Storybook Friday with Death Cab and Roy Lichtenstein

Ah, Saturday. First: Random thoughts. Second: Random Music and/or Storybook Thursday and/or Friday Day story.

It is a lovely day and everyone single person in Minneapolis is outside. Honestly. I love this town. I went apartment hunting with my mom earlier. She hasn’t had an apartment since I was 2. She now remembers the hell that is apartment hunting.

When I got home, I checked the status of Death Cab for Claire as always and found it parked on the corner. I then noticed that the hillbilly dude on the corner was out with his dog on the stoop drinking a beer.

It hit like a flash: that’s his truck. This guy with the dog I think is so cute (reminds me of my childhood dog, Pete) owns Death Cab for Claire. I honestly considered asking him if it was indeed his, and what he was thinking when he bought it, but decided that would be too weird.

Not as weird as having a truck cab sticker with a rotting corpse on it, mind you.

Okay, Storybook Friday continued:

Driving home from my outing with Mom, I passed by the Walker Art Museum. They’re expanding and the building is crazy. I’m curious as to what it’s supposed to look like.

For 99.9% of the people taking the time to read this, the Walker is a modern art museum in Minneapolis. It also has a sculpture garden with, among other things, a fish sculpture by Frank Gehry and a huge spoon with a cherry on it. The museum itself is between Uptown and Downtown, basically. Some of the traveling exhibits they’ve had have been phenomenal. I like MIA (Minneapolis Institue of Arts) better, but maybe that’s somewhat related to the history aspect of it.

But I digress. Anyway, driving by the Walker I thought of a story. I should title the story I suppose. Okay.

THE WALKER MUSEUM
Or: How I Got to Chat Up Roy LichtensteinWhen I was growing up, my mom enrolled me in as many children’s programs at different museums as she could. I remember only a few. But by far the coolest was a workshop (it may have lasted several days) with Roy Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein was getting a piece installed at the Walker and agreed to host a workshop for kids (I was maybe 8). Said newly installed piece was sectioned into many squares and given to groups of kids. We were supposed to create our own version of that section of the painting and try to be as accurate as possible.

I’m not a leader-type chick, but when there’s no apparent leader-type person, I tend to take control. Even at age eight. So I was directing progress in creating this bit of the painting.

Meanwhile, Roy was wandering around the different groups to observe the progress. He stopped at ours.

Okay, keep in mind that I had no clue who Roy Lichtenstein was. I was, as you recall, eight. To me, he was some random guy that made cool paintings.

Anyway, he complimented me on our progress and, if I remember correctly, even told me that he thought it was rather true to the original. I was delighted. He asked me a few questions about life and then moved on.

When everyone was done, we took all the pieces to the front lobby and Roy personally (I think) assembled them. I believe it even stayed there for some time.

Years later, I finally learned who Roy Lichtenstein was, studied his work, and was blown away that he was cool enough to host a children’s workshop and even chat up a little munchkin like me.