again, I took a picture of it because it was just that cool, and in protest. LOL  I would have taken more pictures of it, but there was one of those annoying museum folks standing at the other end of the piece. You can see his legs sticking out of one of the mushrooms (above). Like I said when I started this entry, the whole exhibition was completely cool. I so have to go back before the exhibition is taken down. This last picture (below) is not of any exhibit but rather of the museum store. I thought the lights looked really cool, so I took this picture.  The girl you see behind the counter saw me taking a picture. I'm pretty sure she thought I was taking a picture of her. I did notice her, but not until after I took this picture. Moving on, after leaving the Geffen Contemporary I walked up to Grand Ave., the sight of the main MOCA museum. There wasn't any one exhibit that I was super interested in there, but the comic book one looked interesting enough for me to take a walk. Also, my ticket allowed me to enter both for one price, sorta a two for one kind of thing. The main exhibit right now is this one on comic book art. I found it to be pretty good, but not so great. The exhibit that I liked was called "After Cezanne," which was a collection of work from the museum's permanent collection. Good stuff I must say. I found the art to be so filled with humor that I found myself holding my laugh more than once. I don't think many people would appreciate me laughing in the museum. I found a few prints by a couple of artist I had just found out about from my cool Photo as Art teacher. There was a Nan Goldin print and a couple of Diane Arbus prints too. Oh oh, and a couple of Lee Friedlander prints too. If you're reading this Grafia let me just say that I automatically thought of you. Thanks for broadening my horizons. :) Last exhibit I saw was a collection of work by Karl Haendel. The works were, in a word, astonishing. Haendel's medium is pencil on paper, but from that he creates such a cool mixture of humor and poignancy. Another new favorite that I'm going to have to look deeper into is Karl Haendel. It's getting late but there are a couple of things I want to do. First I'll post these two pictures. The first is a self-portrait taken while walking to Clifton's for my breakfast/lunch (seeing as I didn't have breakfast) after going to the museum.  The second is today's picture of the day. This one, actually I didn't have a title for this one so I'll just think of one right now. How about rock star? Yeah, today's picture of the day is entitled "Rock Star."  On a completely different subject, January 28, 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of the Columbia shuttle disaster. It's crazy to think that it's been that long. I remember that a friend of mine was the first one to tell me about the disaster. I was in school and I was walking between classes when my friend Eric came up and said, "The space shuttle blew up," and just left it at that. He was running by me, and only stopped to tell me that. I was stunned, to say the least. I didn't get to see the actual explosion until I got home and turned on the TV. It was hard to miss after that. I might still have the newspaper from the next day, but I'm not sure. The thing is, the whole impact of that day didn't hit me until I saw Ronald Reagan address the nation. The last words from his address hit me so hard that I couldn't hold my emotion in anymore. I burst into tears after hearing the following. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." It is amazing that 20 years later this quote still brings me to tears. 
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