As expected, the Jen Beckman Gallery was a bit of a letdown for Gene (You can tell by the fact that I'm referring to myself in the third person). For starters, Eliot's work was all there, which is to say that I've already seen all his pieces on his website that you see in the gallery. I was hoping for more unpublished work. Just as important, the prices were out of my league. Not that this is a bad thing for Eliot or a bad thing to do, a guy's got to eat after all, and his work is definitely worth it. But still, it would have been nice to have been able to afford an Eliot Shepard original print. The galery was also tiny, which meant my usual habit of hiding in a corner or nursing some free wine while being ignored wasn't going to work. My giant ass bag didn't make matters any easier, as I went to get some water (sparkling it turns out). I think the gallery is the size of my cubicle. Only with 50 people inside of it. It was a schmoozefest, which I do terrible at, failing to even have a minor conversation with the two people I did actually know (kinda): theMexican (aka Raul) and Eliot (the artist ... I'll email him later about the meetup thingy). At least I could have congratulated Eliot on his show, it's a big deal I think. I chickened out on the phototaking thing. Nobody else was taking photos, at all, so I couldn't screw up the courage to take out the camera and go to town. Which sucks because there were a lot of great looking interesting people there that I could have gone to town on. The worst was when kdunk kept passing her iconic picture and I kept having these great pictures in my head that I was too wimpy to whip the camera out for. My test setup for tonight's elephant parade totally blew. The settings are all off, the tests were totally inconclusive. I'm so going to have to wing it tonight, and with less battery charge to boot too. And now I'm blogging instead of sleeping, which means that I'll be totally out of it later tonight. All my elephant pictures are going to suck, and I'm going to fall asleep on the subway and thus get mugged. Plus I'll be too tired to post my pics, and some hoser is going to get the scoop instead. I think it's the lack of schmoozing ability that drives me the most nuts tho.