I'm Just Mad About Saffron

Like most environmental art, The Gates must be viewed from afar, because if you get up too close, you realize that they are made from cheap, industrial plastics and are proportionally off. However, if you don't look to closely and just amble through the park beneath the billowing fabric, it's quite breath-taking, even though Christo and Jeanne-Claude fail to convince us that Home Depot orange is really "saffron".

It did, however, lead to an amusing exchange between me and the boy. I, of course, began to immediately sing "I'm just mad about saffron / Saffron's mad about me". Of course, it was badly off-tune. A short while later, we were looking for baked goods at Two Little Red Hens and they had orange fabric in the window with a sign that said "We're Just Mad About Saffron". The boy was quiet for a while and then asked, in sheepish bewilderment, why the bakery had a sign up with the same words as my stupid, ficticious song. He apparenlty didn't remember the ubiquitous Gap commercials of 1999. Or Donovan. Or bananadine.

I wonder what life would have been like if he'd continued to think I made that warped song up. Apparently he didn't have hippy parents.... E-lec-trical banana!!