It's common knowledge that in New York, a free event invites all the crazies to the yard. I've been to enough movie screenings to learn that the loudly snoring elderly Black lady taking up the two seats to my right might not be exactly who Christopher Guest had in mind while filming For Your Consideration (save your money, by the way). The context of a free event never quite matters. Open bars, free concerts, street festivals: they're all completely vulnerable to being crashed by someone possessing about as much stability as Kirstie Alley at a coke-fueled, Scientologists-only disco night.
That being said, I should have known going into the First Saturday event at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday night that the place would be stuffed, wall to wall, with some of the most vividly unhinged maniacs I'd ever encountered. It should also be noted that there is something especially demented about "unglued" Brooklyn inhabitants that somehow make them artfully insane, as if they've been given special permission to delve into the dark corners of lunacy, but in "a really colorful way."
Needless to say, it was a phenomenal time.
Aside from being reminded that museums tend to filter out unattractive people, First Saturday also provided a glorious to observe crazies in a natural environment: at a DANCE PARTY! That's right, the entire third floor of the Brooklyn Museum was filled with all different walks of life: rich yuppies, wild kids, the elderly, poorly dressed middle-aged men, drunken hipsters, and beautifully delirious crazies lost in a state of unhinged, non-choreographed stuttered movement. A DJ, playing an excellent mix of kooky pre-Vietnam pop music, really catered to the crowd, spinning stuff from bossa nova to bebop. And do you know how that reads to a frenzied cuckoobird? An epiphany occurs where the inhibitions of everyone else in the room disappear, making for the ideal situation in which acting mental is welcomed, if not encouraged. Thus, we're all crazy. It's like Communism for the mentally ill!
Apparently, what else happens is that I spot the reincarnation of Patrick Crenshaw on the dance floor during Peggy Lee's "Fever." No, seriously. While the kickass little girls break it out, taking centerstage in the short clip below (which gave me, exercising an awkward jumble of stiff kicks and offbeat clapping similar those employed by Cousin Marilyn at a recent family bar mitzvah, all the more reason to drink), let your eyes gaze into the background where Fake Patrick Crenshaw burns it up as a fellow dancer stops to take a picture - ah, now that girl knows her priorities! - as you'll notice in the photo below:
Crenshaw at the Oscars, 2004:
Dancing Zombie Crenshaw at the Brooklyn Museum, 2006:
And to those who chide the concept of spending Saturday night in Brooklyn outside of Williamsburg, I ask you: When's the last time you danced to Astrud Gilberto alongside a woman in a one-piece who looked like she just came from a homeopathic lamaze class in 1988? Didn't think so.
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