MOMA – How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Aside from the givens – beer, sleep, gin, and music – The Captain did manage to mix in a bit of “culture” during his Christmas vacation. The Captain and his crew, those you all know and love as my “legitimates,” took a day trip to the Big Apple, which seemed to me like an educational field trip planned by my daughter to expose me to something called “art.” When she announced we were going to MOMA, it sounded to me as if we would be visiting some mass transit institution, or perhaps a secret chapter of some radical feminist group my daughter sends my hard earned money to. Understandably, I was kind of afraid to ask; but since I was the bus driver, I needed to know. Apparently, MOMA stands for Museum of Modern Art. Instead of being a relief, this caused more consternation. The Captain and art are not well acquainted. I hate to appear ignorant (notice I said “appear”), and art is a topic about which I am woefully ignorant. I have managed, like one of Pavlov’s puppies, to equate a painting with water lilies in it with a French guy called Monet (pronounced ever so pretentiously “mo-nay.”) Along the same lines, when I see paintings with very young ballerinas, I have been conditioned to blurt out Degas (“day-gah”). I only know this because my daughter, as a little girl, loved his paintings, a love which soured once she became a feminist. She now regards Degas as a “sketchy creeper,” after she realized that he was an old man who spent all day staring at prepubescent girls in leotards.

After waiting in line for 20 minutes in sub-freezing temperatures in a wind tunnel called 53rd Street, we finally made it inside MOMA. My frayed and frozen nerves were calmed slightly by the poster announcing that the current special exhibit featured the artwork of Tim Burton, a film maker familiar to The Captain. Burton loves the macabre: skulls, freaky aliens, severed body parts, Halloween - some of The Captain’s favorite things.

Knowing that Edward Scissorhands was in the building, I steeled myself for my art immersion. And not just any art, but MODERN art. Here’s how it went.

The prints and paintings in the contemporary section were surprisingly familiar to The Captain, at least my interpretation of them was thus. I swear I saw one of my drafting assignments from High School framed and mounted in one gallery: graphing paper with unrecognizable shapes and measurements replete with strikethroughs and scribbles, all in pencil. I received a “D” in the course, which, I remind you, is a passing grade in High School and apparently at MOMA as well.

And there on the wall was a painting one of my legitimates created in Nursery school, one of those where the various primary water colors from the cheap plastic paint set are mixed together by kids with ADHD to achieve a very dirty looking shade of brown; this, ironically, was right next to the bizarre cut and paste work by The Captain born out of boredom from the back row of Mrs. Roberts World Civ. !! class my sophomore year in High School, an odd mixture of crayon doodles and pornographic magazine cut outs.

And then there were the too numerous to count Art class assignments with construction paper where I would randomly cut and paste, between tastes of the paste, colored shapes onto a large piece of black construction paper. One man’s attempt to do the bare minimum in art class is another man’s art!

There were some original pieces, however. My favorite was a large bas relief of the angel of death riding a horse that was made entirely of cigarettes. How cool is that? I also liked the piece that was created on two walls of a room that was a spider web of duct tape stuck on the wall with pictures of large human eyes interspersed throughout. It reminded me of the days when I felt my mother was watching my every move – while on LSD (my mother, that is!)

A painting of the “Penis Hat.” Just go and see for yourself.

The Tim Burton exhibit did not disappoint. Youngest Son of The Captain was in his element. He especially loved the display of the skeleton dude from “A Nightmare Before Christmas,” complete with 42 different skull heads, each with a unique expression. Now that’s creativity!

And finally, in a museum filled with the weirdest shit, the weirdest exhibit was a tape loop of a video which was an extreme close up of someone’s lips licking and French kissing a glass plate that looked like it was covered in golden glitter glue. At first glance, I thought it was a slug that had been covered in salt and glitter by some sadistic grammar schooler. Upon closer inspection, I got nauseous.

In the end, in spite of my trepidation in anticipation of yet another field trip to make me feel stupid, this ended up a Miracle on 53rd Street for me. I resolved to go home and become a modern artist. I’ll simply borrow some crayons from my kids and start scribbling maniacally after 15 gin and tonics, or pass off as art one of eldest son’s half ass Calculus assignments, or even get out the old duct tape and start sticking it randomly all over the living room furniture. If I learned nothing else during my brief time at MOMA, I learned that any deranged doofus can display random shit and become a famous modern artist (and if I’m not mistaken, I’m pretty sure there was some actual fecal matter on display at MOMA, so strike that one off the list).

Believe The Captain when he says: Glitter Glue sticks to your tongue!

Yours painting his tongue with nail polish remover,

The Captain

OK. You don't have to go and see Penis Hat for yourself. Here it is!!

Paul McCarthy (American, born 1945)

No swashbuckling hero, McCarthy's pirate is an intimidating and wretched figure who embodies a lifestyle of danger and licentiousness on the margins of society. McCarthy transforms the body of the ship into the body of the pirate: the ribs of the ship become his ribs, windows and holes become bodily orifices, oars act as limbs, and cannons resemble penises and a nose. The phallic weaponry alludes to warfare and sexual conquest, and the various inscriptions and red spurts make clear that if amputated, the pirate would lose his power. McCarthy critiques Western stereotypes of masculinity by transforming the iconic figure of the pirate through brutal images of debauchery and castration.