If it's Saint Plotniko There Has To Be a Zoo

Pat and Joe are in town, and when they're in town you go to the zoo. The Great Ducknik's brother and sister-in-law, who have been married three months longer than Plot and Duck, are traveling quite a bit these days and they hit the local zoo in just about every city they're in.



Plot and Duck hadn't been to SF Zoo in many years -- since before Tatiana the Tiger made a fatal mistake and only ate one of the trio of low-lifes that were tormenting her (not realizing if you get a tiger mad enough and it happens to leap out of its pen you are in serious trouble) and they had to shoot Tatiana and then the dead man's friends ended up suing the zoo and just about bankrupted it. Plot is still mad about that one, in case you couldn't tell.



The zoo is one of those many places you never go to unless out of town guests are visiting. But it's a mistake. There is a lot to see and learn. Did you know an Asian rhino weights 5,000 pounds and can run 50 mph? He's way bigger and faster than the grizzly or the gorilla. Luckily for you, he's got really bad eyesight and lives in China.



After the zoo came a delightful pass through the Picasso show at the de Young, many paintings of which Plot and Duck had seen a few years ago at the Picasso Museum in the Marais in Paris. Picasso was definitely a genius, but the show is 'way over-analyzed, especially on the audio, where they attempt to make political and psychological points about the artist's many artistic periods. Some make sense, some are just silly. So why bother?

it is Plotnik's opinion, and this is the opinion that really counts, that you don't sum up Picasso by his blue period or his red period or his Civil War period or his cubist period, but by his girl friends. Every time he took on a new mistress (and he was still at it well into his seventies) he was inspired into a new style of work. There's the Olga period and the Jacqueline period and the Dora period and probably a Flora and Cora and Shmora period as well.

There are two portraits on one wall, the left one of which is the famous painting of Dora Maar, with her crazy angular face and fingers. It is vibrant and full of bright colors. Next to it is another famous painting of a woman who is probably his wife at the time. The colors are muted and pastel. You can speculate that woman on left is coming in and woman on right is going out.

Picasso wrote that "it must be hard for a woman to see by my work that our relationship is fading."

No lie. Ducknik says she's amazed one of these women's mothers or big brothers didn't just walk up to the great painter and murder him on the spot.

Plotnik loves Picasso. He was sculpting well into his nineties, attempting to use his art as a shield against the inevitable. It worked for a long time.

After the exhibit it was time to eat (again) so after a fairly long wait for a table at Suppenkuche, there were sauerbraten and potato pancakes and herring and these wonderful bratwurst with sauerkraut.



Picasso could not have painted a better plate of brautwurst, though his may have been in cubes and they might have been blue, and a few, at least, would have certainly had breasts. Or they'd have looked like breasts, maybe, according to the guy on the tape.