Weekend at Liz's

Here is your promised recap of when Sarah was here the weekend before my birthday. Get ready for fun, laughs, and the time of your life. Haha, a coworker just popped her head in and said "Wake up!!!" She is funny.

 

The weekend began with me frantically cleaning my apartment. She doesn't know about that part, partially because it wasn't really that clean. Cleaner than usual, but not spotless. She arrived at around 5:45 and then my dad and Sandy came to celebrate my birthday. We all went to Fuddrucker's and then back to my apartment where I opened presents. They gave me a briefcase, which made me realize that I am now wholly in the corporate world. Sarah gave me a beautiful candle holder which goes very well in my living room.

 

That night we were trying to find something to do, but it was kind of late. All the music stuff (of the very few things that looked interesting) had been started and could have been over already. We decided to just go to First Avenue because there was what looked like a typical dance thing and women got in free. Well, so we left and after a confusing drive we got there around 10 I think. I found a $20 bill on the ground in the parking lot.

 

Right before we were there there was a Girls Gone Wild show. Par for the course, I think. People were streaming out and at first we went in what was apparently the exit door. Then we went in the "correct" door and almost got in without getting an armband (funny, since it was 21+, as Sarah later pointed out). We had to pay, even after Sarah explained that she thought women got in free. He said no. He totally should have let us in. I paid for us with my new-found $20. There were like 6 people there. I was hoping that Elijah would be there since Laura said he worked there, but he was not. We stayed for a little while and then found it to be pretty boring and loud, so we left. We tried to find Coldplay's star, but could not. We did find Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, and U2--all of which I was amazed to see. Jeff Buckley at First Avenue. Imagine that.

 

We then went home (after another confusing drive) and pretty much just went to bed. The next morning Sarah was like "I want to go to a cool diner for breakfast" (typical Sarah fashion, eh?) so we found this place in St. Paul and drove there, and it was interesting. I didn't like what I got, but oh well. The waitress was very peppy.

 

We decided to go to the Walker Art Center in downtown Minneapolis, which I haven't been to in years. I did not remember it was a modern art museum. We had the most confusing drive yet going there (Christ, it would be so convenient to actually know how the streets are around there, but I don't live there!) That was really stressful. It happened to be a free admission day, which was cool. There was an Andy Warhol exhibit--ok, a couple of Rothkos--cool, a sculpture that reminded me of Great Expectations--awesome. But then, there was this piece of video. I will try to explain as gently as I can. Now, keep in mind that I am a pretty open minded person. I get art and shocking. I was trying to tell this to my aunt and she was like, "well, art can sometimes be shocking." I was like, no. Shocking is the least of my concerns for this video. This somehow went overboard. Ok. So the artist made a video. It had silhouette people in it, and it was silent. Every once in a while there would be some text alluding to what was going on. The basic plot had something to do with slavery, I think. I'm not totally sure. Throughout it there were white men taking advantage of black girls in all kinds of ways. There were sexual situations throughout it, including a white man forcing himself on a black girl, a black girl using a broom to do "something" to the guy, and two white guys and a black girl. Etc. So at some point the black girls gained control, I'm not sure how, and decided to take revenge. I can't remember all that they did but it included whipping. At the end, one of the white guys was hanged. Then text popped up which said, "We decided to take advantage of all of their good attributes." Then up on the screen comes a view of the guy, hanging, dead, with his "member" erect and sticking out. Side note: I saw on television that this used to happen a lot and sometimes they would even "finish." So anyway the guy is hanging there. And what do you know? One of the girls comes over and pleasures him with her mouth. Until he "finishes." Then, you see some liquidy stuff going all over her face. This stuff goes on her face for 2 minutes, or at least a period of time which seems way too long.

 

Sound artistic to you? The thing that got us the most was that there was a 9-year-old kid in there watching it. I am hoping he just didn't really get it. That would have freaked the living hell out of me if I was that age. Considering how I felt about it at 24...once I saw two people making out in a vestibule at Barclay Square and it enveloped my mind for weeks. Every kid is different, of course, but still...

 

Another interesting thing at the WAC was this thing called the Plesher or something, which was an outdoor art installment. It had something to do with the sky. The description made it sound really cool. I thought it was going to be some kind of made up light show and Sarah thought it was going to be a planetarium type thing. Boy, were we wrong. We had a hell of a time finding it, and walked around the entire place trying to figure out where it was. Finally we asked, and it turned out that we had to go  up the stairs and through the lobby of the Guthrie, outside, into an alleyway, and onto this plywood walkway into a hole in the side of a hill. It was so weird. Then we went in, and this is what it was: a box with a hole in the top. It was basically so that you could look at the "changing sky"--the actual sky as it was at the moment. That day it was pure blue with no clouds. Great.

 

God, this is getting really long and I am so tired of typing. I cannot continue.