14 February 2010

Gung Hay Fat Choi

The image above is from 6th Avenue in New York City. Happy new year to all the Tigers out there, since it is your year. Chinese New Year is so much more fun than the dreary January 1 holiday. I'd say it's because I'm not obligated to do anything, but I have no January 1 obligations either.

This is some sort of holiday tsunami, what with the beginning of the lunar new year, and then Mardi Gras on Tuesday (and of course all celebrants will be fasting and repenting on Ash Wednesday, motivated by more spiritual causes than just a hangover), and Presidents' Day, though since I have to work I'm afraid Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan will have to go unhonored by me.

And I join Marge Simpson in wishing everyone a Happy Love Day. Here's some hilarity from the Onion, and an image for the day from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is a detail from Lorenzo Lotto's Venus and Cupid. I was looking at Titian's Venus and Adonis in the same gallery and had only seen the Lotto out of the corner of my eye when two middle-school students, a boy and a girl, walked up to it and suddenly the girl went, "Ooooooh!" in that "this is so gross!" way and started giggling. So it was then I figured out that Cupid must be peeing. The wall label assured us that what it delicately referred to as "Cupid's action" is an "augury of fertility" and "confers a mood of light-hearted wit" on the scene.
Good auguries and light-hearted wit to all in abundance.

4 comments:

Ms. Baker said...

One of the good things about having a poor memory is that I get to laugh all over again when rereading that Onion piece.
The person who declared little Cupid's peeing "light-hearted wit" probably also owns every Benny Hill DVD.
Happy Valentine's Day.

Libby Fife said...

I seem to remember that I saw a painting with a lactating woman at the Crocker Musueum in Sacramento.

The Cupid picture brought the adulterated Calvin cartoon to mind. Forerunner to the logo on the back of cars with the fake Calvin doing his business on whatever?

Civic Center said...

I love that it took a junior high girl doing a grossed out "Oooh!" to make you notice a golden shower moment at the Met. Thanks also for sharing, and I worked on this President's Holiday too, for the federal government no less.

Patrick J. Vaz said...

Well, I would have noticed eventually even without the junior-highness, since I was circling the gallery and hadn't really gotten there yet, but I thought her reaction was so funny.

It reminded me of going through Fontainbleu, a gorgeous French Renaissance chateau, and seeing an elegant fountain that, upon closer examination, turned out to feature pissing greyhounds.