Always looking for something to do to entertain the kid. A few times a year the St. Louis Symphony will play the score to a screening of a popular movie. Even a top tier orchestra like ours needs to hustle up extra ways to pay the bills. Ellie loved it, but I don't think she was attuned to the nuances of the performance.
Mixed messages and images. We took the kid to the symphony yesterday for a screening of Encanto with a live score. She loved it. Afterward, we went to dinner at a new Mexican restaurant downtown called Cantado. STL has a large number of Mexican restaurants that basically serve the same slop. This one was a real cut above. The decor, however, was decidedly non-Mexican, more like comic book-graffiti-trippy. A good day all around.
A sign put up by a local booster organization on an abandoned building near the Mississippi. It is clearly visible from an elevated highway seen at the top. They want you to start a business, make a lot of money, but then DO NOT take it to another city. It's happened. Baby, please don't go.
Another thought on some riffs in yesterday's post. 16th-17th Dutch and Flemish still life paintings tend to have dark pack backgrounds. Not all of them and certainly not all black, but that's what's in my muddled art history memory. I exaggerated the contrast in this image to meet my impression.
When I was young, there was a well-advertised brand of cigars around New York called Dutch Masters. A slice of The Night Watch was on the box. I was aware of the product but no one in my family smoked cigars and I hadn't yet been to The Met. I had no idea what the brand name meant. Maybe it was just odd marketing. Over the years, I came to associate black backgrounds with Dutch/Flemish painting (except for maybe Caravaggio). I'm not sure how this floral arrangement interprets the nearby paintings but the effect is dramatic.
I gotta get back out on the street and find some new stuff. Getting my back worked on tomorrow at the mighty Washington University Medical Center and hoping for more mobility.
