Crowd Cut Mislead

Months ago my friend emailed me a "Crowd Cut" deal.  For those who are unfamiliar with Crowd Cut, it's just another version of Groupon.  Anyway, the Crowd Cut (or which shall be known as "CC" for the rest of this post because I don't feel like spelling it out anymore) was advertised as "Paint and A Pint".  This caught my friends eye and she thought we should give it a try.  Back in the day we used to like to grab our paint brushes and a blank canvas, open up a Mich Golden Light paint to our hearts content, so why not try it again in a more organized, official setting?  I thought this could be fun.  I'm usually not a sucker for these deals, but just glancing at the title, I figured "what the heck?"  It's 20 bucks, you get to drink a beer or two and you get to paint.  And now instead of my friend and I always talking about getting our paints out and re-creating our life 7 summers ago, we can actually DO it.  So after months of trying to schedule a day to go (these Paint and A Pint activities are only available Thursday nights), we were finally set on last week. My friend made the call and turns out they are booked out a couple weeks.  But the questionably crabby receptionist said we could come Friday instead and still use our CC.  Although there was a 'catch'... "well, you can come Friday, but instead of Paint and A Pint, it's wine and the artist is Van Gogh".  .. Excuse me, what?  Van Gogh?  Wine?  I didn't sign up for this.  This wasn't in the fine print when I purchased the CC.  I was kind of expecting to go in, grab a beer, throw on a smock and paint whatever the heck I wanted.  Now you are expecting me to drink wine that gives me an instant headache and paint a replica of a very famous painting?!?  Oh yeah, and did I mention that it was BYOB?!?!  Again, misled big time by the title of the CC.  Why call it Paint and A Pint when you have to bring your own beverage?  Oh well, I got over it and the two of us went.  Plus, my friend's got a bun in the oven so I wasn't about to go and drink alone.  The "studio" was in Minneapolis (of course) and we ate at some "organic" restaurant before hand where the waitress wore sandals (totally violating health code), had two long gray braids hanging from her head and rather than asking us how our food was, she instead asked if we were "enjoying ourselves".  I really wanted to tell her that yes, we are enjoying ourselves, but the only food we are enjoying is the popcorn, which was free.

From the organic farm restaurant, we crossed the parking lot and went into the studio.  There were about 11 adults in the class and two hippy-ish "instructors" were there, teaching us how to pain like Van Gogh.  One of the instructors was the harsh one, going around and telling you what you are doing wrong--excuse me, but last time I checked, I paid to come and take your drinking/paint class and now you are going to rip on my lack of painting skills?  And the other one was the gentle sole, "anything goes", "art is in the eye of the artist" style teacher who only gave out compliments.  After three hours of painting, I ended up with this version of Van Gogh's Starry Night :

Not too shabby I suppose.  It's not going into the Smithsonian anytime soon, but it might get hung in my computer room someday if I ever get around to cleaning, painting and organizing it.  Right now it's a catch-all while the bathroom is in getting a facelift.  Here's the pile o'crap I am currently staring at on my desk:

And this is the pile of stuff behind me--mainly bathroom stuff with a couple plants thrown in the mix:

Anyway, that's my Crowd Cut turned Restaurant Review turned Messy Room post.  Kind of a weird turn of events...oh well!