Free Day at the Leonard Cohen Exhibit

It’s always a dilemma of epic proportions: whether to go to Free Day at a museum or to pay to get in some other day. 

On the one hand, *Free Day,* emphasis on the Free. 

On the other hand, when you go to Free Day, you’re packed in the museum with the kind of people who go to non-profit institutions on the day they don’t have to pay.

We went to see the Leonard Cohen exhibit at the Jewish Museum on Free Day. It was the only day we could go. I don't know where the summer went, but Leonard will be headed out next week or something so the clock was ticking to get our asses up there.

Leonard Cohen at the Jewish Museum, UES

The exhibit was more like a video installation than an exhibit in the way you'd probably picture an exhibit. The rooms were dark. Beanbags and benches took up most of the floor space. And the place was jammed. Like Free Day jammed. Like the standing room only in the back spilled out into the hallway.

In the middle of one of the video loops, two people got up from one of the benches and I careened in for the kill. Some woman did too. Except she positioned herself right in the middle of the two-person area, so I found myself perched on the edge of the seat. Which would have been awesome had I been engaged in some sort of quad strengthening yoga move, but I was not engaged in some sort of quad strengthening yoga move. I was looking to simply watch the damn Leonard Cohen art film.

So I said to the bespeckled woman (she had on glasses), "Could you kindly scootch just a little bit?" I said this very pleasantly. The bespeckled woman leapt into action. I mean it really was ten points for the leap. She lands so far over in the other direction that remarkably, a possible third spot opened up between us.

And then this other lady rolls up and says to the bespeckled woman, "Could you move a little more so I can sit?" This third lady, not nearly as pleasant. She plops her polyester shorts down between us and it was a tight squeeze I can tell you. Plus, she had really bad breath. Like bad enough that I could mark each exhale from a full-on peripheral 180° position.

I leaned back. And then a little further back. You might have called it Boat Pose. Or Sinking Boat Pose as it were.

I call it, "Sinking Boat Pose"
Photo Credit: https://www.wikihow.fitness/Do-an-Abs-Workout-in-a-Chair