Scene & Herd - No time for the sucka MC’s
Inky dinky parlee vous
Way back before anyone had ever heard of Kurtis Blow, Rakim or the Sugarhill Gang, the most famous MC on the planet was a Dutchman who performed under the name M.C. Escher. Because the Dutch language’s abundant guttural sounds hindered Escher’s ability to work up a killer flow on the mic, he eventually shifted his attention to visual art. At that point, Escher began to shine. He created a series of incredible — and incredibly popular — woodcuts and lithographs filled with riddles, irony and illusions. Only Monet, Ansel Adams and those “Chemistry 101” posters with pictures of illegal drugs rival Escher for dorm-room wall space.
Castleberry Hill’s Skot Foreman Gallery is currently exhibiting an impressively large Escher selection, including many of his most famous works. The one with steps that always go up is there, along with the one where lizards walk into and out of a drawing. And there’s my favorite, “Bond of Union,” featuring spiral-peeled heads. Equally interesting (in other words, fantastically interesting) are some of Escher’s lesser-known works, including a New Year’s 1947 greeting card and one of a donkey.
Stranger than anything Escher could work up, though, was a woman from New Jersey who talked several ears off with a monologue she probably thought was a conversation. She’d ask basic conversational questions like, “Where are you from?” Then, as soon as someone answered, she’d launch into detailed stories about her life. Her son lives with his girlfriend’s sister. Greenwich Village is better than ever. Her husband is dumb. Maryland is really the South. They’ve got a beach house in Virginia. I look Lebanese. Can you recommend a good restaurant that’s open late? The concierge at the Sheraton is very nice, but terrible.
I had a much more satisfying (and much shorter) conversation with a fella named Adam Cashin. He pointed out the similarity between Escher neckties, which Foreman had for sale, and Ferragamo ties. Cashin thinks Ferragamo’s ties are blatantly derivative. And besides, Ferragamo’s paintings suck.
It was all yellow: The umpteenth annual Yellow Daisy Festival was held last weekend at Stone Mountain Park. So enormous was the festival that I never got to see a single yellow daisy. It turns out I was in the crafts portion of the festival, and the flower portion was in another part of the park. Live and learn.
The crafts portion of the fair was similar in scope to the city’s other plant-named hootenanny, the Dogwood Festival. The main difference was that the selection of items for sale at Yellow Daisy was a little more down-home and folksy. For example, you could buy — and witness the handcrafting of — doormats made from old tires. According to the “Mat Story” on the vendor’s table, doormat making “has become almost a lost craft, even though the need for a good doormat is as great as ever.” Amen.
By far my favorite vendor was Wendy Riley. She sold personalized Sing-Along-With-Wendy recordings — e.g., “Andisheh went off to ride the horse, parlee voo.” My girlfriend and I bought one of her CDs, titled Christi and the Dinosaur, and laughed the whole way home. It was $18 well spent.
The festival supposedly had a festival princess, but I couldn’t find her — even though I asked for directions. The closest I got was a guy in a skirt and wig with a headband that said, “Party Princess.”
“Are you the festival princess?” I asked.
“No, I’m a cross-dresser.”
Whose drumline is it anyway?: On Sunday afternoon, the Georgia Dome hosted the Original Battle of the Bands, an event its promoters claim is the “largest marching-band-oriented event in the country.” And since I can’t name another marching-band event without making something up like March-a-Palooza or Million Man March(ing Band), I’ll have to take their word for it.
The battles consisted of massive choreographed musical marches. The way to get the crowd really fired up, it seems, is for a marcher — preferably a tuba player — to jump and land in a split. The kids at Benjamin Mays High School seem quite good at that. Humping the football field is also a crowd-pleaser.
Careful readers will note that this is the second week in a row that I walked on the field at the Georgia Dome. It was also the second week in a row that I got lost wandering around the Georgia Dome. But unlike last week, I didn’t end up lost under the bleachers. That’s not a reference to the legendary IP Freely book; I was literally lost and under the bleachers.
Blessed are the mess-makers: For the second year in a row, I took one of my dogs to get blessed at the Peachtree Christian Church Blessing of the Pets in Midtown. Blessing my other dog last year had no noticeable effect on her behavior. The couch cushions are always on the floor when I get home, and the wastebasket near my desk is rummaged daily.
Blessing pets isn’t about making them stop barking while you’re writing or talking on the phone (bad dogs!), it’s about being thankful for having them around. Pets are blessings, so why not bless them?
The crowd was bigger this year than last year. It included a lizard, some birds, a turtle named Batavia, and at least two dogs named Sushi. A Great Dane named Harley won a Great Dane stuffed toy as a door prize. He carried it on his back for the rest of the ceremony.