Weekend Review: My First Art Show, Joe's Wedding

Flew into Dayton Thursday night and sat on the plane next to Mike Moses, who played basketball on those great St. John's teams of the 1980s. Like me, Moses was flying to Dayton for a better price, though Cincinnati was the final destination for each of us. And when his ride bagged out, I chipped in with the assist and got him to the Queen City. Tell Chris Mullin I said what's up.

You've probably heard me talk about Mindy, the twin sister of one of the Survivor finalists from a couple years ago. She met me at Teller's in Hyde Park as I was eating a lovely penne with chicken and watching LeBron James turn into the man the NBA has been hoping for in Game 5 against Detroit. What a performance.

I was done with dinner and Mindy had to leave and the first overtime ended in a tie, so I hustled over to McMurphy's to watch the second OT and waited for my dude Jason and his new girl to show up. McMurphy's was decent.

Then it was off to Mount Lookout Tavern, one of my old hangouts back in and after college. Though I've gotten a few years older, the crowd at that bar unfortunately has not, so it was a brief visit.

FRIDAY

This was the big day. Started with a TV appearance to promote my first art show. It went well, but I'm sure you might have another interpretation when you watch the clip, which if I can figure out how to upload will be up here this week. The interview was fun nonetheless. Old girlfriend Heather is a producer at WCPO in Cincinnati, so she lined it up for me. Very cool of her.

After tying up some loose ends, I got to the Madison Wedding Mall in Covington in mid-afternoon to start setting up. I found the box I'd shipped from New York, full of every piece I was trying to sell. Despite my having scribbled "FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE" all over the box, the fine folks at UPS went Kobe Bryant on it by literally tearing it a new one. Some one is going to hear a complaint at some point about what you see above.

Then came probably the biggest surprise of my life. My back facing the front door as I was talking to one of the Wedding Mall vendors, I noticed her gaze shift over my shoulder toward the door. I turned to find Mom and Mike. If you know me, you know I seldom have trouble speaking. Well, after staring at the parents for at least 15 seconds without saying a word, I burst out with quite a femme-sounding "Oh my God" or something like that. Whatever it was, it couldn't have sounded too manly. I was speechless.

Mom and Mike drove 5.5 hours down from Cleveland to suprise me, and I really don't think I've ever been surprised like that. That was very cool of them. The gesture was appreciated even more when they said they just wanted to come down to say hi and chill for an hour, then head back to Cleveland. They couldn't stay for the show. They just wanted to support me with my debut. Sure I was disappointed they had to leave, but their reasons were legit, so I showed them back to the highway a short time later and suddenly I had about one hour until the show.

The event was to begin at 6, and I arrived promptly at 6:05 p.m. Tom brought a case of wine and when we walked in together, there was Jeff Gluck in the back, perusing my stuff. Jeff drove more than an hour down from Troy, Ohio, just to take a look, say hello and show his support. He had to split early as well. Very cool of him.

So things started kind of slowly, but after 8 or 9 or so, the mall had filled out, as had one of my pockets. People kept coming up to me and handing me money. I'd sold a lot of my work, mostly what I'm calling my photo-strations. I take pictures of popular New York City landmarks and art them up in Photoshop. It is not dificult to do, and they're apparently good enough that noted collectors Nancy and Roger Stephens bought eight pieces between them, and Nancy now wants to display my work at her brand new gallery in up-and-coming Newport, Ky. It was quite an evening.

The funny thing is that this event was far from the only memorable portion of the evening.

A small group of us went to a bar down the street after the opening, and after about an hour or so, my dude Chad -- an avid bicycle rider and collector -- figured the best thing for us to do would be for me to ride on the handlebars of his vintage 1973 Schwinn (pictured, right) all the way over to Newport for continued debauchery. I'm typically not used to another guy telling me "Your ass is going to be sore tomorrow," but after visiting two weak spots there, we thought it would only make sense to ride over a second bridge, over to Cincinnati, for a late-night bite at Shanghai Mama's, the hip, un-Cincinnati joint that attracts the pretty after-bar crowd. They let Chad and I in anyway.

On the way, there was no shortage of loud-mouthed jackals taking guesses of Chad's and my sexual orientations. It's amazing how two dudes doing something a little unusual at an odd hour must clearly mean to others that the behavior can only be attributed to homosexuality. One frat-boyish looking moron chased us down the bridge as Chad pedaled faster, zig-zagged away from the hooligan and calmly told him to get away. At that very moment, I was only able to think of 7 million other places I'd rather be than on the front handlebars of a bicycle speeding downhill after 2 in the morning. But thanks to Chad, we escaped this tough guy's sinister intentions with ease.

SATURDAY

Woke up a little later than planned, but after shaking off the effects of being overserved at the establishments the previous night, I was off to the package store to send my art back home to New York. Still keeping my fingers crossed.

Visited Nancy at her Newport joint and we agreed that she'd take a look at my Web site and get back to me this week. I'll send her a few of my 12-by-18 prints and she'll have them on display in the next week or two. I guess this makes me an official artist! Hooray me!

Several hours later, as I was waiting for the downtown shuttle van to take me to Joe Beckman's wedding, I looked in my camera and realized there was no battery in it. I'm smart.

The wedding was outstanding. Caught up with J.B. Ward and his wife of 10 years, Mary. We sat and reminisced the entire time, until I decided I'd had enough to drink that it would be OK for me to make an appearance on the dance floor. I'm actually not bad if I've been drinking, but I don't like to say that because that's just like a lot of other dudes.

I was among the large group of men admiring the way Robin moved on the dance floor. Because I have very little game, especially with beautiful women, I continued to sit with J.B. and Mary. But when the party people met up at the Hilton in downtown Cincinnati after the reception, I began the effort.

Robin (pictured, right) and I visited Havana Martini Club and were followed by a guy from an entirely different wedding party, just some schmuk who thought she was hot. Once I flashed the wad of cash topped by a hundy from the previous night's art show, he knew -- or at least assumed; we all know I'm broke! -- he was up against some tough competition. So I ordered two drinks for us, which presumably reminded him of his third-wheel status. Needless to say, he peeled of to his own group, and Robin and I finished our drinks then headed off to Shanghai Mama's for a 3 a.m. feast.

SUNDAY

The only thing worse than having to drive up to Dayton International Airport on two hours sleep, arriving at 3 p.m. for a 5 p.m flight is finding out your flight was actually scheduled to leave at 7 p.m. I could have gotten some more sleep. Or done anything but sit in the Dayton International Airport.

And then, of course, my connection to Washington was delayed, so I had to wait an extra hour for a connection to Philadelphia, where I waited another extra hour for the final leg to LaGuardia. Then a delay in the baggage, then the bus, then the train ... I was finally in my apartment at 1 a.m. Good thing I took Monday off from work.