wandering through an art museum

big meal at monroe's, king kong, then a bowl of corn chex

Martin Munoz from work, my dad, Josh, and I are in a large city in another country. We are working towards the museum. We get there and visit the gift shop first, which is like a giant, run-down Walgreens. Stephanie is working there behind a big square counter as a chekout girl. She shows us a handful of little decorative boxes and jewels on long chains. She does a little magic trick to make them appear out of her shirtsleeve. They are repros of objects in the collection. We can go up and see the real things and then buy our own repros up in the other store.

We head upstairs, into large, modern gallery spaces with polished concrete floors and white walls. [National Gallery in London.] We take escalators up to a second level overlooking a huge wall with large paintings with Byzantine themes on them. They are beautiful, but not what we're looking for. Keep moving. We come to a long hallway , the surfaces encrusted with yellow stones, jewels, junk, beads, etc. Large Scooby Doo characters are painted on board and cut out & mounted on the walls between the intervening doorways. "John Pfahl," explains the tour guide we run into, did this Scooby Doo tunnel. The doors lead into artists' studios, still active. The tour moves into one of these studios. I sit in the artist's chair. We are somewhat frustrated that we can't find the "Body Ornamentation" galleries so we can get our little jewel boxes, but I'm also interested in learning about the John Pfahl hallway.