a breathless story about a small series of events

Thursday, feb. 22, 2007   |   0 comments

A couple weekends back I got a great deal on Southwest and flew down to LA for my friend Megan’s housewarming party (her loft is insanely gorgeous, with brick walls and tons of light and space, wow). The trip perfectly coincided with an art opening for one of my favorite web people, Lisa Congdon, which was held at the Reform School, a store I’ve long wanted to poke into.

So even though it was the scheduling was a tad hectic — Megan’s party started right at eight and the opening started at seven, giving me only the briefest window in which to navigate to the Reform School (in Megan’s ridiculously sporty convertible Audi thing), ogle everything, and then dash back to Megan’s — I scrambled my way over there, managing to get turned around only once or maybe four times along the way.

Now, as a small subplot to all this, I’d tried to get Pam to hit the opening with me, but she couldn’t go because she had to go buy a ball gown for this black-tie event (she wound up coming to Megan’s party instead, which was such a delightful clash of my worlds, delightful and booze-soaked). By the way, that’s my new favorite excuse for bowing out of any invite: Unfortunately I shall not be able to accept your kind invitation as I’ll be otherwise ensconced in a ball gown shopping spree. Anyway, so as I was heading off to the opening, my Sidekick rattled with a text from “AB”: “Are you going to Lisa Congdon’s show tonight? YOU MUST CALL ME!” AB. AB? Who do I know by the initials AB who also knows I’m headed to this opening? Huh. So I called the number, and the one and only Anna Beth answers; she’s busy making cupcakes in Louisiana, and thus can’t make Lisa Congdon’s opening, but would I be so kind as to buy one of Lisa’s pieces for her? You know, which ever one looks the nicest? (A little more background: She’d asked Pam to go on her behalf, and Pam, amused by the strange coincidence of two of her out-of-town friends trying to get her to go to this thing, gave her my number, much to AB’s confusion, seeing as I’m supposed to be in Oakland, etc.)

Cut to me, at the crowded, crowded opening, on the phone with the hilarious AB, whispering descriptions — I was painfully aware of being the frantic Los Angeles asshole on the cellphone — of all the different pieces as AB tried to match each one to the small photos on Lisa’s site. “There’s the painted ‘Regret’ platter thing,” I hissed, “and a small wood block wrapped with butcher’s twine? With like…antique sort of photos of I think Asian people on it?” All the while, the list of available items was dwindling as more and more “sold” stickers got stuck next to item after item. “Oh my god! AB, people are buying everything! Fast! Faster! PICK ONE!” And then in the middle of all that, Megan beeped through, in a panic over needing a bottle of cooking oil (for her mind-meltingly great parmesan beignets, holy shit). So quick, quick I bought a piece for AB (one of the gorgeous little collage blocks), and whoops, I also got myself a little something (see below), and then I scrambled over to pay my (deep, so deep) respects to Lisa, whom I’ve never met before. But Lisa was already talking to another one of her fans, so I hovered off to the side as unobtrusively as I could manage, but then yet another fan swooped into the respectful two-second cushion I’d left open. So finally I just dove in, and what witty opener did I wow her with? “I HAVE TO GO BUY COOKING OIL!” And then I followed up that insane greeting with a bunch of bumbling half-gushes — “such a big fan” and “everything…so lovely” and “the walls…pretty!” — all while pumping her hand feverishly.

And then, sweaty and mortified, I raced off and bought cooking oil at the weirdest 99-cent store ever.

Here’s the shedding tree I was lucky enough to grab for myself (image pinched from Lisa’s own Flickr set from the show — I won’t actually get it in my hot little hands until after the show breaks sometime in March).