This evening, Tina, a friend from Cleveland who now owns her own design studio in New York, invited me to her sister’s husband’s art exhibit, The Smile Project, at the Green Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The project involves two squat, bulbous robots, Neil and Iona, that interact with each other and the audience, by moving their heads, swiveling their bodies around, cycling an animation of a mouth on the TV screens that serve as their heads, and occasionally speaking. They were wired to a computer off to the side and naturally I was interested in how they worked from a technical standpoint, but the artist was in demand, conversation-wise, and I never got to speak with him.
It seemed timely to see a robot exhibit since I had just read about the MIT engineers who developed a prototype robot that walks on water, much like a water spider. I mentioned this to several people in the gallery, but no one seemed as excited about it as I was. I did get to speak a lot with Tina’s friends, most of whose names I’ve forgotten, but it was a funny coincidence that her friend Ben was a web designer, so we could talk about shopping cart systems and CSS.
We hung out for awhile, drinking Bud from cans and wine from those red plastic cups. I briefly met Tillamook Cheddar, Brooklyn’s most famous dog-artist, outside her new store, which is right next door Green Gallery. She had her own photographer, who was crouching on the sidewalk talking sassy fashion shots, but was a bit standoffish to anyone else who wanted to pet her. I think the fame has gone to her head.
Afterwards, we went to Sea, an Asian restaurant designed to resemble equal parts ’60s bachelor pad and Buddhist temple. It was just about too hip for me, but I was impressed by the reasonable prices (at least when compared with Manhattan)—bottled imported beer was $4 and my sautéed eggplant and tofu dish, seasoned with garlic and sweet basil, was $7.
I was initially alarmed that one of Tina’s friends who joined the dinner party was wearing a watch that appeared more expensive than the entire contents of my closet and also had a sweater tied around his neck like he was Gatsby or something. But it turned out he’s a real estate lawyer, so I unexpectedly had a lot to talk to him about. He was funny too; after we’d been seated for dinner, the first thing I made sure I asked him was what his favorite lawyer joke was. An oldie but a goodie: “What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.”
I hardly had a chance to speak with Tina, so I agreed to make the long haul up Long Island to visit her next weekend and catch up. Our group split early, but I had a voicemail on my cell from Andie to hang out with her and her posse back on the island. Waiting for the subway, a frizzy haired gentleman was bobbing his head, tapping the time and vigorously slapping out a sweet version of the T. Rex power ballad “20th Century Boy” on his acoustic guitar, for which I dropped a dollar in his case, the first time I’ve appreciated subway music enough to tip.
After receiving further instructions on the night’s festivities via my cell at Union Square, I went up to Brother Jimmy’s where Andie, Katie, Erika, Sam and Carolann were enjoying post-BBQ beverages at a sidewalk table. Eric joined us a bit later and we all partook of a fishbowl filled with a potent, pineapple-based alcoholic concoction, as well as a small, rubber alligator.