Day 100: Pole Dancing at LACMA

Today my son and I spent the day at LACMA to check out the Tim Burton exhibit.  The first thing we saw as we walked up to the famous Lightpost installation is a random flash mob of people dirty dancing in the poles.  It was awesome! Their friend was filming them.  I have no idea who they were or why they were there.  Only in L.A.

We took a few photos and then Beckett wanted to play tag.  We ran through the lamp posts until we were exhausted.
After tag, we bought tickets for a 4:00 entry to the Tim Burton exhibit.  We were both sort of starving, so we decided before art there would be lunch.  We ate at the grown up cafe, Ray's next to this incredibly groovy lounge area (note to self:  looks like an awesome place to hang out with grown-ups!  A cross between the lounge area of the old TWA building at JFK, and the sculpture garden at MOMA.)  There was no kids' menu, so Beckett decided to order a pulled pork sandwich (?) I asked him if he had ever eaten pulled pork, to which he replied no.  But I supported him ordering something totally out of his wheelhouse and just warned him if he ended up not liking he could share mine, but we would not be ordering a third thing.  (He is not a cheap date.)  He had a few bites and decided he didn't really like it.  I on the other hand, who have also never really had a pulled pork sandwich, thought it was yummy.  We traded half-eaten meals.  So between the pound of fresh-baked bread we both ate, neither of us starved.

After lunch we checked out an exhibit or two, including an installation Beckett liked with hundreds of tubes/strings dangling that you could walk through.  At four, we headed into the Tim Burton exhibit, armed with our headset guides.  The exhibit was awesome!

It starts with Tim's painfully boring, detached, and yet inspiring youth in Burbank.  The exhibit takes you through his earliest sketches, inspirations, musings and cartoon strips he made as a teen.  Throughout every phase of the exhibit there are fantastic drawings, puppets, film clips and sculptures from the prolific brain of a weird, dark genius.  We loved the audio guide, complete with snippets of interviews with Tim about what goes on in his brain.  His characters are tortured, odd - they have scissors for hands, buttons for eyes, they are disenfranchised outsiders.  But at their core, his protagonists are vulnerable, human.  I love this quote from the irrepressible Ed Wood:
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: And cut! Print. We're moving on. That was perfect. 
Ed Reynolds: Perfect? Mr. Wood, do you know anything about the art of film production? 
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Well, I like to think so. 
Ed Reynolds: That cardboard headstone tipped over. This graveyard is obviously phony. 
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture. 
Ed Reynolds: The big picture? 
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Yes. 
Ed Reynolds: Then how 'bout when the policemen arrived in daylight, but now it's suddenly night? 
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief? 


As we left MOMA, without a dinner plan or any exciting groceries to go home to, we were thrilled to see the Galbi NYC food truck, and the topper, a powder-puff blue cupcake truck.  As Ed Wood would say:
"Cut, print, it's perfect!"