Irrelevance Glorified

For once, a post not about hiking! Back at the end of July, I traveled back to Chicago for a long weekend. Why? Well, for one, I hadn’t been back in a little while and hadn’t seen anyone in my family since February, so it seemed like a decent idea. Secondly, my sister Sharmila had recently had a kid, so I was up for seeing my new nephew Sachin. And thirdly, my other sister Vandana and her husband Rich were coming up from Orlando, which is a fairly rare occurrence. So I took a few days off from work and flew in to Chicago. Thursday was spent doing chores around my Mom’s place, such as cleaning gutters and stuff. Friday we drove up to Sharmila’s place on the North Side, meeting up with Vandana and Rich. We spent most of that day goo-gooing over the baby and taking a little walk out to Lake Michigan. Saturday’s forecast called for rain, so we decided to do something indoor, namely go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hadn’t been to the Art Institute for a really long time, so I was definitely up for that (although I was very disappointed when I realized they had removed/hidden the medieval armor and weapons gallery). They had recently opened up a new Modern Art wing, so I was curious what they had there. It was….interesting, to say to the least. I took a few pictures, although not so many as I always tend to feel like I’m stealing from artists and the museum when I do so. Afterwards we went out for Tapas, and Sunday was time to return to our respective homes.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures after the jump.

I wanted to get Sachin a stuffed Tiger, because he should know that tigers are the best animal. But I saw a deal on Winnie the Pooh characters, and I had to jump on it, to make him aware of both the best types of animals and the proper types of children’s cartoons. None of this hyper-commercialized junk, Winnie the Pooh harkens back to a time when cartoons were good for their own sake. Luckily, though, it eventually became hyper-commercialized, so I was able to get these stuffed animals for him.

It’s always nice to have stuffed animals that are as large as you are. It’s a lot cheaper to achieve when you are pretty small, though.

Here’s my sister Vandana posing with Sachin. Is he asleep or just blinking?

Okay, sleeping it is. Man, he is lazy.

In many ways, babies are like black holes. In particular, they tend to bend light in such a way as to make it impossible not to take pictures of them. Here, Rich (Sachin’s Uncle-in-law) holds Sachin while my sisters Vandana and Sharmila take pictures.

Grandma here has gotten pretty good at taking care of Sachin. It’s good to know that she’s in the area if needed. By the way, Sachin eats like a champ. He was constantly hungry. It was somewhat frightening.

It’s kinda hard to tell if he’s setting up to start crying here. It looks like he’s enjoying himself…and then it looks like he’s about to cry….and then he’s okay again….and then he’s hand jiving. It’s all so confusing. He should just learn to talk and leave all this doubt behind.

Sachin loves his Daddy.

This is a fairly awkward hold I have here, but whatever, I’m not very good at holding babies. This is pretty much how I would hold a cat.

Rich & Sachin are engaged in a battle of the ages. Alternately, Sachin is just confused that he’s being held by someone who isn’t brown.

My sister’s apartment isn’t too far from Lake Michigan, so we found the closest access point and went for a walk. Every walk with the kid is an expedition. I carry a lot less when I’m hiking 10 miles.

Sachin likes to hunch down when he’s being held by his Mommy.

From right to left, here are Rich, Vandana, Alok, and Sharmila. Well, actually, if I just said this is Rich & Vandana next to Alok & Sharmila, you probably could have figured that one out as well.

I like this picture because it looks like Sachin is pinning my Mom down. He may grow up to be a good wrestler.

That night, some of our old family friends came over to celebrate some birthdays, and to see Vandana and me, since we’re not often in the Chicago area. It’s been a while since Chandru here had a kid of his own this small, but he seems to have remembered how it goes. It’s probably like riding a bike.

Considering how well Sachin slept through this party, I don’t see why I have to be quiet when he’s napping.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited the Art Institute of Chicago, and they recently opening a wing devoted to Modern Art. They had a lot of….interesting stuff in there. For instance, this display used video as the media. Um…about clown torture.

Clown Torture is a collection of looping videos. One of them had the clown crying in a room. One of them showed a clown on the toilet, reading a magazine. Here’s another video of a clwon holding on to a broom(?) attached to the ceiling. Or wall. Something. I rotated this image; as displayed the clowns feet point to the right, perhaps insinuating that this clown is required to stay horizontal.

I understand why Modern Art is often so weird. I realize that since the invention of photography, making "realistic" art isn’t very challenging or noteworthy, so artists must feel compelled to be more abstract or metaphorical rather than being an undistorted lens. However, I think it’s real easy to fall across the line into pretentiousness, and this one art piece made me chuckle with it’s over-the-top-ness. I didn’t even take a picture of the actual installation….I think the description is painstakingly thorough enough that you can probably imagine this work in your mind’s eye. By the way, the "painful imagery" includes illustrations of lynched people (presumably black people) hanging from a tree. Maybe I’m just unappreciative of higher art, but the way this is all so explicit, with each component a static metaphor…it’s like an overdramatic high schooler made it up.

Seurat’s memorable painting always makes me think of Ferris Bueller. If you zoom in enough, you can get the same effect.

This was supposed to be a great use of the mirrored elevator wall to take a picture of all us. But without flash, it was blurry. With poor white balance, it’s yellow. And with me, it accentuates my gut.

We found this sculpture/installation while walking towards dinner. It’s near Michigan Avenue and the Chicago River, and it’s by J. Seward Johnson. Don’t know why its there, though…

Based on some after-the-fact Google Street exploration, I’ve pinned this down as the corner of Michigan & Ohio, on the Magnificent Mile. They should rename Ohio to Ohio State for this little stretch, to see if they can incite any fights or anything. Decreasing both of those teams’ fan bases would be a good thing, overall. Anyways, I took this picture because Michigan avenue is packed up ahead, and since there were no outstanding events today, I think this was just normal business for them. Aren’t all these people in debt?