March 24 to March 26, 2006This was our first trip of the year 2006, one intended as an appetizer for lengthier adventures later on in the year. Our theme last year was art museums. This year, we had decided to continue that theme, but to also generate a new one…the theatre. Our weekend in Indianapolis would be the first theatrical production we had planned to attend.
Friday, March 24, 2006: The Trip to the Hoosier State
To expedite our adventure and get us out of Lexington faster, we arranged for Jennifer to drive my car (my baby!) and drop me off at work. She could then pick me up at the end of the day and we could head straight out of town, rather than lose time rendezvousing at home. Our plan worked out well and though we ran just a few minutes behind, we traded places in the driver’s seat and managed to get on the road with satisfactory efficiency.
The Drury Inn, Take TwoWe arrived in Indianapolis close to our anticipated time and checked in at the Drury Inn. We’d had a good experience with the one in St. Louis and had decided to room with them again. Besides that, they were relatively close to our first event the next day, that being the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), and the Inn was right across the street from our other planned excursion, the Beef and Board’s Dinner Theatre.
The girl at the front desk was very pleasant and we bantered with her while she thrust us into a handicapped room. Actually, she immediately caught the mistake and rectified it, giving us a room on the first floor. Jennifer and I were delighted, since all of our other experiences at hotels always began with us mothballed so high up in the building, that we had to spend the first hour just adjusting to the altitude sickness and beating the albatrosses away from the windows. Being so high up wouldn’t be such a burden, except that we always end up waiting for elevators that are crammed with people and as efficient as a triangular bowling ball. We took our electronic keys and lugged our luggage down the hall, convinced that this time would be different.
Yep, it was WORSE.
The hotel itself was still a good place. We had a gigantic king-sized bed that was big enough for myself, Jennifer and two other women [snicker]. The amenities, such as the refrigerator and microwave, were reasonably on par with our experience in St. Louis. No, the problem this time was through no fault of the Drury Inn…our first story room was right next to the exit. Yes, the door outside was heavy glass, and weighted with a hydraulic mechanism that ensured it would fall closed with a bang every time someone walked through it. By the end of the trip, both of our ears would be black and blue and the only dreams we would have would be of a pleasant night’s sleep. We just chalked it up to the fact that as travelers, we’re destined never to sleep as comfortably and soundly as we do in our own bed.
Yen Ching—Ye Gawds, What a Meal!After settling in, Jennifer and I were able to walk down the street to a promising Asian restaurant known as Yen Ching. For a Friday night, they were blessedly uncrowded, making us wonder if they were near closing time. But they warmly settled us in a table and we ordered what had to be food worthy of Confucius or Buddha. The entire meal moved us toward Enlightenment. Since it was a Friday and a vacation, we decided to try a couple of Asian beers. I had Sapporo, while Jennifer experimented with Tsing Tao. We both ended up liking mine and finding hers to be…well, kind of there. One couldn’t really dislike it, any more than they could “dislike” the moon. She still finished it, but we both we had more fun splitting the rest of mine.
Saturday, March 25, 2006: The Fruition of Our Intent
After the 10,000th slamming of the door outside our room, Jennifer and I gave up on sleep and creaked our way out of the field of mattress. After readying ourselves to face the day, we were too late for the complimentary breakfast given by the Drury Inn and we didn’t feel like facing the hash-dream hubbub of a sit-down restaurant on a Saturday morning. Since we had already gotten directions to the local Starbucks, we decided to just see what we could find for breakfast there.
Gratuitous image of Jennifer in our room at the Drury Inn.Slaloming on Our Faces for Coffee
Gak! Half of the city’s roads seemed to be under construction. The locals didn’t appear to have any problems navigating the pinball machine of orange barrels and roadblocks, but for out-of-towners, it was a horrendous experience.
Jennifer and I feel like we crossed through two time zones and danced the sedentary Tango before we completed our roundabout way to a parking lot near Starbucks. I say near, because we didn’t see any obvious route over to the place that didn’t require mukluks and a team of Alaskan sled dogs. Instead, we parked in an adjacent bank lot and slogged our way through a colon-load of the greasiest, most slippery mud I’d faced in years. At one point, I found an old fedora hat sitting on top of the mud, next to an abandoned bullwhip. I picked up the hat and looked at the inside label…sure enough, it said, “Property of Indiana Jones.” Some jungle traps defeat even the best.
When we got to Starbucks, things got easier. There was asphalt. Inside, we got our usual coffees and a stale sandwich we could split. This was the strangest Starbucks in that it seemed to be built right into some other business. It felt funny to buy our drinks in a café line, but find a table in an electronics facility.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art
Back on the road again, we started working our way toward destination #2: The Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Of course, getting there would prove an ordeal. Granted, traffic is bad everywhere. Jennifer and I know this from driving in our home city for so many years, as well as other cities. However, the bad drivers at home are familiar in their badness. The city is filled with those who have the “me first” attitude, who are selfish and self-absorbed, and who are bound and determined to screw whomever they have to screw to save four minutes that they will still spend sitting at the same red light as we do.
Even realizing the universality of the dangers of driving, Jennifer and I still felt a distinct difference as we drove through the streets around our hotel and leading into the IMA. Rather than seeming selfish as they are at home, these drivers seemed…kind of dumb. There did not seem to be so much as a disregard for traffic laws, as a lack of understanding that such laws even exist.
These hunks of glass sculpture proved more intelligent than most of the drivers the Thornberries encountered on the way to see them.Twice during our stay, I had to honk at the person in front of me, because they didn’t seem to get that a green light means they’re supposed to aim the car forward and press that wonderful pedal on the right. In other words, GO!! No, they just sat there, sucking oxygen and giving no return on the green earth’s investment.
The road we followed inward to the museum was little more than a trail. Despite being in a relatively large city, it felt like it was made for bicycles more than cars. I started to get more and more nervous as it felt like the other vehicles were only inches from my door. It didn’t help that they evidenced no comprehension that red lights mean they aren’t supposed to just keep doing what they’re already doing and sail through the intersections. Fortunately, the entrance to the IMA was clearly marked and easy to navigate, once we found it.
Clunk! The Camera Crashes
We love our camera. We cherish our camera. Our little digital camera has been a boxy workhorse since we procured it for our trip to Biloxi, Mississippi, back in 2004.
Disappointment was inevitable. Our workhorse went lame. Yes, it’s happened many, MANY times in the past. We had long attributed it to the more clumsy, mechanical nature of the old 35mm cameras we used for previous vacations, but this trip proved that even the best can falter. Jennifer and I were clopped. Since we’d had a few problems with the batteries before we left, we decided to rule that out as a problem first. I was bound and determined, however, that we were going to get good pictures of this museum, even if we had to find a $#*@ Circuit City and $#*@ buy a new $#*@ digital camera!
So we entered the museum and asked the desk mannequin about where in the museum might sell batteries. The stiff, wooden employee, who evidenced no discernible personality, gave us a general direction. I figured that since people take pictures of museums constantly, their gift shop should have at least a few general odds and ends, like film and batteries.
Wrong.
The staff acted like we had asked them to borrow their brassieres. After a moment of awkwardness, they gave us directions to a CVS drugstore, where we could see about finding some disposable batteries. It was a creepy neighborhood where we had to go, but ultimately, it all worked out and we got what we needed.
Heading back to the museum, we got a few shots of the façade and then went to pay our fee to the mannequin in order to see the sites.
The Whole Price, Half a Museum
Jennifer and I are fans of European, Indian and Chinese art. So naturally, we were quickly told that we would have full access to the museum, with the exception of the European, Indian and Chinese art. Those sections were closed for renovation until December 2006. Both of us grumbled at that, since their web page hadn’t listed all of those areas as being unavailable. More, they still charged us full price, when half their exhibits weren’t even available. *Snort* But we decided to make the best of it and frequent the American art and their selection of African pieces.
To be fair, this was a museum with a decent collection and we did get many good pictures for our archive.
ABOVE: Jennifer sits on Thomas' big LOVE. He, he.
BELOW: A video stream of a beautiful stained glass image.
Sartre Was Right…
“…hell is other people.” Granted, he was referring to a much deeper existential truth that all of us are destined to be seen by other people, not as who we truly are, but as the construct they carry of us by their interpretation. But that’s not important here. We’re presenting it more literally, without the existential context.
The fact was that this museum had many annoying people. Not all of them were annoying in a bad way. The guy who took our coats, for example, had a very Cap’n Kangaroo appearance and presentation to him. Overall, he was just kind of verbose and obviously interested in working there for the people and not the pay. He spent some time telling us about which exhibits were closed, which were neat optical illusions and how the museum layout worked. He also warned us to turn the flash off our camera, as the employees upstairs wouldn’t be so polite about it.
Man, was he ever right!
Jennifer and I are not new to art museums. This one was our fourth, and we were well aware of the rules on touching exhibits and using a camera flash (it degrades the artwork). The other art museums we’ve visited generally had many patrons with video and digital cameras and the staff kept pretty good direction and control without being intrusive of the artistic atmosphere.
Here, they were ham-handed about it.
One of the employees of the museum.We felt like the employees were staring daggers and venom at us the entire time. I held the camera, so I was more conscious of it than Jennifer, but even still, she got it too. I ultimately started referring to the staff as the “Picasso Gestapo,” those art Nazis who were climbing up our ass every time we stopped to immortalize a piece. Not many other people were using a camera, so maybe that made a difference.
The worst incident happened next to a beautiful marble half-nude sculpture that I wanted, since we had a shot of a similar one from the Art Institute of Chicago. The flash was off and we knew exactly what we were doing. But that didn’t stop a crizzled employee from swooping in with her leathery wings to screech at us about the flash. To add insult to injury, she then curled her clawed toes around the beams of the ceiling, folded her wings around herself and bounced her sonar glare off of us the entire time we were positioning Jennifer for the final shot. Fortunately for us, employees like that don’t show up on film or picture prints, else she could have ruined the shot entirely. It still bordered on insulting. We felt like telling her that this was hardly our first art museum, but we figured the best revenge would be to capture her personality and image metaphorically in this narrative. I think we’ve done that. And we also got the statue and many other very impressive pieces of art.You’re a Mouth, Fats
At least that winged mammalian bloodsucker was relatively tidy. We also had problems with a sloven obese employee (he's in the picture down below). It wasn’t that the guy was embarrassingly overweight, so much as the fact that he made no attempt to conduct himself in a manner one associates with an art museum. His uniform was poorly fitted, and his pants were obviously not wide enough to accommodate his girth. So he had to pull them wa-a-ay too far down, to the point that some parts that shouldn’t show did, while parts that were supposed to show, didn’t. His shoes, for example, were buried in a pile of his own pants, to the point that he looked like he’d scotch taped a bundle of laundry to his feet.
One could even argue that the guy couldn’t help his physical appearance (which was stunningly remote from even the most liberal definition of attractive), and we certainly did bear that in mind. No, the problem with Fats was that he was loud and intrusive. And not even toward us. He stood and talked about his personal life with another employee, making little attempt to whisper. His yodeling bray was like Elmer’s glue on the vinyl record of our museum experience. No matter where we went, he showed up. I tried several times to get a picture of him for posterity, but each time, he
somehow managed to blunder around and avoid me. At one point, I tried to surreptitiously get him while he waited for an elevator, but he turned around at the last minute and spotted me. I tried to play it off that I was taking random shots of the entire museum, but I suspect he knew what I was doing. Fortunately, after that point, we never saw him again.Duda, doot, doot [snap, snap]
Imagine the tune to the Addams Family, (1964-1966) and you’ve got this chapter. There was this huge, shambling, Lurch-like patron there with his daughter. This was one of those guys who stands so tall he doesn’t conceive of a world that is under six feet, so we felt like he was always stumbling into us and over us. I wished someone downstairs would pull an ever-present rope and bring him to them with the cliché phrase, “You rang?”
Jennifer is looking quite whelmed by the staff and exhibits available at the museum.Derelicts and Hulks
After stuffing our trusty camera full of good images (despite the bats, Fats, harpies and vultures hovering over us), we began to feel run down. The lack of sleep because of the ever-slamming hotel door, plus the camera woes and warding away the “Picasso Gestapo” had finally worn us out. We left the museum and headed back to the Drury Inn.
Only to find that everybody on the road was dead.
Okay, that may be a little overstated, but we passed several wrecks and destroyed vehicles on the outgoing Bike Trail that were not present on our way in. We noted the reason why at one point. Remember those dumb drivers? Well, we watched one pass blithely through a red light at an intersection where police and firefighters were already working on one wreck! Brilliant clods like that one are the reason why such work is necessary. He was ensuring the police and firefighters had steady jobs, I guess. Along with the morticians. At one point, traffic slowed down to a crawl and we groaned when we saw a car smashed all to hell in the middle of the road. This time, however, there were no sirens flashing, and the derelict vehicle appeared abandoned. The already wedged-together traffic had started swerving around it, going through the greasy mud and grass at the roadside. As I followed suit, trying not to run the car over the last six inches before the drop-off appeared, Jennifer got a picture of the battered, abandoned car. Gad, I couldn’t wait to get off that road!
The Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre
This was the chapter of the trip that Jennifer most eagerly anticipated. The Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre was one of those establishments where you go to have a long, leisurely evening of good food and live entertainment.
We considered it a semi-formal affair, so both of us had packed a nice outfit. She wore a brilliant, red dress, while I wore one of my blazers and a baby-blue tie. We trundled across the street, found a good parking space and waited for the doors to open. Then we went to our first dinner theater together.
Elegance and Denim Collide
Apparently, dinner theaters in rural states are different than the ones in urban or coastal regions. Jennifer and I were not the only ones dressed nicely, but mixed heartily among the other serious theater patrons were a number of people wearing denim pants and flannel shirts. We didn’t see any flip-flops, but I would not have been surprised if we had.
Still, the atmosphere was clearly jubilant and festive, with a neon-lit gift shop, several props arranged around the lobby and large posters advertising the theatrical productions yet to hit the stage of the theatre in the year 2006. In our finery, Jennifer and I were excited.
Jennifer and Thomas both respect the theatre enough to dress for the occasion; unlike the denim-clad clods who attended with them.So Much Flesh!
We were seated at our mid-level table. Although we weren’t in the classiest seats in the house, we had a good view of the action. At this point, the stage area was doubling as the display for the gigantic buffet that was arranged under lights. When the time came to eat, a musical production came on the loud speakers and the chefs strolled out to ceremoniously remove the covers on all the dishes. One of them remained next to the roast beef haunch, where he would ultimately cut off as many slabs as we wanted.To avoid a stampede of humans flocking down to the herd of succulent dead cow waiting below, the dinner theater catering staff systematically invited everyone down by table. When Jennifer’s and my turn came, we stood in the line, ambled forward and beheld a wondrous feast. Nearly every form of animal flesh imaginable was available, from baked chicken, to fried fish, to the aforementioned roast cow haunch. We both got a buttload of other sides, such as garlic mashed potatoes, fluffy rolls, steamed veggies and even some red cabbage. It was a long, slow meal, made only slightly difficult by the fact that we had more plates and sides than our 1 X 1 table would hold. When we got the busboy to take some of it away, things got easier.
Check out the video below for a general feel of the theatre's atmosphere:
The Thornberries Meet the Phantom—Round 1
As we the audience merrily stuffed our faces, the buffet was cleared away and the stage crew began adjusting the stage for the entertainment. After one of the actors used some time to wish many people in the audience a happy birthday, the show began.
I am long familiar with the Phantom of the Opera story line. I’ve seen the character portrayed as the bloodthirsty spawn of Satan by Robert Englund (1989), Charles Dance’s (1990) tragic rendition in an NBC television movie, the really bad Fantasma dell'opera (1998), as performed by Julian Sands, and Joel Schumacher’s (2004) special effects motion picture. This American version was closest to the NBC movie I watched as a teenager, and I found I enjoyed it as much. The actors were very talented, all of them good singers and the story line engrossing despite my long familiarity with it. We felt we were in France, circa 1876. The stage crew did a wonderful job making the audience believe the characters were changing rooms and venues. The rotating portion of the stage helped.
Scotch. On the Rocks. Know It.
At intermission, the catering crew brought us our choice of dessert…sugar free chocolate pie. Surprisingly delicious! The meal was already paid in full from when we booked the show weeks previously, but our drinks would cost extra. So what? We were there to have a good time, so both of us ordered Coronas with lemon with our actual dinner. To get us through the show, however, I suggested to Jennifer that we give Scotch another try. The two of us have been bourbon fans for a long time, having never quite successfully found a good Scottish whiskey counterpart. But we figured it was a night to experiment and both of us had been about breaking from our routines a little. We ordered two double-shot snifters, which were doing fine getting us through the show. They worked for washing down the chocolate pie!
We were given about 30 minutes to eat, and then the show resumed. Jennifer and I were just overall pleased by how the evening was drawn out. There was no hurry, no sense of being rushed. We were intended to be leisurely and relaxed. Eat and be entertained; just as the name--Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre--implied. Ultimately, we had absolutely no complaints about the evening and highly recommend it!
Jennifer and Thomas, obviously having a good experience at the Beef and Board's Dinner Theatre.Cheezy-Ass Puking Zombies
The movie we watched when we got back to the room, on the other hand, was absolutely atrocious. Jennifer and I changed from our classy clothes to our “bummies,” and were content to process our evening in front of the boob tube. We settled on a movie with promise on the Sci-fi channel called Mortuary (2005). Although we waited for it to get better, it never did. If anything, it got ever cheesier and campier. The plot was about normal people getting turned into zombies by some kind of fungus, which was vomited on them by previous zombies. The only virtue to the movie was that it had lots of nudity…which of course the Sci-fi channel edited out, so even that one set of perks wasn’t available to us. Sentimental fools that we are, Jennifer and I cried our eyes out at the end…tears of joy for seeing it go off the screen.
After a long day, we ventured off to sleep.
Sunday, March 26, 2006: Itching to Get Down South
The next morning dawned early and amidst the 200,000th slamming of the door outside our room. We dressed and to our maximum regret, we attempted to grab a quick breakfast at Bob Evans before we returned to our more sedate lives down south.
Buffeted and Bounced—Losing Our Breakfast Before We Eat It
Boy, was that a mistake! If we had dreaded getting a meal at a sit-down restaurant on a Saturday morning, Sunday was infinitely worse. As soon as we walked in the door, I wanted to leave. Throngs. Horrible, seething masses of people crawling over each other like bait in a Styrofoam cup. The waiting list was about 20 minutes…20 eternities for those of us who don’t like the closeness and dislocation of being in a crowd. We were bumped, jostled, squeezed and pushed until I wanted to vomit on people and turn them into zombies. It was mercy when they finally called our name.
Talk to the Back of My Head
Our waiter barely paid attention to us. We tried to understand that they were busy and hustling on a Sunday, the goal being to get people in and out as soon as possible. But speed and efficiency at the cost of accuracy and goodwill is not the answer. We could barely get a word out to our waiter before he was running away. He screwed up several parts of our omelet order and neglected to bring sweetener for Jennifer’s coffee…when we asked for it, we got enough sweetener for four cups! Urk! We were definitely ready to pack it in, leave this city and head for home.
Home and Proud of It
As always, Jennifer and I were sick of people by the end. When we rolled back home, we were just as excited to be back to the familiar as we were to leave it at the beginning. We do like to travel, but in small bursts and for a limited time. That’s a good characteristic, because otherwise, this little narrative would have held you even longer than it has already!
Thanks so much for sticking with us!
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