The UA Cinema by the Scottsdale Civic Center is special to me because that is where I first saw Broadcast News and The Unbearable Lightness of Being--still the best examples of the megababeness of William Hurt and Daniel Day-Lewis, respectively. Alas, the property owners, who have no sense of history, sold the building to the City of Scottsdale which gutted it and transformed it into the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
The downside is obvious, but the upside is that the same room which saw Day-Lewis seduce the women of Prague by telling them, "Take off your clothes" bore witness to the second to latest Funk+Fashion show featuring Pat. Beyond that, the entry fee was only $5, and free snacks were available in the concession stand…uh, gift shop. Plus, there was a tarot card reader, but I'll get to her in a moment.
The sponsor of the evening was Plush, retailer of shiny retro clothing which I wouldn't recommend to anybody who weighs over 155lbs.
I weigh well over that amount, well over and also have a policy against shiny clothing that rivals the White Pants Codices in gravity, but none of the people I knew who were there that evening came in shiny retro clothes so I didn't feel too out of place. These included multitalented Nicole Maletta and her protégé Christina, Shane and his posse, and our cousin Kristine.
A few weeks ago, Nicole's designs were featured at another museum happening-The Phoenix Art Museum this time, which boasts myself, Pat and his doppelganger Partick J. McGovern as members.
The name of this event was "Very She-She," and in the company of an embarrassingly dated dance tribute to Feminism and the enormous photographic reproductions from that Mistress of the Obvious Annie Liebowicz, Nicole's act was classiest. Though I had to giggle when directly after the announcement for her show was made the first person to cross the staging area was a fat janitor pushing a brimming garbage can. But the most notable feature of the evening was the all too rare appearance of Nicole's brother David. We always ask if she has him in tow, and she almost always answers, "What, on a school night?" and snorts with distain. Anyway, during the dance number, he would turn and stage whisper, "What the hell is this?…I should writhe on the floor like that during my closings [he works for the DA's office and is wonderful at it and respects his boss utterly]. I act out the murders sometimes and I think it makes people nervous."
Although Nicole has been mentioned in The Cobra's Nose a number of times, only recently has she become a subscriber. On the night of the Scottsdale Museum show, after her first exposure to some back issues of The Nose, she expressed satisfaction that my prose has proved me deranged enough to run in her circle. While I chose to take that as a compliment, I am a bit concerned with the vibe I apparently project in person.
Samantha the tarot card reader (I said I would get back to her) had the most exotic teeth I've ever seen in person-quite a prominent overbite with long canines, like fangs. When I complimented them, she said, "Not capped-yours?" Maybe a bit defensive. In dress, she was everything you could hope for in a mystic, mostly in black with lots of shiny, dangly objects which kept catching on the embroidered shawl that covered the table in front of her. She asked what I hoped to get out of the reading ("I don't know") and began laying cards on the table.
"I see one, no! two romantic entanglements in your near future. Both men, or" she held up her hands, "women."
The fabulous Nicole Maletta
People make this allowance more and more, and I'm getting a bit concerned about that vibe as well "will enter your life sooner than you think." She turned over another card. "Three! Three romances."
I imagine I looked rather nonplussed at this point because Samantha began to comfort me. "Don't worry, everything will be fine. You will know precisely how to handle all of them and will grow as a result of your experience." Little did I know how true her words would be, but I'll get to that in a moment.
Kristine was next up for a reading, and I didn't want to just hang around and spy on it. Besides, she is something of a magnet for magic and romance and I wasn't in the mood to have my three future liaisons upstaged, so I returned to the room where the show was due to begin in ten or fifteen minutes, which it did.
Because the clothes were Seventies Revival, Funk+Fashion impresario Mr. P-body (pictured below) abandoned his usual electronica mix of music in favor of Steppenwolf, late Beatles, middle Bowie, and the like, with spotty results. There is nothing about "Magic Carpet Ride" or "Tomorrow Never Knows" that suggests a vamp, and when the person vamping is your brother dressed like a hotdog salesman the disconnect is glaring. But his other outfits (a cream color shirt and one with swirls in boxes, both with tight black pants) out glammed any rough spots with the music, and when that chick came out with an open jacket and no shirt at least half the room stopped listening anyway.
After the show, we regrouped, and I asked Kristine what Samantha had predicted for her, and she said, "I was expecting the normal, 'romance will come into your life' spiel, but actually she talked about my job and how it profitable it would be to my future professional and spiritual development." I might have been amazed myself had I not been witness to Kristine passionately described her job to two guys whilst standing in line for her reading, and I began to doubt Samantha's predictions for me. Kristine had to leave, and I thought I would check out the art, having finally finished with my plate of free snacks which were forbidden to enter the galleries.
What I saw in the largest was not heartening, lots of half-assed concept stuff that made me question my interest in art generally, but the moderne restroom, sculpture garden/ smoking area, and paintings from the guest artist in the little gallery put me in a good enough mood to start singing snatches of "Mull of Kintyre" (because snatches are all I know), and not stop until I got home and went to bed.
THE VERY NEXT EVENING…Funk+Fashion opened for P-Funk at the America West Plaza in Hayden Square. I'm almost certain I got the name of that venue wrong, but it's too late to go anyway. When I arrived, Pat was still being made up, but Nicole, Christina, and Christina's mom Becky were on hand, drinking Happy Punch from the Have a Nice Day Café.
Pat is wearing the Chachi bandana on his leg, Mr. P-Body
is in the lower pic on the far right.
Happy Punch is commonly served in fishbowls with smiley faces on them and tastes like Kool-Ade, but don't be deceived-it packs a whollop. We were chatting when Pat turned up with good hair and silly make-up-three quarters normal, then long lashes painted on the top and bottom of his left eye. The look was meant to evoke Alex from A Clockwork Orange, but more resembled Sister Connie Lee interrupted halfway through her toilette. Pat figured that since relatively few people even know who Sister Connie Lee is that wouldn't bother him too much.
Suddenly, Nicole pointed at my hemline. "Slip!" she said. She was acting in her role as the Fashion Police. "You have to suffer for Fashion. Just look at them," she pointed to Christina and Becky who were decked out in unseasonable head to toe Minimal winter wear. "Look at these shoes," she pointed to pink plastic clad feet. "DOES THIS LOOK COMFORTABLE TO YOU?!"
"That's all I heard this for the first two months I knew Nicole," said Pat, then he left to finish preparing for the show.
"And now you look fabulous!" She shouted after him.
She led me to a booth where another of her protégés was working and selected two strings of beads (which I did not have to flash anybody to get, in case you were thinking of starting that rumor) to match my outfit. Then I found a comfortable place near the catwalk to await the show, which was much better than the previous night's because Mr. P-body seemed more comfortable spinning R&B and funk selections, Pat didn't wear the wiener vendor get-up, and because I was hit on midway through by this guy with no shirt.
We had a brief discussion about P-Funk and the music that was currently playing (the Williams Brothers, our song I suppose you could say). I turned away to woo-hoo at Pat, and when I looked back he was gone. Well, okay-he didn't look that good without a shirt anyway. Well, actually, he did, but easy come easy go.
The show ended, and I meandered back to the bar to get a Coke. While I was waiting, another guy (named "Guy," as a matter of fact) struck up a conversation. This was getting weird, but when Guy got his fishbowl full of Happy Punch he vanished as if into thin air. That was more like it, but then a third guy asked me what I was drinking. I said, "Coke" as if I meant it, but he pointed to the beer can that sat before him and said I could have it if I wanted. Empty beer can, I gather, as he walked away with a fresh one moments there after. Charmed, I'm sure.
Then it struck me: three men in quick succession. The Prophesy!
(Believe me, I know how pitiful this all sounds, but it's a lot more action than I see in a typical night out, which sounds even worse, but it is, alas, true.)
Pat finished up with his Funk+Fashion responsibilities, then he and Nicole, and Christina and Christina's mom Becky, and I listened to P-Funk for a while, then headed to Z-Tejas to see if Kerrie was working (no) then to that Japanese restaurant, you know the one, right down from Z-Gallery, for sushi. There, Christina tried to convince Pat that sperm were responsible for dragging putrefying tissue all around women's bodies and causing disease, but Pat kept interrupting her to say, "YES! SPERM! YES!!!"
I sat quietly and reflected on
the Signs and Wonders that had been visited upon me that blessed night.
Written by Sharon C. McGovern
