A Lovely Friday, During Which We Attend ART Basel and Get Lost in Miami

We have been having a marvelous time in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, even though we became really, really lost and accidentally toured Miami's mentally ill crackhead dope dealer neighborhood before getting stuck in rush hour traffic for about five hours.

It was most Disconcerting.


However, ART Basel was fun and interesting. And "money". And exhausting. We may possibly return today.

Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed, and the Miami Beach Convention Center was swarming with security. So I was unable to lift any of the art and take it home with me. I saw a smallish sort of Chuck Close painting that would have looked nice in my foyer too.

Most of the art was by famous older and/or dead artists like Picasso, de Chirico, Rauschenberg, etc. There wasn't very much that was surprising, and young emerging artists were in the minority. However, I saw some nice "paste-up" pieces by JESS, as well as an interesting piece by Lari Pittman. I was a bit mystified by a large artwork composed entirely of Pokemon and PowerPuff girl stickers (!) that was being sold for $95,000. It was very fun, but I think I could have a LOT more fun than that for $95,000; think of all the candy and video games you could buy!

We roamed around picking out the things we liked the most, ate yummy poached salmon with champagne, and ogled the crowd, which was fashionable and contained random people like Todd Oldham.

After we got lost, we drove back to Ft. Lauderdale, baked two delicious apple pies and stayed up playing Scrabble (because we are nerdy like that). I lost, because my Aunt Peggy got a Scrabble with TOTALLY for fifty extra points.

The End.