Today was our appointment with Materials for the Arts. MFA, for those of you following along at home, is a lovely service which connects discarded industrial goods with needy non-profit artists -- like us! -- for free. It is also a giant, infuriating bureaucracy in a well-hidden warehouse in Long Island City. It's hot; it's grubby; it makes me unspeakably cranky. All the frustration of thrift-store shopping with a thousand times the chance of sticking your hand on some weird fiberglass by-product that will make your hands sting for days! And you can't say no to anything, because what if you regret it later? And it's all free! So I sit by the cart and glower. I am a top-flight glower-artist.
But the real horror of MFA, legendary among visitors, is the parking guy. The parking guy is an example of the failure of the conventional playwright's tools. Merely reporting this guy's speech won't cut it when it comes to conveying exactly how infuriating he is. He is in a constant state of wounded anger. He cannot believe that you would drive into the parking lot without stopping at the unmarked, ambiguous border to hunt him up from wherever he is! He is enraged by your failure to follow rules you had no way of knowing about! He is sneeringly contemptuous of your ignorance of where the door is! For all of these sins, he will subject you to a repetitive, half-shouted, half-whined lecture, which can only be escaped by (a) flight, or (b) the appearance of some other poor soul breaking rules nobody told them.
But anyway, now we have lots of stuff. My favorite is the tambourine that looks like a turtle.
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