Forgotton photo #5

Riding behind a portable greenhouse.

A Chocolate Bun Too Far.

Trying to sneak a snack upstairs and I fail. Junk food is hard to get enough as it is--trying to consume it away from Mom's prying eyes is futile. Will have to resort to the sad practice of eating in the bathroom.

The High Bandwidth Art Museum Blog

Rode my way to the Museum of Art. Here's my bike--I'm so proud.
It has been said that the best thing about this museum is the building itself, which is probably true:

Front


Back


Opposite the Courtyard

I'm ashamed to say I didn't even realize I'd been walking on a tennis court inside the courtyard. Then some kids came and put up soccer goals. Very interesting--makes me think the building is French, which I could find out with a simple google search (or better yet, you can find out with a simple google search.)

Very nice stained glass work throughout.


And nice tile-work on the balconies.


Alexander Calder eat your clown nose out!


I like this--a cross between Short Circuit and Judge Dredd.

And yes, there is some art inside. Mercifully, not everything was war-related.


Both of these have negative space around the heart. Wonder if that is Vietnamese symbology?

The title of this sculpture struck me as really neat.


I think this one is about SCUBA.


This one keeps me up at night.


Chagall's Asian counterpart.

If it weren't for Uncle Ho in the middle, I'd think this was a Latin piece. The ethnic people have really colorful garb--hope to see them one day.

These Two were neat. The longer I look, the more repeating patterns I find.

An interesting pose.

A guy with lots on his mind.

Look, I've got an Eastern ancestor!

Don't mess with this guy when he's drunk.

This is a really neat piece--"Spirit", though it was placed in an awful spot--needs a plain backdrop to be appreciated.

Here's some contemporary Vietnamese art. It is for sale in a gallery downstairs, though you can get stuff like this cheap in the back alleys of Hoi An. With the bright colors and heavy paint daubs, maybe you can say its not fine art, just gaudy technique. But I really like it--the sort of things I'd want in my house.




This one is interesting for its shocking realism--this is exactly what back alleys look like.


I'm sure I've seen paintings like these in big, modern hotels. Strange about the ears--it seems that most Vietnamese women have really tiny ears, often with cute elf tips.

I like this one for its faery-like qualities.


The title of this one could be "So that's what we Vietnamese were fighting for?"

I love these--sculptures of other artists and writers that the sculptor probably didn't like none too much.

Goddess of the moon, god of the sun, and OMG Dog!

And with this last picture, someone from the museum asked me not to take photos. Which is really too bad--I missed my camera after that. But that just says how good a museum it is.

Banh Mi: The Other Pho

Back Home, Banh Mi (bun me) is all the rage. It's also as Americanized as egg foo young. Some nice sweet pickled radish and carrot, a slab of gristly pork or chicken (or my favorite, boiled chicken), hold the pate please.


Not like here at all. It's usually made from a tiny portable sandwich shop (or a barrel) on the street, but it's a complicated affair with many ingredients. There seems to be some order to how it's constructed, but no part of the sandwich is the same. On one side you may have a processed pork product, followed by some fatty thing or lard paste, a cucumber and bland/ briny radish in the center, and then some deep raspberry-colored pate. Some parts are actually tasty, but they are all strange to Western tongues. Each bite is like uncomfortably settling into a cold bath, followed by a feeling of relief that it's over.

The Hazards of Eating Out

We're having grilled pork and rice just 2 feet from a really super messy, loud and sloppy pavement job. The food was good, especially for about $2 a head.

Failures are an important part of eating out. It is very important to learn what not to eat. Almost everything here is excellent, though last night's meal was a bust. We had a plateful of the kind of invasive snails we get in Prospect Park. I pried open one, make a grim meal of it, washed it down with some juice. Then I had ANOTHER. Why? Because it was the last one I'll ever eat.