Day at the Met!

Today was a professional development day at work - and that means I have the day off! Steph and I took advantage of the rare weekday alone time and took a late afternoon trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We went a couple of weeks ago with my mother, but there are so many exciting new exhibits we need to see.

First, we went up to the roof to view Roxy Paine's Maelstrom. The piece is actually the largest sculpture ever installed in the rooftop garden and was pretty awesome to experience. The structure is similar to a large tree root system that has been, well, uprooted and placed on the roof. It is pretty neat to wander around through its metallic limbs.

You can see a video of the installation here:




And some pictures:

Afterwards, we headed down to see the Model as a Muse exhibition, which included both fashion photography and articles of haute fashion from the last five decades. The exhibition was really interesting when you have the reference points of Top Model and Project Runway to draw from. Each room of the exhibit was separated by decade with an accompany piece of music that defined the era. Some of the choices were... interesting. In the 60's we were delighted with a French big band number; in the 70's, The Who's My Generation; in the 80's George Michael's Freedom (I Want It Now); and for the 90's, of course, Smells Like Teen Spirit was blasting from the speakers. Kurt Cobain, the anti-star, must be rolling in his grave. The exhibit did ironically end with a glimpse at the 21st century thus far sound tracked by Marilyn Manson's Beautiful People. Someone has a good sense of humor.

Early Morning, FAO Schwarz, and The Met

New York City has a way of turning you into a night owl. Back in Tallahassee I couldn't keep my eyes open past 12:00. Now I've been having trouble getting to sleep before 3:00. I've been having trouble getting home before then. There is so much to do and see here, and there never seems to be enough time to do anything. Last night I had to choose between a free concert, the dance show we went to, and hearing Thurston Moore speak about the history of Sonic Youth - and those are just the three we narrowed it down to (and were all free!). This morning was atypical. We got up early so that we could go down to the flagship Apple store where CBS This Morning was filming their Saturday morning show live. Well, we got there in the middle of the broadcast and guess what, the plaza where they were shooting was empty. You see, just because it says it is being recorded live doesn't mean it is being recorded live right then. They had apparently wrapped it all up about an hour before we got there. There wasn't a lack of things to see that early in the morning, however. At the Apple store, people were still lined up around the block and down the street to buy the new iPhone 3G. I overheard one of the employees say that it had been that way all night. The store is open 24 hours a day. When we went by on Monday there were already people camped out to buy the phone. I'm going to go get mine in a couple of weeks when the hype dies down. Since we were in the plaza we went by FAO Schwarz where we took these killer pictures of us doing what we do best: making a scene.

The collection of Harry Potter costumes was impressive, but it was the Lego land that really had all my bricks stacked. I even got to see the giant piano that Tom Hanks played on in Big. You too can own one for a mere $250,000.00! Here's a video for your viewing pleasure:

Yeah, I could do that. I want to learn something ridiculously hard and casually walk up to it and go crazy then quietly walk away. Either that or master the Rubik's Cube so that I can beat the man that demonstrates his knowledge of algorithms over and over trying to make himself look cool.

We walked the twenty blocks up the east side of Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is a super crazy cool exhibit on fashion and superheroes/comic books going on right now. Unfortunately, they're pretty strict on the who "no taking pictures" thing, so you'll just have to come to Manhattan before September and see it for yourself.

Four and a half hours of wandering though Chagall, Picasso, Van Gogh, Warhol, and a whole mess of armor, guns and swords we called it a day (for the museum anyway.)