museum of modern art, scotch

Took it easy today. My throat is still sore, and so I hope I'm not getting sick.

Made pancakes for breakfast. I moved K's ipod player to the dining room and loaded Songza so now I finally have some music back in my living spaces. Right now I'm chilling out to a bossa nova station, and it's real niiiiiiice.

I did finally get out and immediately grabbed two more barbacoa tacos for lunch before pressing on to Chapultapec park. Today, I wanted to visit the Museum of Modern Art. Like so many buildings, the exterior of the building belies its beauty. Actually, I had to double check my iphone to make sure I was at the right building. The building visible from the sidewalk, the main entry, is kind of...small. And round. The faceted drum of the building with the reflective dark glass and protruding silver mullions looks more like bad 80's architecture than avant garde 60's.

As it turns out it's just the welcome center, so to speak. It's got the gift shop, a few small exhibition rooms, a lounge, tickets (M$25), etc. The inside is quite nice, with the sensual, cool geometry of 60's modernism. Above the central stairwell, a massive shallow dome covered in gold, from which a modern glass light fixture string of pearls down to the lower level.

One passes through a pleasant sculpture garden to get to the larger building, in the same style, but containing the larger galleries. This building has a really cool mod lounge in the center atrium with books, benches, tables, and chairs. I really wanted it to be a bar selling Mai Tais. The domed ceiling above this atrium is a massive skylight which provides a warm yellow cast to everything. There are four huge exhibition rooms, one of them permanent, with the collection of Mexican artists from Diego Rivera's generation. There was Orozco, Sisquieros, Dr. Atl, Friday Kalho, the whole gang.

The other exhibits were good, although there was one artist who made incredibly realistic large charcoal drawings based on photographs. From a distance, it looked like a black and white photograph, down to focal blurring. The subject matter was also very striking- insane people at an asylum, the dead at the morgue in various stages of autopsy.

Anyway, afterwards, I walked over to the zoo since it was right next door and free. Mexico City has so many great museums and attractions. The zoo is not one of them. Didn't see many animals in the enclosures, and McDonald's dessert stations were everywhere. I did see one of the Mexican hairless dogs (Freda Kahlo kept two) and the rare "volcano rabbits" which looked like regular rabbits to me.

Came straight back home since I was getting tired and didn't want to overexert myself today since I'm planning on traveling to Tepotzlan tomorrow morning for some more sightseeing.

Oh, and K brought over nine bottles of good Scotch whisky from cleaning out her storage unit, most of them with less than a quarter bottle left. It's actually kind of a shame I'm not into scotch. I tried a little bit tonight, and it still tastes like furniture polish.