BRAINS: An Antivalentine's Party

As the second of the #HASHTAGPUNPOCALYPSE! @OHNOES! blizzards falls outside, here's New York nomofomist-at-large Tamar Zeffren ("It," above) on what I missed in New York this weekend:

Dispatched on the eve of a snowstorm--

While much of the East Coast lay quiescent beneath a winter wonderland blanket, a different sort of hush enveloped “Brains,” the second installment in Ms. Campbell’s New York-based anti-Valentine’s Day soirees designed to test the hypotheses: does misery—in this instance, of the lovelorn—indeed love company?

As the brain and its attendant rational impulses has been commonly positioned in classical philosophy against the tangible and the fleshly desires, a celebration of the cerebral was deemed an appropriate theme. Ms. Campbell's painstaking attention to detail manifested itself in the décor, the choice of background black-and-white film (Donovan's Brain, a 1953 adaptation of a cult novel about an evil brain, starring Nancy Reagan, née Davis) and, most notably, the foodstuffs--head cheese (ersatz), gray-matter-colored M&Ms, and gelatin brain-shaped candies, all surrounding a plastic skull worthy of Hamlet's monologue.

Guests disported themselves in 'thoughtful' attire: Dr. Flanagan arrived as the unfortunate Phineas Gage; the affianced Mr. Katz and Ms. Gross as, respectively, Melatonin and Serotonin; Mr. Schwartz as the Absent-Minded Professor (TM); a glamorously attired Ms. Kuperberg, the esteemed moderator, as "a mind that is made up"; and the Kilmer laureate Mr. Rueda and our esteemed hostess Ms. Campbell as dual Freuds, a circumstance which promptly caused the minds of all present to explode.

--Your humble guest correspondent

Thanks to Caitlin for the pictures.