Final Friday!

Yesterday evening the Denver Art Museum (The DAM) held it's Final Friday event.  It was a pretty subdued affair this month, which gave me the chance to visit the Joan Miro exhibit now on display at the museum. There were a number of guided tours of this exhibit, but none of them explained the really important questions, such as why was he named Joan?  Was it a traditional Spanish male name?  This, of course, reminds me of the story of the famous Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich (father of television sleaze host Maury Povich).  Shirley Povich grew up in a small town with a large Russian Jewish immigrant population,. and Shirley was a traditional male name.  There were several men named Shirley in the town, and when a girl named Shirley moved in, everyone thought that was absolutely hilarious.  But of course, with a name like Shirley, it did cause some confusion.  Povich was named to the list of Most Notable American Women one year, and the biography clearly stated that he was married to a woman and had two children.  That entry got a lot of publicity, and the next year he was dropped from the list (just like he had married a stripper or something, as Povich puts it).  I suspect Miro's experience was not nearly as colorful, but hey - what do I know?  I 'm just a kid from the South Side of Chicago.