Comedy Wind in a Can, Chicago Style

I went to Chicago just like I said I was going to do.  Kristin graduated as planned and things were as they should be.  I found this neat art installation in Millennium park before the two hour ordeal.Unfortunately, the chains weren't velvet.

It was a great day to be outside.  The ceremony was dry at times but there were also moments that were enjoyable. A Mr. Jerry Saltz was the speaker and he managed to make me feel smug about my educational choices.  See, at one point in my life I thought I wanted to get a BFA or something like that until I actually had to interact with other art students and realized that I wasn't comfortable with the whole thing and stuff, like I didn't fit in and I shouldn't be in that department?  And of course I transferred to the most usefulest field ever!!!  

The smugness came on when Mr. Saltz told the kids that went to school to study art that they were artists and as artists they were different from the hoi-polloi seated behind them (their family and friends of assumedly non-art persuasion.)  I muttered under my breath, "You don't know me," in my best Jerry Springer guest impersonation and then made the argument in my head that since I was already an artist, I didn't need to go to art school to have someone show me how to do that, ergo my switch to Philosophy to understand the world and universe as where I was getting my ideas from.

I also got a sunburn.  (Not noticeable in the picture.  This is after commencement.  Hot, sweaty, grumpy.  Waiting for Kristin to finish her latest Installation.)

Afterwards we went to a reception at a gallery associated with the school and I milled around the grad student exhibit.  There were some nice pieces.  There were some great ideas, but overall I wasn't that impressed and when I informed Kristin how I felt about it she said that SAIC was more about the conceptual approach to art rather than the classical fundamentals of art.  They teach you how to focus your ideas and communicate them through your medium over teaching you to master you medium and then be able to deftly and superbly communicate your ideas.  Now that seems backward to me, but I'm like that with my music.  I'd rather not take the time to be able to play Eddie licks up and down the neck of my guitar as much as I would like to be able to communicate something through sound waves that don't involve the symbols of spoken language.  So I don't know where I was going with that but yeah...

We also had dinner with her family in Wilmette up in the north suburbs.  I had a blast trying to make my way back to i-94 since my planned route didn't include a west-bound on ramp.  I ended up driving around Wanettka (it was spelled something like that) being reminded of living in the further north (and not so affluent) suburbs in the mid-eighties.  All of the streets sort of look the same, matching what I remember from the superbowl shuffle days and that sort of bummed me out.  I don't want to explain why.  It just did.

I also bought a Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks disc at the Barnes & Noble and listened to that on the way home.   It wasn't quite what I was looking for when I went to the music section (originally, I was going to pick up some early Bob Marley but decided against that after looking at the stacks of CDs and knowing full well that none of them would contain music so mind-blowing-ly awesome that I would have to stop driving to give it my fullest attention.  I honestly wish there was such a thing these days.  Bjork's Volta may have come close at points.  Sigour Ros does at times as well, but they're still working in a realm of the familiar.)

And it rained for most of the drive home.