Posted by nasty pumpkin from pool0236.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.236) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 1:25AM :
I've lost Dr. Ron Michaels as a patron too by now. He bought a couple of sculptures and I owe him another one...which I will get to him.
I like Ron...he's bright...sharp and terribly conceited without quite the justification he thinks he has...but he's fun and funny and talks like a real person. He's on a kick now to buy Henry Hyde, or rent him really, we haven't that much money and I'm afraid he's just a little to the right of Attila the Hun for my personal tastes...but so what. I could have stayed 'friendly" and Shawn will say I must just be peeved that no one is buying sculpture from me and I am an "artist scorned".
Ron and I would chat about how Assyrians don't value themselves...how difficult it is to accept that Assyrians can contribute to society AS Assyrians and not just as surgeons and lawyers and such. I practise Assyrian Art and it gets me praise, recognition and used to bring me money as well. If Ron dared practise Assyrian Medicine now...they'd throw him in jail.
Being an all around snob, Ron is of course a food and wine snob too...not very, but enough. He called me a couple of years ago when we were still in St Helena...said he'd just arrived in town with a sweet young thing... could I suggest a restaurant...and would I join them for lunch?
I suggested one at which a friend was that very day on shift as a waiter...and said I'd meet them there. I called my pal and said I would be meeting a couple and after lunch I wanted him to tell us that the manager, recognizing me as a local artist of GRAT promise, was picking up the tab.
We met...the young woman was lovely, tres elegant and Chaldean. We chatted and ate and drank. My luck, he ordered a $300 bottle of wine but it all went well. We even discussed the deplorable condition of the artist in our community and how no one took our own seriosly etc. with his lady friend and I in passionate agreement.
The check was finally called for by Ron...and my friend said, "Mr Parhad, the manager wishes you to know that your meal was on us."
I of course am flattered...Ron gawks...his date shoots him a glare because she'd just finished agreeing with me that our own people don't extend respect for their own...that this forces us to go elsewhere for praise and income etc. Ron was suspicious, but he didn't know exactly why. Here, at the end of our meal was just such evidence...that whites would extend a courtesy our own never would...and he felt guilty for not readily believing the charade.
I insisted on thanking the manager and walked off to pay the check. On the way out Ron had it on the tip of his tongue to ask if it was a set up...but he wasn't married yet (and didn't) and any such suggestion that only through a ruse would such a thing have occured would have ended it for him as far as that night was concerned. So he bit his tongue, shook hands in the parking lot...terribly conflicted, and drove off.
And he was right...but so was she and so was I.
The expensive bottle of wine was awful and I went happily back to my own bottle of cheap red which I'd been working on when he first called.
-- nasty pumpkin
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