Picasso and Wine

I am not an artist. I stopped taking art as soon as they let me. I fail at stick figures. The very idea of having to create something with my hands that is not food or fashion makes me freeze with failure and and fear. Seriously. I'm an anti-artist. So when one of my best friends suggested Picasso and Wine for our yearly Christmas get-together instead of finding a bar and drinking excessively like we usually do, I was not totally enthused. But I'm a good friend, so I figured I'd suck it up, get a little drunk, and slap some paint on a canvas. Then give it to my mom and make her hang it up proudly, cause no way I was carrying that thing back to Boston and displaying that sadness in my own home. As a mom, she's required to do that.

We showed up at P&W, after uh, pre-gaming a bit at Stuft, got our glasses of Yellowtail (this is my biggest complaint, will expound later), grabbed our brushes and paint and claimed a seat. Most of us, the men in our party excepted, are not yet 30. We were overwhelmingly the youngest people there, and the 3 guys we brought were the only Y chromosomes in the room. This is not our demographic. But you guys, this was FUN. The instruction is such that you really can't screw it up unless you try pretty hard. The paintings turned out really well, and I was surprised that I actually created something that didn't look like a kindergartener got into the paint cabinet. My mom displayed my painting with pride, and not just mom pride. I suggested she do this with her friends; they'd love it.

I only have two complaints. One, the wine. I'd GLADLY pay an extra $3-5 for some decent wine. Yellowtail is not wine; it's swill I drank when I was 21 before I knew what real wine was. There's better bottles for purchase (and oh, those were purchased), but the by-the-glass options REALLY need to be better. Yellowtail is awful; step it up. Two, the music. When I walked into a room full of 45 year-olds (nothing wrong with that, but not so much our demographic as noted earlier), holding my glass of almost-undrinkable Yellowtail, and heard YMCA blasting out of the speakers, I thought I was in for a hellish evening. PLEASE P&W owner/manager people, this is not a wedding. Get that off the playlist. And make it a longer playlist, so the same songs don't play twice.

Picasso and Wine - way better than I thought it'd be; go and bring out your inner slightly drunken artist.