Can You Dig It?

I don't know what was better, the estrogen rush or the dated psychedelia.

This afternoon's sunny warmth had me craving an outing, so I called up a friend and suggested an opening.

She was just out of the shower and naked, she told me, but open to suggestions.

I wanted to go to Plant Zero for 1212 Gallery's juried portrait photography exhibit and she was game once clothed.

The portrait genre fascinates me, both for what it reveals and what it doesn't, plus there was a variety of subjects.

Kay Springwater's "A Coptic Man, Jerusalem" showed a black man in a sky blue robe against a weathered cream door; both the man and the door came across as strikingly sculptural.

Showing a sense of humor, Lisa Botkins' "Shall We Dance" showed four unclothed mannequins facing off as if about to dance.

To me, they resembled a 21st century version of Greek sculpture.

"Cowboy Johnny," a black and white photograph by  Catherine Hennessy showed a Jimi Hendrix-looking guy, shirtless in leather vest, shades and massive bell  bottoms jeans wearing a peace sign around his neck, in front of a boardwalk signs and under a lighted Coca Cola sign.

The groovy factor was suddenly high.

Just as dated was D.B. Stovall's "Print Shop Supervisors, 1978" depicting a black couple in full-on '70s regalia.

His jacket was loud and plaid, the knot of his tie bigger than his fist and with a perfect 'fro.

"I can't get past her!" my friend exclaimed and the pictured woman's ensemble did make it difficult.

The wide-legged bell bottoms were so high-waisted they topped her rib cage with a matching denim jacket that was equally distressed looking.

Like her male counterpart, each of their polyester shirts had collars that extended all the way to their sleeves.

I'm going to bet they don't let print shop supervisors look that fly anymore.

For sheer beauty, Dan Mouer's "Mennonite Girls with Apples" was a feast of color and youth.

What looked like two young sisters in a carriage wearing flowered dresses, coordinating cardigans and bonnets (yes, bonnets!) looked out at the photographer, the younger girl in pale blue with matching eyes.

The older sister looks askance at the younger, probably questioning the wisdom of addressing the camera. Both have half-eaten apples in their lap.

As my friend noted, it could have been a painting by Berthe Morisot, the artist so fond of female subjects.

I countered with Renoir because the peach-complected sisters and their exquisite faces looked like something that artist would have painted.

It is a very good afternoon when I can be admiring photographs and discussing painting with a girlfriend.

We came back over the river for wine, stopping at Bistro 27 for Tempranillo and talk, specifically girl talk.

Some of my best friends are male, many in fact, but they can't give me the kind of girl talk I needed.

I shared my recently-acquired master equation for structuring the best relationship and she explained the fiery hoops she saw as necessary to reach relationship nirvana.

It's so satisfying to explain yourself to someone who agrees completely.

As if to prove our point, as we left 27, she got a text from an ex, saying he was at a bar and thinking of her.

I made light of the message until she informed me that he was her favorite conversationalist from her past.

Well, if you're going to put it in those terms, my dear, perhaps I should drop you off at said bar and let the two of you explore your conversational connection.

A short drive, a little lip gloss application and she was deposited so as to enjoy her favorite thing about the ex.

No commitment, just conversation. Everyone's happy.

I was off to my own adventure at Strange Matter, where they were doing a "No show and a movie" night, showing "Head."

That's right, the trippy, dippy music conceived of by the Monkees, producer Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson during a long weekend smoking weed and spouting off ideas into a tape recorder.

Boy, it must have been nice to be famous, rich and have Hollywood as your playground in 1968.

The film began and ended with the Monkees being chased on a bridge before going to chromatic, underwater scenes with musical accompaniment.

It was topical, with lots of footage of the Vietnam War including the iconic image of the shooting of the Vietcong prisoner on the street.

It was spectacular, with the Monkees playing through scenes in myriad kinds films  (westerns, adventure, mystery), inevitably ripping through scenery to escape having to participate.

It was cliched, with a roomful of synchronized belly dancers performing in a smokey room for the band.

Scenes were sped up or shown in slo-mo, the better to approximate being high.

It was self-deprecating, with both the band making fun of themselves and their image and others skewering them.

When Mike thinks Mickey is hiding from him, he threatens, "If they think we're plastic now, wait'll I tell them how we do it."

It was topical, with the band being lectured while led through a factory, with the leader warning them, "If you constantly seek pleasure, be careful, you may get what you want."

Yea, like a bunch of twenty-somethings are going to listen to that.

It was irreverent, with one of the Monkees yelling at the producer, "It sucks, Bob!" and walking offstage in the middle of a scene.

It was a pastiche of low-level '60s celebrities, like has-been Annette Fuincello, Sonny Liston, dancer Toni Basil and Frank Zappa.

When a cop gets knocked out, the words, "The Cop's Dream" appear above his dazed head, lest we should be confused about what comes next.

But the really amusing part was that from the moment the film began showing on a sheet on the Strange Matter stage, there was running commentary from the bar crowd.

At first it was very "Mystery Science Theater"-like, funny commentary and putting words in the Monkee's mouths - but then devolving into inane chatter by people who couldn't shut up and watch the movie.

Who's that guy?
I dunno, I think he was in the Monkees.
Who?

One of the nay-sayers in the movie warns the band that the movie they were making had better be good. "Well, if it isn't god's gift to the 8-year olds..."

Hey, he's cute.
He was the cutest one.
Was he?

The special effects were hysterically dated with bodies spinning and hurtling through space.

Davy did an Anthony-Newley-style song and dance number, alternately black and white, and very purely '60s European-style pop.

It was during that number that one of the bar elite noted, "Davy was the Michael Jackson of the group."

I almost shot tequila out of my nose at that.

Soon, apropos of nothing, one of the bar sitters observed, "I can't wait until they build robotic bodies. I'm gonna totally turn in my body for one."

Maybe it was a nod to Peter's speech about the nature of conceptual reality, a subject clearly on the minds of the band when they made this. Or smoked that.

By the time the band was back on the bridge and running from the unknown (pop culture? rabid fans? money-grubbing TV execs?), I was a little sorry to see it end.

"Head" was disjointed, not in a stream of consciousness kind of way but in a "it's the '60s and we're smoking a lot of weed" kind of way.

I saw this movie when I was twelve but I really didn't pay attention. Hey, can I have another margarita?

And the peanut gallery was hysterical.