Modern art is rubbish?
Damien Hirst, “master of the modern British art scene”, had a launch party recently for his new work. At the party he arranged some of the rubbish — beer bottles, ash trays, candy wrappers — into an impromptu art installation. The next morning the gallery janitor arrived and promptly threw it all into the garbage. Ha! The gallery had a cow, of course, and workers had to dig through the trash to reclaim everything and rebuild the “artwork” from photographs. Hirst apparently found the whole debacle quite funny.
Personally, I just love the way the British press crow about this stuff. “Cool Britannia” was a great marketing slogan, but the reality over here is quite different. Sure, Londoners are pretty modern about most things, but there are certain topics guaranteed to bring out the conservative side in most Brits: joining the Euro and scrapping the pound, laws the force the use of the metric system, genetically modified foods, and modern art and architecture. Of course, having seen the Lloyds of London building up close and personal, I’ve got to agree with them on the last one…
Three things that describe my afternoon: 
In need of a challenge, I decided that tonight I would attempt a culinary feat that has set cooks a-trembling since the Dawn of Man: making my own homemade pizza from scratch. Armed only with the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the memories of watching my mom do it a bazillion times, I proceeded to make a large, floury mess of my kitchen. The kneading part was enjoyable, though I proceeded to get goo all through my hair. Once the yeast beast was “resting” in a covered dish, I suddenly remembered that I had only one pan suitable for baking a pie on. “Oh well,” I thought. “There isn’t that much dough, really. I’ll just use it all on one pizza.” (Take a note, kids. Never double up on your pizza dough.) Strike one. While that monstrous slab was baking in the oven, I turned my attention to the toppings. Wanting to be professional, I sliced my onions very thin. Thin to the point of shriveling into tiny charred strands of nothingness after being baked. Strike two. (Always remember to cut veggies into substantial chunks to avoid oven disintegration.) And lastly, as I was spreading the cheese over the top of this aberration (the dough had formed a lovely dome in the center, so everything slid towards the crust), I realized that simply picking the “white” shredded cheese doesn’t guarantee mozzarella in this country, but instead nine times out of ten you’ve got low-fat cheddar. Which kinda sucked. Strike three, I’m out.
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