My Review of Moondog Wild West - LGW

 LILI WARD

★★★★☆

Moondog wild west, the boozy playground for childlike quadragenarians

Watching every one woman to ten men attempting to ride the bucking bull in the padded arena, soaked in purple light and pollinated with the pastel scent of artificial sweetener number 1,

The basic six colour colour-wheel can be divided into thirds, according to their stimulating functions:

• Suppressant: purple and blue

• Mild stimulant: green

• Strong stimulants: yellow, orange and red.

I'm seated, half involuntarily, as the back pockets of my jeans are lip locked to the leather with week old fizzer, and I'm scanning the bright burnt orange hues of the grand canyon mural that occupies the space behind the barely-legal looking bartenders. Conscious colours of strong stimulation. Somehow looking through and beyond the cartoonishly finished rock edges, toxic cheese dust peppered on exotic mountains. I'm resting in the blue paint of the horizon, suppressed, Zen, watching cowboys sputter up orange dirt, letting sunlight float down the back of the ungroomed horse.

“Are we thinking that's real bull fur?”

“What?”

“On the bucking bull, are we thinking that it's made with real fur from a bull?”

“Probably.”

And yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self

The real bull was skinned and cleaned, the fake bull was constructed out of wood and acryli-plastic parts and then once again donned in its steam cleaned fur. We made the real inanimate in order to artificially animate it once again.

Faux genteel poverty, faux fur.  Three story 7 million dollar simulacrum of a middle American dive bar, punctuated with misdirected nostalgia, we are falsely lulled into the comfort of a childhood never experienced but distantly ingested. Echoes of an arms length youth are heard in the jingle of the deer hunter simulator and buzz out of LED neon's of cowboys lassoing on horseback like low spirited tinnitus. Three beers deep, fingers gripping brightly painted plastic cups, we are hungry for an American early life deified in our TV rooms.

I wonder if the saturated juvenility is as consciously calculated as its effects.

Research shows that adults are more likely to engage in ‘pro-social’ behaviours when reminders of children and toys are present.

When businessmen were near toys the number of dishonest men in a social experiment dropped by 20%, just the presence of half used crayons on the nearby tabletop incites notions of purity and morality. Is this a post technological playground for big kids or a lease-long demonstration of how coloured plastic can keep drunks well behaved on a main road.

A venue in its teething phases, I watch grumpy dads smile at brave bull riders and laboured hands get wetter with every pour.

Atmosphere 4/5 ★★★★☆

Service 4/5 ★★★★☆