what is art? art is art.

if i wasn't already convinced that i'm far too simple to understand art, i totally proved it to myself this weekend.

after the old lady and i got home from doing the ROC race, we threw around all sorts of ideas as to what we could do to entertain the bean (and ourselves) for the rest of the day.  disneyland was out, because hot and crowded.  our membership to the l.a. zoo was expiring soon, but again...hot and crowded.  the natural history museum?  well, we were still a little scarred from our time there during that wack ass overnight outing we did a couple of months ago.

but then i thought of something else - we'd been wanting to check out the broad museum in downtown l.a. for awhile.  we'd scored tickets one weekend, but then weren't able to attend for one reason or another.  i knew they did a standby line for those who didn't have tickets and were willing to wait, and their twitter feed told me that the current wait was about half an hour.  then i randomly clicked on the "get tickets" button, and by some sort of magic managed to snag three tickets for later that afternoon.  sweet!

it was an easy drive downtown - well, with the usual bit of traffic just a mile or two away, but that's to be expected.  parking was super easy and located right underneath the museum, and since the tickets were free i didn't bat an eye at the $10 i forked over to pull into a spot.

i love stuff like this.  whenever you take ordinary things and either shrink them down to mini size or blow them up to gigantic proportions, it's just fun.

it was a pretty long way up on the escalator.

as soon as we stepped off of the escalator, the adventure began.

i don't have anything interesting to say about most of the stuff we saw, because - well, i'm not gonna lie.  i just really don't get it.

 'murrica!

this just made me want some pancakes.

we did like the shiny things, though.  especially the gold urinal thingy.

big michael jackson fan?

the bean's reaction to stuff was funny too.  i heard a lot of "mommy, this is...weird.  i don't get it."  join the club, kid.

who'd have known you could turn a bunch of vacuum cleaners into a piece of art?  not me, that's for sure.

and hey, props for reducing/reusing/recycling.

at least i recognized something - some andy warhol work.

and this was by far our favorite part.  the girls thought it was funny when i remarked that now we knew what mollydog gets to see every day.

by then, we'd had our fill and happily headed into the elevator to see what else there might be.  there wasn't much, by the way.

back downstairs, we found that the line to sign up for the infinity mirrored room had dwindled down to nothing.  so we stepped up to the iPad to check it out...

we found an empty bench to sit and gather our thoughts on our experience thus far:

and then a museum staffer approached us and asked if we had a reservation for the infinity room.  i explained that we'd just signed up on the iPad and she said "do you guys want to go in right now?"

um, YES.

she walked us right over to the entrance, where there was one couple waiting ahead of us, and told the guy who was manning the door that we were next.  each visitor or small group gets to enter the room for 45 seconds, and they're very strict about that time limit.  he explained that we would be standing on a narrow platform over water with low-hanging lights just above us, so we needed to be super careful or we'd end up wet or wacking our heads on the lights.  we could take as many pictures as we wanted, but as soon as he knocked on the door we had to exit right away.

i was so enthralled by all the pretty lights while we were inside that i really only took a couple of pictures.  that's okay, though, because how many pictures like this does one really need?

a stop in the gift shop had the bean gazing at this with the most confused look on her face.

outside, we saw people setting up for what looked like an outdoor concert.

and this looks like a super cool restaurant.  maybe on a date night with the hub one day.

as we left, we noticed how long the standby line had gotten.  whew...thank goodness for last minute online tickets!

so to sum it up...giant plates and table and chairs, giant shiny balloon animal, infinity room.  that's pretty much all we got out of our visit to the broad.  i'm not entirely sure that we'll return unless the hub decides he wants to check it out, but i'm glad we went.

yay for culture?