Sex education (unwittingly)

I went to see the William Eggleston exhibit at the Whitney Museum yesterday. I like his photographs (if you're a Big Star/Alex Chilton fan you will already be familiar with his work from the Radio City and Like Flies on Sherbert album covers), but I was eager to see the video, Stranded in Canton, that's also part of the exhibit. It's mainly footage Eggleston shot during the early 70s in Memphis, Mississippi, and Louisiana. And since a good part of it was shot in bars in Memphis, it's mostly Eggleston's friends rambling drunkenly and lurching toward the camera. In many respects it's not that different than countless scenes you've probably already seen on Cops (although as far as I know, Cops has never featured a couple geeks biting the heads off of chickens). I'm not quite sure why I would find this so appealing, but it may be because I prefer watching humans in their most natural state: drunk, dumb, and barely civilized.

Later, while exploring the Progress exhibit on another floor, I had to chuckle when a well-meaning mom encouraged her young son and daughter to check out Ammo by Robert Rauschenberg (the NY Times described it as a sculpture of "obscurely erotic images of human body parts silk-screened on plexiglass backlighted by blinking lights"). "Look at the flashing lights," mom said as her kids approached the sculpture. For her sake, I hoped the kids couldn't make out the only images I could: cunnilingus, wide open beaver, and dangling balls mid-coitus.