Burgers
Tate Modern. Retrospective of Edward Hopper.
You know who Edward Hopper is? Think “diner.” Think of the boulevard of broken dreams and every other knockoff of that one diner picture (done in 1942). The guy who did that painting the first time – that’s the one.
What was weird, seeing it in the flesh? Standing straight in front of it, it looks like a painting, but moving off to the left side? The characters, the woman, the soda jerk, the other guy sitting at the bar? They all seem to move forward, move around, almost leap out of the painting.
Yeah well, it’s the Tate Modern and it’s such a wonderful space to view art. Plus, imagine this: Lamb Burger & Dorset Crab in the café for lunch. Little black sheep done up as a burger and a real crab from England’s southern coast. I like me my southern food.
We were cruising down the street and found a “ticket vendor” or “booking agent,” as the lad styled himself. Plus, after watching the guy work, he had a closet for an office, two or three phone lines going constantly, we managed to snag some tickets to an already sold-out show, Theatre Complicite’s version of Measure for Measure, at the National Theatre.
Pompey: Yonder man is carried to prison.
Mistress Overdone: Well! What has he done?
Pompey: A woman.
Mistress Overdone: But what’s his offence?
Pompey: Groping for trouts, in a peculiar river.
We all pooled our resources, and sister and friend had to go in search of a cash machine, while I waited in line.
“Yeah,” I drawled, “I sent my wimmins off to turn a few tricks.”
“Right. Over in Soho?”
“Yeppers, they’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later, the girls rounded the corner with the cash.
The end of the evening we found ourselves at the Hard Rock. The Hard Rock. Not the chain, but the first one, the original. Decent burger, a bacon cheese burger.
While I was worried about everyone’s mental health earlier, I’m less concerned now. They all stopped laughing at every joke.
And somewhere in between, there was theatre. Which is, as they advertise, all 37 plays by William Shakespeare, in 97 minutes. While much of it was silly and tremendously amusing, the best bit was one of the lines, “Hamlet? That’s not a Shakespeare play, it’s Mel Gibson movie.”
I guess you had to be there. We were?
