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Art Gallery Opening
An Episode at Trek Smut University by The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam
Dressed in her characteristic lady archaeologist of the 1920's look (no pith helmet, true, but a pince nez, a dumpy khaki suit, a flowery cotton hankie, and sensible shoes for scampering up pyramids, with her curly gray hair in a topknot) and accompanied by her three fawn Chinese pugs, Moonman, Moonman, and Moonman (Moonman and Moonman were boys, but ironically Moonman was a bitch), she was announcing that she was taking some of the vast Sunbeam family holdings and endowing a fine-arts museum at TSU. That was the subject of the slides, you know. "Hmmm," she cleared her throat, "could someone turn out the lights?" Lights go out, following by the sounds of lusty kisses, real and virtual. "Ladies! My word! Back to your seats!" A grudging silence. "Now here's my first purchase; it's going on the ceiling of the Broad Hall at TSU -- done by Michelangelo, doncha know, it's called *Morning, Darling*. My impeccable sources agree that the Creation of Adam on the Sistine chapel ceiling was a rough draft for this beautiful work. Here we see Jean Luc - slightly aroused in his sleep -- with his strangely large hand draped on a powerful thigh and Q is bursting out of a wormhole to touch him with his mighty Q-electric-sex-finger." Yay, goes the crowd. "Here's another purchase: Greek art." The crowd sighed. "Three plates from the red-black period of Prax-uh whoever made all them little plates showing different scenes from typical Greek deals. This one shows Riker, uh, tickling Wesley . . . uh, into certain aspects of Greek life. And here's Worf, uh, showing Jake some wrestling holds. Then on the third one, a slight variation -- Garak and Julian imitating two of their favorite gods. Notice the plasticity of form; remarkable, really. "Oh! My favorite!!!!!! You are of course aware of the undergound art of the great Japanese printmaker Hokusai (go ahead, look him up!) -- here Hokusai shows Jean Luc and Bev in a thrilling personal moment. Check out Jean Luc's glistening love dart! Honestly, girls, have you ever . . . "This is going out front: it's a huge African ebony sculpture called *Four Great Chiefs*. Carved in a single piece from one giant tree trunk, it depicts the four captains: see - the little kitten face and preposterous Big Boy hair that represents Kirk, that sexy-debauched-Egyptian-vizier look of Picard, Sisko's bullet head, and the squinty cigarette-eyes and bun of the lady whose name I can't recall (see, the Sunbeam family estate is located near a wormhole and we don't get particularly great cable service from Comcast Hicksville) [Can you dig it? We just got the Scifi channel with that, how-do-you-say, um, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 six damn weeks ago. God's truth, mesdames! They get better cable in Chechnya.] What interests us here at TSU is the emphasis on the genital area - notice the huge stiff appendages that almost reach the ground on the gents, and the pronounced bifurcated triangle of the gal. They say you can rub parts of this sculpture for good luck." The crowd goes wild. "We second that emotion!" "Back to your desks, this minute," says the outraged Engimatic Big Miss Sunbeam. "Oh here we go: a Rubens, called *The Discovery of Wine* -- it has all the goat boys and nymphs of Starfleet crushing grapes against one another: Let's see, there's Jean Luc, Riker, Miles, and Deanna. Deanna is naked and sittin awfully carelessly, while Miles and Riker are at her feet, and Jean Luc is feeding her grapes; look at how happy they are! Does that woof? Speaking of Woof, Worf is over there in the forest glade -- very, uh, pleased to be watching this scene. As you can plainly see. "Do yall think Edward Hopper is a sad painter? I kinda do. Here's one of his paintings redone for TSU. The original was called *Moody Usherette* or something. See Bev in her Starfleet outfit -- she's leaning up against the wall with that warm blonde hair falling over her face -- she's hiding it because she's sobbing as if her heart would break. She doesn't quite know what to make of a big black and white film on the view screen, which shows Jean Luc and Q, well, Jean Luc is lying on his back and Q is leaning over him getting ready to . . . "Now, no one hates Thomas Hart Benton more than the Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam, but this picture is really . . . different. Benton is famous for his hideously misshapen cowboys trying to pawn themselves off as typical Americana, but here I think he's . . . somehow . . . well, at any rate, the name of this painting is "I'll Be Home on Christmas Day" after the beautifully evocative Elvis song, and as you can see Elvis himself is here in the back of the painting singing on a tiny wooden stage in some Mississippi Delta juke joint which has been decorated in the most forlorn way for Christmas -- one strand of large lights, yellow, red, green, blue, draped at the top of the plastic paneled walls, and dancing as Elvis sings are our Starfleet friends. For example, there's the pretty boys of Voyager lined up against the wall (more meat rack than wallflowers however), and that amusing Barney-Fifish doctor from Voyager is looking them over. He's wearing a stingy-brim porkpie hat on the back of his head and a wonderful gray orlon polo shirt with a black lozenges design on it, and his striking features are emphasized by his five o'clock shadow; he's trying to figure out which one he wants to take for a ride -- and how! -- in his 1967 red Austin Healy (just visible outside the window in the sodium vapor lights of the juke joint parking lot). And there's Garak and Bashir -- Bashir's been in the commissary, and he is so fucked up he doesn't notice Garak playing the eensy-weensy spider game in his lap. Worf and Deanna are among those dancing; she's bare to the waist and Worf loves it, cradling one of her soft breasts with his big paw. In the back, we see the charismatic Dukat coming in the door. He's just spied Odo dancing with Kira and he's saying, "Pop back in the pail, Percy, Kira Nerys is mine." And Riker's sitting at a table with some of the alien babes from Voyager; he can't get enough of them, and they know a chump who's good for change when they see one, so they'll be damned if they'll move their moneymakers til the money's all gone. And in the very center are Q and Jean Luc dirty dancing in tank tops; they're really drunk too, and Q is pressing himself against Jean Luc -- Q's eyes are glazed with intoxication. Frankly, it's the Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam's favorite time of day: the morning after. And Jean Luc is folded and content in Q's arms and Q is caressing Jean Luc's stage-side armpit with his thumb in a startlingly intimate gesture and getting ready to kiss Jean Luc, because he --- as our stand in -- can't get enough of the ineffable Jean Luc, Jean Luc, Jean Luc, half captain, half father, half soldier, half virgin, half proud-as-Lucifer conqueror, half stubbly victim" There is a decided murmuring from the crowd. "What! You all say that's too many halves. Well, I don't want to live in a sorry-ass world that can only give Jean Luc Picard, Captain of the Federation Starship Enterprise, two measly little halves. Notice, Benton's blending of three major American myths/cash cows/obsessions, Christmas, Elvis, Star Trek, so, horrible artist he may be, but he didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday." The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam dimples and murmurs: "That's the real America, you know, Star Trek, Elvis, Christmas, not somebody with a . . . horse, for Christ' sake." Next slide. "I suspect this will be the least popular work: it's a cubist masterpiece based on his *Nude Descending a Staircase* by Marcel Duchamp. This one is called *Q Getting a Blow Job.* All right, all right, I know, you have to squint to see it. "One of my favorite genres: socialist realism! The Cardassians are very similar to the Soviets in a number of ways, primarily in their torturing and murdering people, but their art was similar as well. They practiced Cardassian Socialist Realism. We see here a sad little Cardassian apartment -- and in a realistic yet cartoonish style we see Garak and Bashir coming in and Garak has taken Bashir's thumb in his mouth and is running his lizard tongue over it, and Julian's mouth is open in gratitude. At the wall is a big picture of Entabain Tain with a red ribbon over it and at a rickety nearby table a Cardassian samovar is ready to distribute hot Cardassian Prime Zinger tea. It's called *The People's First Human.* "Oh, a Vermeer. Vermeers don't grow on trees, you know. You know Vermeer's *The Letter* -- shows one of these healthy Dutch babes sitting down and pensively getting a letter from another healthy Dutch babe who is smiling at her? The light in all Vermeer paintings is simply beyond belief -- it's tangibly blue and clean. And harmonic. And invisible. And golden. Well, this shows Jean Luc and Q, fully dressed, not touching, in the famous shuttlecraft scene and Q is smiling down at Jean Luc who is giving him one of *those* incredible meaningful melting sober Jean Luc looks. Only Vermeer could hope to capture the levels of meaning on those two beloved faces. Frankly. "Now here's a little statue made of cast iron -- it shows Garak, um, satisfying himself; the mannered, elongated style (appropriate really) is very much in typical Cardassian style, which is sometimes known as Art Gecko." Boos and hisses resound! "Smutniks, remember yourselves!" Disgruntled calm reigns. "That ends my little show for right now. I suspect I will be adding to the collection as time slips away, but before I go, girls, let me share an amusing personal anecdote about the current (or regnant) Big Mr. Sunbeam. This is rich: Big Mr. Sunbeam has only seen two episodes of Star Trek in his whole rat life: one was the Little Green Men on Deep Space Nine -- the Big Mister has lots of unresolved post-Freudian issues, and he loves weirdly to see 50's men smoking so this was right up his alley. Mischievously, I told him all the actors who play Ferengis went to Julliard, implying that they got in through a quota system since he thinks -- dope that he is -- that Ferengis are real, like, you know, Latvians or something. Oh, did he throw a big right-wing-nut fit about entitlement!! What fun!! But the really rich thing is that he's only seen part of one episode of the Next Generation, and that's Allegiance. And so he thinks that the evil-twin Jean Luc IS Jean Luc and that the whole show, episode after episode, consists (ala the old Mitch Miller show) of Jean Luc standing around Ten Forward singing vaguely slashy sailor songs with the other boys. So when I leave the extremely subtle pleasures of the Sunbeam connubial bed and say, "Well, baby, I'm going to tear me off a slice of that there Jean-Luc," he starts doing what he thinks is a brilliant Patrick Stewart imitation and singing something like: "Oh come you lads who plow the sea remember the gospel of Sir Winston C. he said sailor life was nothing but rum, the lash, and sodomeeeeeeee"* "and laughs his Big Sunbeam head off. "*The cream of the jest is that Winston Churchill once said that 19th century sailing life was nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash; a nice phrase, eh? The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam admires the pithiness of the phrase, although, as one of nature's bolsheviks, she really hates that old right-winger Churchill." *Sigh*. "I guess I better walk the dogs." The audience sighs with her. "Probably that's enough book-larnin' for today. Okay, ladies, let's put on our brute drag and rave!!" And so they did. The End |