January 31st ~ The Crookedest Road and the Hungriest Teen

We had such a great time with our newly teenaged son in SF last weekend. :) It was really fun spending time with JUST him.

How often does a kid get the full attention of BOTH parents for an extended period of time?

We let him choose anything he wanted to do for the day. We went to a couple of museums first...one of which was the MOMA. (The first museum was fun but relatively uneventful.)

He'd never been there before.

Well......we all know that art is subjective, right?

And, you know what you are getting when you see Matisse or Picasso..

However, a few of the other exhibits were....well......more adult oriented. lol

One in particular: Peter Sarkisian's Dusted (installation view), 1998 Mixed media and video:

Dusted uses a five-channel video projection to animate a white cube so that it appears to be a glass container entrapping two naked figures. There also appears to be a lint-like film on the glass cube you are looking through....and as the moving figures "inside" the cube brush body parts against the inside of the cube...the lint is cleared away making your view of them more clear. Like using your hand to wipe off a foggy mirror... The sound of voices whispering the names of men and women make you feel as though you are looking at something secret...something you aren't supposed to be walking in on...

Ok...so the room with this piece was completely dark....except for the cube in the middle of the room. We walked into it completely unaware of what was in there. And although we could hear the whispering....you couldn't make out what they were saying very easily. You had to strain to understand the voices.... and in the same way...it was hard to know what was in the cube. At first it appeared to just be shadows....and shapes. As you looked though, the nude bodies could clearly be seen.

So.... realizing that this was likely making our son uncomfortable, and feeling equally that if I was in there alone or just with hubby, I'd probably have stayed and watched that cube for hours on end, I made a hasty exit, son following with a look of stunned surprise.

"Well, THAT was interesting," he said in a baffled voice.

I laughed. "Sorry, I didn't know we were in the sex-ed wing of the Museum!"

The next exhibit was equally wild... in part, depicting life-sized wax female nude sculptures, including some with unusual things protruding from their bums. hmmmm

So we quickly went to the other, tamer, floors of the museum. lol

The Chuck Close self-portraits were amazing!

Anyway, it was pouring rain (as you can probably tell by the photo of the crookedest Street above) ALL day. That didn't deter our fun though. We walked and walked...umbrella-less....drenched.....but happy.

We spent a couple of hours in the Metreon. Father and son played in the arcade....I was so bone tired from all of the walking we'd done that I watched them from the sports bar inside the arcade. A Corona light recharged my batteries. lol IT has amazing recharge qualities. I noticed a few other mom's recovering in the same way. lol

We then proceeded to China Town. It was festive (the night before Chinese New Year) and fun. Mr. Teen bought some fun Chinese tchatchkis and then we had dinner in a spectacular Chinese restaurant. We ordered some unusual things he hadn't tried before. Wonderful. (sigh) He kept eating and eating. lol

We got home really late..exhausted....but relaxed and happy about the success of the day.

Our next son is counting the month's until HIS 13th birthday.

14 months to go for him. :)