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Herb Benham: Soldiering on with museum face and black teeth at Chinese warriors exhibit
| Monday, Oct 6 2008 10:34 AM
Last Updated: Monday, Oct 6 2008 1:55 PM
Now I see how the Chinese put on the Olympics. After the Terra Cotta Warriors, building the Bird’s Nest must have seemed as easy as eating a pork bun.
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Recently we went to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana to see an exhibit called the Terra Cotta Warriors, Guardians of China’s First Emperor. In 1974, farmers were digging a well when they discovered part of the crypt from the first emperor of China along with what may eventually contain 6,000 life-size soldiers made from terra cotta. The soldiers looked as if they were guarding the emperor’s tomb.
We went to the exhibit because this is what people do whose children leave home. They become art people. Then they buy floppy brown hats, matching brown shorts with an abundance of pockets, sturdy shoes, binoculars and start bird watching.
On the way to Santa Ana, we stopped at the LA Mill Coffee Boutique in Silver Lake for lunch.
“You didn’t know there was a lake in Silver Lake?” said my future bird-watching companion in a slightly incredulous tone of voice when we passed by the lake.
No, I didn’t because I’m from Bakersfield where we have a river that doesn’t have water in it.
You can buy good food and coffee at the LA Mill Coffee Boutique, but just sitting there ratchets up your cool quotient. I felt like I could have written a script and acted in my own movie.
I had a sweet pork sandwich with a sliced heirloom tomato. Afterward, I had a cup of Ethiopian free trade coffee made in a French press.
The coffee was darker than a moonless night in the Black Forest so I asked for cream and sugar.
“Cream and sugar?” repeated the waitress who had a scarf flung around her neck. “That’s like adding ice to wine.”
I know, but this coffee is so dark I’m afraid I’m going to end up with black teeth. No teeth are one thing, and where I come from, they are almost a fashion statement, but black teeth are not quite as festive.
After lunch, we drove to Santa Ana, about an hour away. Our time slot at the museum was 3:15 to 4 p.m., when the museum closed. Forty-five minutes is perfect. You can blow through the exhibit, master a couple of buzz words and then pretend you’re going to buy something in the gift shop on the way out.
Some advice about museums. Don’t get bogged down by the small stuff. Skip anything smaller than your hand. If the artist had thought it was important, he’d had made it bigger.
Also, don’t bother with the phone-like listening devices detailing in audio form what you are seeing. First of all, they make you look stupid. In a museum, looking stupid is not a good idea. Especially when your teeth were as black as mine were.
“Look at the guy with the black teeth. Do you think he’s part of the exhibit?”
I wouldn’t bother reading about the exhibits either. That’s too much work. Just walk up to one of those big clay soldiers and give him a head butt.
People wore their museum faces. It’s the face that says, “This is a drag, but I know it’s important. Please don’t talk to me. I’m close to a breakthrough.”
We exited through the gift shop. People were buying replicas of the terra cotta soldiers. Small ones. They might as well have had black teeth.
Opinions expressed are those of Herb Benham, not The Californian.