Once I was up and showered, and I cringed at the idea of being in this house again all day. I made the executive decision that we would venture to the east side of Cleveland.
First up was a slightly late lunch at Tommy's. For all of the restaurant failures you encounter, you wonder why more places can't figure it out. It doesn't seem that complicated: Make good food that people want with quality ingredients. All of my favorite places are like this.
I had this thing they call the Sharpy Burger, a turkey burger on a hoagie with pizza sauce and mozzarella. We shared a giant plate of fries. I had a milkshake that rocked my world. We left very full.
Coventry is such an interesting little area that has beaten the world of strip malls, and I wish it was closer. Trendy-freaky-smart people hang out there, and that's a group of people I can identify with. Lakewood is trying hard on the west side to be like that, but it's just not quite there.
Since we were in the neighborhood, relatively speaking, we headed over to University Circle to visit a museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art has finally reopened in some sections following the rehab of the original building. The new east wing will open in a few weeks, and the project is about half way through to its final expansion, which will be done in 2012.
I haven't been there since third grade, so naturally there was almost nothing familiar about it. The original 1916 building is clearly old, but so beautiful and clean, as if it were new. And yet, it holds pieces that are hundreds of years old. I'm not much of an art person, but just the sheer ago of some of the objects fascinates me.
I was a little bummed that they don't yet have any of the Egyptian or Asian pieces placed back in the halls, because that's easily the most interesting stuff to me. The impressionist and modern stuff has all moved to the new wing, which has a few more weeks to go. I definitely hope to go back once it's open, and since it's free, I certainly should!
They had an expedition for Lee Friedlander running, and I was immediately taken aback by the description at the start of the exhibition written by some curator from a museum in New York. It ready like copy for the side of a coffee can. That's something that troubles me about art, when there is all of this bullshit wrapped around it by "art people" who know better.
There were a few really interesting photos in the collection, but I noticed that much of what made them interesting at all was that they would combine small and large objects and almost balance each other out, because he seemed to always use very wide angle lenses and get close to the small object.
The nudes were on a pink wall, while the rest of the exhibit was white. That made me laugh. Nude photography is really, really hard. I've tried it. Either you're trying to capture some expression or the interesting lines that a woman's body makes, or you're trying to make an arousing composition. Sometimes I wonder if the two are mutually exclusive. I've not looked at a lot of "porn" really, outside of SuicideGirls.com, but some of their photogs I think try to do both.
Much of the still life photography was not any more interesting than the things I've seen Tyler shoot. In fact, a lot of his photos at least evoke some kind of response, which is more than what I could say for many of Friedlander's. Just goes to show that art is what you think it is.
All in all, it was a fun little adventure to take. We even drove down most of the Euclid corridor, which is the first time I've been down there since it re-opened with the double-bus lanes. You see parts of Cleveland that are so nice, and so positive, and it's hard to believe there could be crack houses a few blocks away.
And the Cavs are now 7-0 in the playoffs. The Dallas Mavericks were completely robbed, unfortunately.
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