Art and Crab Legs

Today I will tell you about art.

Entitled "Life"

This man is sad because he just spent two hours of his life which he will never get back taping newspapers to the inside of his bedroom closet.

Untitled (Portrait of Two Alabama Children) circa 1845

What's the little one pointing at? The world will never know. Maybe it was a kitty. Because little girls like kitties.

"Young Girl With Cat," 1867

They like them so much that they will cling to even an uncomfortable and trying-to-escape kitty.

"Charleston Bride," 1948

I wonder if Charleston Bride's husband was a good man. I wonder if they stayed poor. I wonder if they stayed together, if they were happy, if they laughed with each other.

This picture...I have no idea. Joe said the man's upset because he wanted the chair to be on the ceiling but it's not.

My camera just couldn't capture this one properly. It was enormous. That's why I had Joe stand next to it, so you could see how big the painting is. The artist used the length to communicate a sense of movement. I was impressed.

"Nkisi," 2001 (Charcoal on wood with found object)

I think this portrait is well-done, considering it was drawn on some boards. I don't, however, understand the "found object." I personally would never use a hairbrush made of rusty nails. But maybe that guy did, and that's why he looks angry and has no hair.

"Georgia Marsh," 1984

"Georgia Marsh." See the tall grass swaying in the gentle sunlight? The dark murky water? The turtles on the log? Neither do I. Abstract art irritates me. Why does this artist make thousands of dollars?

How about this one? I know it's small. But so...evocative. I made it a few years ago. It's entitled "My Feelings on the War in Iraq."

I'll start the bidding at $2,500.


After the art, we went to a place to eat: Rhinehart's Oyster Bar. We found it on our phones and the GPS. It had great reviews and we were in the mood for seafood and I didn't know what "dive bar" meant, so we went. A few minutes after walking in, we were standing next to a crowded bar on an unfinished cement floor, smelling urine and waiting for someone to seat us or to otherwise acknowledge our existence. We kept looking at each other and whispering about whether we wanted to go somewhere else. But we didn't leave, because it got good reviews and because it was an adventure.

That guy to the far right of the picture where you can only see half of his face and his arm, that's Joe's friend who was with us. The crab legs served on bucket lids in the lower left-hand corner of the picture was Joe's dinner that it took him until 20 minutes after Friend & I were done with our dinners to finish. We're eating at a picnic table indoors off paper plates, and our drinks came in plastic Solo cups.

The tables and the walls (and the parts of the ceiling that people could reach) were absolutely covered with doodles and stuff like "Summer <3 Clay - Us against the world!" and more art. Once, Stephen King wrote something about how he sees a lot of graffiti and how some of it's funny or actually thought-provoking. I thought about that and kept my eyes peeled for deeper meaning as I looked around. The only thing that was even close to being well-thought-out was "I'm out like a fat kid in dodgeball," which didn't strike me as funny or thought-provoking or even interesting.

The music was loud (but muffled just enough by the cinderblock wall next to us,) the toilets leaked, and it was scary in the bathroom, but the food was great. Probably worth another visit. With a Sharpie.