Wednesday, June 30, 2010

as we all go soft, for a second.

When I think about you, flowers grow out of my grave.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Every man is a peece of the Continent

 

"We might be the only Americans on the island," they had blithely hoped to one another. Such illusory dreams were dissipated whence they sat next to an Army trainer on the flight to the island. They had each tried to brood for the duration of the flight but found it impossible due to the repeated jabs to the ribs, followed by twenty-minute lectures on the geography of the European continent falling beneath their airship with the same fluidity as the Great Lakes, or the Rockies, or the Mighty Mississippi. Your America is just like this.

 

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Forgive me for the inundation

But I must say, I found this (Design slides!!!!!!!) and suddenly have the urge to do a PowerPoint presentation on architecture. Will someone hire me for such an occasion? I can promise you my one-time fee of $0.00 is very reasonable considering my vast knowledge of the subject, and my rider requires only that the air of the presentation room not smell suspiciously like a horde of monkeys passed out on Sudafed. And, since you're a dedicated reader, for the negligible fee of 1 (one) package of Ramen noodles, Shrimp flavored, I will promise not to sing any Kanye West during the entire presentation. (As long as playing Kanye West songs on old-school boombox while I pump my fists in the air for dramatic entrance effect is still allowable.)

dissident European art

 (The noticeable absence of Great Britain, still, yes, a part of the European Union, is not due to censorship, but a deliberate choice on the part of the artist. Of course, him being David Černý.)


Bill Clinton was at this game, probably reflecting for 92 minutes that he scored more often than this lot. The USA won the match and Group C in the most dramatic circumstances possible, Landon Donovan's goal relegating England to second place just when they thought they had secured the top spot. The USA left it late but there can be no arguing with the justice of the final table. England scored twice in three matches. The USA scored four, and had a perfectly good winner chalked off against Slovenia.
[. . .]
Yanks, eh? And what did Clinton think? "Every contest eventually becomes a headgame," the former president said. "I like people who don't quit though. We are not keen on quitters in my family." (text mercilessly filched from The Guardian Online)


USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! (Repeat 'til the page is full, printer.)

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

vibrations of life

Chicago, if nothing else, is a place of thriving dichotomies.

Even when closer to death, Chicagoans are of a race devoted to life.

This (inexplicably?) reminds me of the bar counter at the Cape Cod Room in the Drake Hotel, upon which many names and initials have been carved. Among them, MM & JD. I sat next to it one night over oysters rockefeller and tri-layered chocolate cake. I was certainly overcompensating for something. I am firmly, firmly in the camp that the Drake is downtown Chicago's most beautiful living hotel, a fondness not superseded by stays at the Palmer House, the W, and the Hyatt Regency on Wacker (although the latter does win for best bar). And beauty, after all, is meant to attract beauty. And the hat trick of beautiful space, beautiful face, and beautiful lace (dressing gowns) means so much more in Chicago, where such a thing can be absent for many months, even years at a time, unlike Hollywood or Manhattan, where it is guaranteed most every night.

With that, gratuitous picture of one-half of the best initials carved into a Chicago bar:

Monday, June 21, 2010

It was never to be built.


Come by and see me, I'm a love-letter away

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Those lights we call stars

"It was here, on June 10, 1983, just a few hundred yards from Michael and his friends' fort, just down the road from the junior high and the homeless black veteran on the school roof, that S was murdered."



Houses sit quietly. There's a siesta-like hush. Cars inch by on the streets, rolling through stop signs. Music in the distance. Someone washing a car. The tops of trees in the woods sway softly.



"It made the front page of the local paper the next morning, below the fold."

Friday, June 4, 2010

lepidoptery, in the time of vn

vn is dead. lepidoptery might as well be.


this thing looks like that thing

in architecture, mais bien sur, this is what i call "impersonation tactics"

University of Chicago, Reynolds Club

Happy Alumni Weekend! (From one of the newest class of alumni, or will be alumni, t-minus 8 days) 

Magdalen Tower, Oxford College, Oxfordshire
I never got over Italian tourists snapping photos of students through the windows. Ban tourism. Bandite turismo! (That's right; 2nd year Italian- Come butta?)

Architecturally (Ir)Relevant

I don't have the background or the vernacular to speak at length about architecture like someone who has actually studied it (aside from one brilliant course I'm in at the moment, I really have no foundation). I also have no design skills so have no actual pull to architecture as a "calling." Yet I can't help what I am drawn to, and at the moment, it is a team of architects working, building, designing, and revolutionizing (Hokeywood), who have been for quite a while and are certainly not unknowns in the world of architecture. I would like to, if I could, call their work cold and isolating, a view of the modern at the sake of human who inhabits the modern. But I'm not rigid. I'm always changing my view points, with each new piece I see.

things i've recently shared-
Strata Tower (Abu Dhabi)

"Multi-Storey", Amman, Jordan

Shopping mall parking lot, Dubai


That's what's going on across the Middle East. And here's what's happening in your neck of the woods:
Fort Smith, Arkansas, c. 1880, recreated for the Coen brothers’ adaptation of True Grit

she take my money

when i'm in need

yea she's a triflin'

friend indeed

oiled up



 @ londonist brings "us" this:



Thanks @londonist!

I'm not saying she a gold digger
But she is (in fact) messin' with some broked oil

Get it? The pipeline has burst. That's the joke.

THK GOD ONLY HALF OF SWANSEA, HUH GUYS? Honestly, no idea how my brain would absorb the tragedy of being without this landmark:

(The four architectural stumps of what was once a terribly overpowering fortress and castle. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre. Per Yeats:
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.)

Anyways I'm sad and miss London today and my heart is completely absorbed in this terribly tragedy, and I mean that, not ironically, I mean that. The Gulf Coast has suffered enough, say.