We're pathologically social. We're professional leisurists. We're burrito lovers, bar flies, art whores and music nerds. We dish the good dirt, and we'll risk a parking ticket for a cheap sample sale. Sometimes, we blog drunk.
Ward on the Street: Beers and squirrels in Flux
"Where do you even get a dead squirrel?" a blond woman asks her friend.
I'm at the Venice offices of Flux, the film collective responsible for last year's Swerve Fest and the ongoing Hammer screening series. They recently moved to new, breezy headquarters and—as a housewarming gesture—are hosting an art exhibit by Kyle Ng and throwing a party that involves a barrel of free beers.
It's a sleepy Thursday evening, and I'm standing face-to-face with a cluster of taxidermied squirrels wrapped around a dead fox, suspended from the ceiling and attached to a fistful of glass balloons. People surround it, sipping free merlot, unsure of how to respond. I myself can't decide if I want to pet it or run away; both gestures seem inappropriate.
There's a queue forming in front of a closed door, so I shrug and wait with a few strangers to enter a closet. Rather than 7 minutes of anonymous make-outs, we enter to find that it's tricked out as a snowscape, complete with a foot of powder and a stuffed porcupine sniffing a fake human hand. My date murmurs as we slide open the door to leave, "What's weirder than the dead porcupine is that we were all in there... just looking at it… silently."
Leaving, I run into Ng outside and he asks, "Did you see the porcupine?" I shake his hand, say yes, and compliment him on the gold walrus with the rhinestone-blinged tusks in the hallway.
But I forget to ask where he got the squirrels.
Miss Alie Ward
Trackback URL: http://blogs-losangeles.metromix.com/vmix_hosted_apps/66/post/2575/trackback/