Went to see the new show at the Luckman Gallery, Dance Witches Dance, a collaboration between Lara Schnitger and My Barbarian. Schnitger has been making fragile, somewhat anthropomorphic sculptures out of commonplace materials such as knitted and sewn textiles, fabrics and sticks for several years now. She calls her sculptures "characters," which she literalizes with titles such as Beijing Bitch, The Cougar and Suicide Woman.

For this show she teamed up with performance collective My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade) who provided a song & dance interpretation of her sculptures. The conceit was that the sculptures were witches, and that the members of My Barbarian were some sort of sorcerers who could bring the sculptures to life in order to make them dance to the songs being sung. Lara Schnitger danced in the background and occasionally took part in the rites being performed as My Barbarian sang their songs -- Schnitger looked exceedingly pleased that her sculptures were being metaphorically brought to life; it occurred to me that the next step should be to actually bring her sculptures to life via mechanical means -- I half expected them to actually move. There was also a video in the back room that they collaborated on -- it was supposedly filmed in the former Hollywood Hills home of Liberace, now owned by an art collector and apparent fan of Schnitger and My Barbarian. Overall a great collaboration -- I hope they do more together.

The next morning I woke up at dawn to join Ara Shirinyan, Brian Kim Stefans and a host of others for the Armenian specialty breakfast, khash. It's sort of an Armenian menudo, a hot boiling pot of garlicky goodness -- with stewed cow tongue, stomach, hoof and tendon. It's served with dried lavash bread crumbled into the soup, and lots of garnishes: pickles, radishes, fresh greens and cured meats. Also you drink vodka. Lots and lots of vodka -- and at 7 in the morning, it really gets your day off to a fresh start, let me tell you. The idea is you eat, get a little tipsy, then go back to sleep and wake up in the afternoon. It's supposed to be a good hangover cure. I love it. All the richness from the fat makes your lips stick together.