So, this nice lady I volunteer with at the Egyptian tipped me off to Charles Phoenix, who is a sort of local eccentric/author/quasi-celeb who has published some books on mid-century modern culture and kitsch (which, you may have gathered, are things that I heart very much) and who collects people’s old slides at flea markets and thrift stores and estate sales and does slide shows with them wherein he basically, well, makes fun of them but at the same time demonstrates how totally fucking rad they are. Anyhow, I went to one of his shows tonight and it was SO GOOD. I can’t even properly express how hilarious it was. You should go to his website and sign up to get the slide of the week! It’s not quite as hilarious as when he provides colour commentary in person, but it is still super awesome. Anyhow. Charles Phoenix. I love this man. He showed up wearing a yellow blazer and a fez. Fuck yeah.
And also! The slide show was held at the Petersen Automotive Museum, which is a place that I knew existed but is not a place I would ever have thought to visit (in fact, I think I found out about it and thought “a fucking car museum? That is one place I will never go,”) but it turns out that the car museum is also fucking awesome. They have the Micheal Keaton Batmobile, and, more importantly, the Adam West Batcycle. And there was a special exhibit of vintage camping trailers, which is amazingly fascinating. And they had Roosevelt’s car, and Eisenhower’s car, and Nikita Kruschev’s car, and a Bugatti owned by the former Prince of Persia, who I always thought was just a videogame character, and a car that looks exactly like the Fluevog car, and just really a lot of beautiful, beautiful vehicles. And the circular-door Rolls Royce pictured here is, in person, the most fucking impressive and imposing and glorious and terrifying thing I have seen in a long time. I think it is safe to say that I have changed my mind about cars because, apparently, cars can be art? Who knew. So, yes, I am now the kind of girl who would go to the fucking car museum, even though I really know nothing about cars at all. No, actually, I know one fact about cars: Never date a man who drives an Audi. But that isn’t so much fact as it is Life Lesson That Was Learned the Hard Way.
ANYHOW. It was really super. Really.