The Holocene

Eyes Bigger Than Your Stomach: I Seem to Have 40 Bond Stuck in My Craw

2008-12-22T12:04:00.001-05:00

NYT_Nico: It Was Fun Till the Money Ran Out

Nico doesn't bother to mention the role his predecessor played in hyping up this orgy of architecture for the rich, connected, and landed. I don't know if that is out of respect for the dead, NYT policy to to criticize itself, or the creeping fear that he is just as guilty as Herbie M.

July Light: Tricks of the Central Park West Druid

2008-07-15T08:44:00.000-04:00

Last week on Friday we experienced the late summer alignment of Manhattanhenge. This pet of the head astronomer at the Hayden Planetarium is one of my favorite urban quirks: twice each summer the setting sun aligns perfectly with the crossstreets of Manhattan, and you are given the chance for a figure on Greenwich to cast a shadow onto 2nd Avenue.

Among the many reasons I love this event is, of course, that it is exactly the type of thing I collect in my little birdbrain. More significantly, it is the unexpected source of another, more ephemeral delight for us summer New Yorkers. For a week or so surrounding Manhattanhenge, each long evening takes of a special glow as the long light of the summer afternoon is allowed to penetrate deep into the city. The luminous urban evenings of the Hudson riverbank bleed deep into the grid, and the scene for us pedestrians is lit like a movie set (preferably the evening moments of Rear Window, right before the stage catches on fire). It makes me glad to be here.

Bernard-Henri Lévy Is a Lot Like Jonah Goldberg

2008-07-11T17:16:00.002-04:00

From The New Republic:

Barack Obama can win because he is the first African-American to take, by grace of his birth, a step away from the two sides of a deep divide--and the first who may now play the card--not of condemnation or damnation--but of seduction and--as he says over and over--of seduction.

Obtuse punctuation aside, what is it about BHL that can start with a captivating kernel of critic's insight and turn it into such a glaringly false polemic? Besides the final promise of a 'coming together,' what parallel does he find between the seduction and reconciliation that make them the proper synthesis in this logic? It seems abundantly clear that his only real goal is to insert a little sex into the play of politics--something that, frankly, we have no use for this particular time around the horn.

Sticks and Stones - The Christmas Party Insult Edition

2008-01-03T13:52:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I was at a party where our host--the genial father of a college friend--was interrogating me and a party-crasher from London about our professions.

First came the Londoner: I work in banking and spend most of my time in Russia making deals with the oil-igarchs.

This elicited approving head bobs and murmurs of 'new markets.'

Next it was my turn: I am an architect here in New York.

More head bobbing, but with this evaluation: Now there is a profession where you really have to work for your money. Hard work and plenty of it for little pay. Now, it always seems to me that the ones who are well paid are the interior decorators. They do pretty well for themselves.

I was chagrined at this little observation from our aging host. Granted, the smell of private equity in the morning tends to put me off my coffee, but I don't like having my unprofitability rubbed in my face. I managed to stammer out something about striving for permanence: I like to do work that can't be erased by something as feeble as a spackling knife.

I don't know if that really got the point across, but it didn't really matter. I was deflated. I left for home soon afterward. To add insult to injury, the coat check girl gave my scarf to someone else.

More Gawking

2007-10-19T22:25:00.000-04:00

Once my initial sputtering at the audacious vapidness of another Slate article died down, I gave my memory a brisk shake in hope of dislodging some stray crumb of meaning that I had missed before. I was rewarded by a stale, but otherwise edible morsel along these lines: the Gawker story is one about the urbanism of New York. What's-her-face who wrote the thing attributes the vitriol of the Gawking-class to just that: a special type of class rage developed by the well-educated young aspirants of the publishing industry running up hard against the economic reality of the city's finance and real estate industries. She locates the source of their rage in their understanding that Manhattan has been stolen from them.

So this is a problem of physical displacement? Are we watching the rear-guard action of the world's best educated refugees? In a way that I kind of like, this elaboration--perhaps embroidery?--of her idea explains the strange pointlessness of the Gawker enterprise. These displaced masses are not trying to take back the homeland, they are trying to poison the well. This was certainly the sense I got from the now-defunct Gutter, Gawker's architecture gossip blog. The tone was not so much 'Nothing is sacred,' the quality our Authoress seems to locate, but 'Nothing is good enough.'. It is so exhausting for the audience precisely because this attitude has no endgame. It isn't played on a field of relative values; it is an endless rehearsal of the same attitude in postures. It is a reaction, not a strategy or even a tactic. And it's a lousy lens for watching our city.

Putting It to Bed: Boredom in Publishing

2007-10-17T20:04:00.000-04:00

I just spent way too many minutes reading the New York Magazine cover story on Gawker. As usual, I was left with two distinct impressions from my visit to NYMag:

1. It's unspeakably annoying to have to click to a new page every 1000 words. Can't there be a better way to generate ad revenue than pre-digesting every article into fragments that make you even more distractible? Are they so embarrassed by their articles that they actually hope you won't have the conviction to finish one? Which leads into:

2. Why does every NYMag article feel like a visit to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum? Another completely engrossing concept has been left bafflingly untouched, despite the heaps of stuff that looks like research piled up in every corner. It's amazing that two projects, so different in medium, subject, and method, can have identical personalities as unswerving underperformers.

It's a real shame to get to the end of several thousand words and not have a single one of your questions answered. The only time there has ever been anything approaching clarity skittering across the surface of my mind after one of these articles was after the profile of Katie Couric. When I opened the page I thought to myself, Of all her possible outlets, why would she open up for a profile in this magazine? When I got to the end I realized that it must be because only those jokers could have provided her with six pages of ink and basically require nothing on which to hang a story. It's kind of like someone decided to re-inflate the dessicated husk of a USA Today story back into its original NYTimes nutritiousness, but had never seen the meatier version to begin with

I'm hungry and on my way to dinner. Can you tell?

Saddam

2007-09-17T22:27:00.000-04:00

The ghost of Saddam Hussein haunts a bench in front of my office, looking soulful and eating peanuts.

I am always amazed by the fact that you can find everybody somewhere in New York.

Basic Services

2007-08-21T22:44:00.000-04:00

Just in case you ever thought I was going to turn my attention away from regurgitating info from the New York Times, the New Republic, and Deadspin, let me slam the door nice and hard. Last night I read Sarah Williams Goldhagen's essay on American infrastructure that just appeared in TNR. Let's see. Hmmm. Shrill? Check. Wonky? Yes. Self-righteous? But of course (this is the woman who got the ball rolling by calling out Calatrava's warm-fuzzy indicing design for the Ground Zero PATH station the kitsch it really is).

But, after some beating the reader about the head and shoulders with unfathomable statistics, she brought up an issue that is really the total mystery to me at the center of the architectural profession: how we could have such a poor relationship between the public and the professionals. She captures the stalemate pretty well from both sides, and then takes a swing (something the biggest names have been begging, just begging for) at the leading lights of the profession for happily giving in to the terms of this acid environment.

Today's city planners are seen as clueless and well-meaning bureaucrats at best, and as anti-democratic elitists at worst. Architects, landscape architects, and urban designers (including the many who do not merit the slander) are depicted as divas who care more about fancy forms than about the people who live in their buildings or the clients who build them. Expertise in the built environment is often held in public ridicule. As a result, folk wisdom has it that it is up to the public-spirited citizen--the community board activist, the local environmental review agency, the historic preservation commission--to stop them: thus unwittingly validating a salient quotation that was prominently displayed in one of the Moses exhibitions. "The critics," he once said, "build nothing."

. . .

Sadly, the public's mistrust of the experts who should be advising politicians on how to address the multifarious problems of the American infrastructure is not wholly misplaced. To be sure, there are many talented public officials, city planners, urban designers, and architects who are committed to working in the interest of the public good. Yet there are also many professionals who have resigned themselves to working within the ever-narrowing constraints that the public assigns to them of designing mainly signature projects. . . . As a result, American architects sometimes run the risk of appearing to be little more than glorified shoe designers.

I don't know why we let ourselves fall into this trap--letting the public tell us that they know better than we do and then proving them right time after time. Goldhagen would have the widely held views above as part of the made-for-TV dialectic between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, but somehow I am tempted to locate it somewhere else: in a basic anti-intellectual bent to American culture. After all, we gladly feed our babies toys made with leaded plastic from China only to scream bloody murder when we have to pay the price for our credulity, but as a culture, we wouldn't take the most earnest and well-documented piece of advice from an educated professional bred in one of the countries best schools and practicing in a major artistic and corporate milieu. Goods are good; ideas stink like some much Froggy cheese. A Harvard-educated doctor is a trope of trustworthy achievement. A Harvard-educated architect would be lucky to be paid the respect of the shoe designer SWG would have him reduced to.

The Gray Lady Sags a Bit

2007-08-20T23:08:00.000-04:00

I just read Paul Goldberger’s review of the new New York Times building and the Bloomberg headquarters. It is a fairly work-a-day review, but those of us still suffering a hangover from the days of that shrill shill Herbert Muschamp, just that is reason to lift every voice and sing. The pointed end of his criticism is leveled at the design of the interior—the newsroom, to be exact. In fact, the whole reason for bringing in the Bloomberg building at all, since it is hardly a fresh addition to the city, is to make the point that the Times newsroom is a staid design gussied up in some fresh finishes while the Bloomberg example is a totally innovative approach to a media-environment which, by the way, also has some fresh finishes.

While I believe Goldberger—after all, a combination of Cesar Pelli and Pentagram probably can do a much better job at planning an interior than just letting Gensler loose in a big floorplan whose lace edging was hooked by Renzo Piano—we kind of have to take it on faith. Compare

“With its sea of cubicles partitioned by wood-veneer cabinets, it is vastly more sophisticated than any workplace the Times has ever had, but sleekness has brought a certain chill . . .”

with

“. . . some four thousand employees sit in uniform rows at identical, white-topped desks bearing custom-built Bloomberg flat-panel computer terminals.”

and tell me where, if anywhere, I can find “a newsroom truly designed for the electronic age . . . a workspace that could not have existed ten years ago.” All in all, I think I’d rather pass on both and go work in the Marin Civic Center as re-imagined in Gattica. Well, minus the eugenics.

Goldberger doesn’t answer my two biggest questions—in fact, he slides by both of them as if they’ve been answered somewhere else, and I just haven’t been keeping my eyes open. The first is why the NYT needed to build a 52-story tower of which they were only going to be occupying a fraction. The second is how we all got it passed over on us that the building is not the shimmer white tower we saw in renderings and model and instead looks armor-like and, basically, filthy before it’s even finished.

The old Times building and the new Times building are of such different scales, it’s a little hard to imagine how the same institution could find a home in both. Goldberger mentions the development team of Forest City Ratner and later talks about how most of the news room staff is actually housed in a midrise building outside of the bigger tower—something that is supposed to give these old newsies a “pride of place.” (Dolores Hayden just called—she wants her catchphrase back.) What he doesn’t do enough of as all is connect the dots of these two features of the project and tell us how the Times is basically an anchor tenant to a towering commercial real-estate mall, one with enough public and economic clout to smooth the way for such a large project, but no more the occupant of the tower than Nordstrom’s at your local Westfield development. This thing seems like a rip-roaring real-estate investment that uses the reputation of the Times as some sort of scrim over thee more real, more likely ugly, mechanisms of the principals here.

The last issue is why this thing has to look so dingy. The ceramic rods were supposed to be shimmering, ephemeral (Goldberger managed to suck that one up straight from the press release too—bonus points to the PR flacks who have made sure we all talk about the building using that word, even if in outright disagreement). I guess we should know by now, every time you hear those words, put your hand on your wallet. I can see the Times tower grow day by day from my office window, and it may be a lot of things, but light, iridescent, ephemeral, etc., etc. are not among them. Goldberger gets the ambiguous success right on:

The ceramic screens rise higher than the roof by about ninety feet, forming a light, ephemeral crown. Piano said that he wanted the tower to look as if it disappeared into the air, and while it doesn’t quite do that—in part because of its steely, battleship-gray color—it has a tensile elegance that sets it apart from every other skyscraper in Manhattan.

NOKD

2007-08-19T12:51:00.000-04:00

A place where even Photoshop can't help you.

I've been wondering for a few months when we were going to hear news on the future of 34 East 62nd, the site of last year's most Fountainhead-ian event of architecture an urbanism: the townhouse that was blown up by its inhabitant, a rather shady-sounding dentist (?), who would rather blow up his home than let it fall into the hands of his ex-wife. The pudgy doctor, removed from the ruins of his house on a stretcher, provided a fitting form for my feelings about Howard Roark . . . but I'm getting lost on an Anti-Anne Rand tangent here.
One of the special things about this site is that it is right in the middle of the Upper East Side Historic District, an entity I feel just about as warmly as I do the darling author mentioned above. I'm still slightly shocked by the successfully self-righteous hysteria that its denizens used to squash the Norman Foster tower last year. Here they are about to get one of the most sophisticated architects in the world to slip a tower onto the top of a completely undistinguished limestone box that has been putting the neighbors to sleep since it was installed in the '50s, and all they can do is run around crying bloody murder because it will cast a shadow on the Carlyle Hotel, a location dear to the heart of every Upper Eastsider as the home of the fifty-dollar check for tea and cakes.
Clearly, I'm just itching for someone to try to stick something modern up their noses on 62nd Street. What has shown up Colonel Cathcart frame of mind--to wit, is this a feather in our cap, or a black eye? Because what we got is a modernist townhouse that is irritating the bejesus out of the folks next door at the Links Club, like someone poured a cup of sand into both Weejuns. The problem is that is also irritates the hell out of me because it is such an insipid example of a modernist townhouse, complete with every tired trope from the eroded corner windows to the quote-unquote gravity-defying slab of the facade hanging above the entry.
Because of the general lack of imagination on display in this project, I was getting ready to side with the stuffed-shirts over at the Links Club, until I got to the little part where the neigbors on the Community Board chimed in with their version of an Amicus Brief, or perhaps tighty-whities, that declared the proposed new building a poor fit.

The 91-year-old Links Club, Community Board 8 and several leading preservation groups are less sure. Playing an advisory role, the Upper East Side community board voted 27 to 5 last month to disapprove the plan on the ground that it is “not in keeping” with the historic district.

Nothing gets me more frothy in a urbanism discussion than that little gem. Ossified preservationists and other assorted cultural conservatives use it fearlessly as if it were some sort of trump card for their issue, as if they would love to have a building like this if only all of the other buildings already matched it, but, since they don't, it's aww-shucks-too-bad. In reality, all I can hear is some mother worth four or five points in a Punch-Burberry game telling her cute-in-pearls five-year-old that these buildings are simply Not Our Kind, Dear.

Some Things Never Change

2007-07-16T21:15:00.000-04:00

Back at the dee em vee. We're in a new state this time. The Herald Square edition of the New York State Department of Motos is outfitted in a scheme of cream and green paint, accented by blonde woodwork that has been urathaned within an inch of piss-yellow. A large bingo board at the front of the room is the sole focus of attention for everyone sitting in the five rows of wooden pews. Sometimes the numbers switch rapidly, as the DMVers cruelly dispatch one victim after the next; sometimes the numbers are frozen as a wave of petitioners manages to put up a bit more of a fight. In any case, the attention of everyone waiting must remain dutifully fixed on the board, because all changes happen silently. In a cruel twist on the usual boredom of the DMV, the silent room means that you can't read or doze or zone out, because there is nothing to alert you that your opportunity has slipped by. In this state of acute tedium, you must remain in an alert trance. It's enough to make me miss the plastic pasha's tent of the Whethersfield DMV where bells and gongs heralded every new opportunity and left one peacefully reading like a Penn station commuter waiting for the 5:45 to Oyster Bay.

Moblog is on!

2007-07-06T18:04:00.000-04:00

Yes it is, yes it is.

Time has come to turn this machine back on. I realized this when I had two great ideas back to back: nobody makes beautiful gas station maps anymore because today cartography is more of a data science than a graphic art and . . . and . . . I forgot the second idea. Which means it is time to start writing them down.

You'll all be poorer for it.

In case you missed it: Deadspin

2006-09-05T01:54:00.000-04:00

Ever since the whole World Cup hullabaloo at the beginning of the summer, I've been an intermittent reader of a sports blog named Deadspin. This a desperate attempt to actually be conversant on sports subjects beyond cycling stage-race strategy, the late-season Red Sox, and semi-professional croquet. Who knows who will benefit from me figuring this stuff out--it's not as if anyone is silly enough to ask me to join their fantasy football league--and I think it's just too damn late for me to ever be that excited about basketball in this lifetime.

Deadspin had great WC coverage by David Hirshey--it was right up there with the surprisingly good effort from the folks over at The New Republic soccer blog (you're getting the picture now, aren't you--my main sources of sports news is a bunch of policy wonks at a weekly political magazine with a subscription base somewhere in the order of the winter population in Bar Harbor, Maine). They've kept me reading with a series of inspired running jokes about an investigative reporter in Cleveland named Carl Monday whose recent claim to fame has been an expose of a young man caught masturbating at the internet terminals in his local public library (it's funnier than it sounds) and an apocryphal story regarding Chris Berman's ability to pick up leather-clad women in bars (yes, I bought the t-shirt).

I've been pumping this site to anyone who will listen, but no one seems to have added it to their reading list. In fact, the biggest response I've gotten comes from my friend Owen who always counters my suggestion by saying that I should read this great site he's found--Arts and Letter Daily. He forgets from week to week that not only did he already make this recommendation a few days ago, but that I actually turned him onto that site back in college.
So I continue in my little mission to get others to enjoy the fun over at Deadspin--bringing the campaign to my totally-unread blog (the only regular reader decamped from NYC for Hong Kong with her husband and has apparently left my URL behind with her last Metrocard). Here's a little teaser, though, just to share the love. It's in reference to the comeback of the safety-averse Ben Roethlisberger:

"The appendix didn't burst, say the doctors, and the surgery was a routine repair. During the surgery, doctors also took the precautionary step of affixing a little tiny helmet on Roethlisberger's appendix."

I don't know why that gets me so much, but I can't stop giggling over the thought of an appendix outfitted with one of those plastic helmets they serve ice cream in over at the DQ.

Convocation: Last Bastion of Pure Malarkey

2006-08-28T18:22:00.000-04:00

I managed to get myself set up here in Columbia's Butler Library. (One not-quite expired Yale ID + carefully cultivated appearance as hassled grad-student + three manila envelopes with papers pouring out + sprinkle of toe-tapping impatience = one visitor access card good for two months.)

The task at hand continues to be summiting my incredible mental block to sending out cover letters and resumes. Instead, I am catching up on incredible amount of truly trivial email, looking at Priceline for flights to Chicago (I absolutely hate anything to do with booking travel, so you know it must be bad over there in that folder marked 'Cover Letters'), and generally catching a lot of surreptitious glances at the Columbia students surrounding me. So far, they look pretty much like the kids at Harvard and Yale, only without the same percentage of obvious athletes.

My treat, though, has been the ongoing Convocation held on the lawn beyond the reading room windows. I was able--nay, privileged--to hear almost the entire address by whatever dean they wheeled up there before the assembled frosh and 'rental units. Either they have a PA system here designed for holding commencement in Times Square traffic, or the university hasn't decided that double-glazed windows are part of their global-responsibility kick.

It is amazing the heights of cynicism I can work myself up to when trying to write an appropriately sycophantic cover letter while being force fed, 1984-style, some propaganda about how the assembled fresh faces down there should consider themselves lucky, because they are now part of the great tradition of the Columbia family, just as the University should count itself blessed to have gathered such an impressive new generation of spectacular and diverse talents. Did I mention that I am over-weight and not that attractive?

On and on, the droning dean continues with this rousing little summation of just about every Ivy-League stereotype (did he really just say 'Best of the Best'?--you bet he did), until it is time for some school songs. Now here I face an inner conflict. Do I continue with my affected grimace of post-post-graduate ennui, or do I go to the window and listen to a new example of those '30s-era school tunes that I find so endearing. Shameful as it is to admit it, I actually know and enjoy singing all of my high school's rally songs, and I've never heard Columbia's before.

Deciding that sneakiness is the better part of valor (ahem.), I wiggled over to a window at the end of my row, made sure I was hidden from view by a large shelf of the New York Times Indecies, 1917-1969 (perfect for hiding both me and George Jr.), and listned for the best of what was to come.

Unfortunately, these kids didn't know the words, and I guess no one had printed them in the back of the program because all I was able to make up was some strident brass marching music and a lot of rumble-grumble that sounded more like the soundtrack to the orgy-cult scenes in Eyes Wide Shut than the pleasantly drunken festivities of college louts in beaver-collared club coats. Maybe that's a little hyperbolic, but I think you get the idea.

So now I'm back in my carrel, about to try to come up with a convincing conclusion to the sentence that begins "I have always been fascinated by the work of you firm . . ." Have pity on my soul.

In case you missed it: Sunday Styles

2006-08-27T14:31:00.000-04:00

From the corrections:

"An article last Sunday about transgender lesbians referred incorrectly to Judith Halberstam, a gender theorist and professor of literature whose books include “Female Masculinity.” She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles; it has no San Diego campus."

All build-up, no punchline.

Los Angeles at My Doorstep

2006-08-26T22:24:00.000-04:00

The man in the 10-gallon fedora.

Summer is wearing itself out here in New York. The last few weeks have been pretty good because if that. The city is warm, but the beastly weather is behind us. And with a big chunk of the vacation-taking class off taking their vacation, everything seems almost relaxed.

I give this description of New York because I’ve been spending a lot of my time in Los Angeles, at least in my head. For almost two weeks I’ve been gobbling down Raymond Chandler books and making some inroads into those by Reyner Banham. These two are becoming my favorites for the real champions of that city (sorry OJ). I’ve barely looked at a picture of the city—just a few posted on the web by a friend of mine living in Venice—and I’ve kept away from movies or TV on the subject. Instead, I’ve got a pretty good picture going in my mind, and I want to keep it that way, unburdened by modern interference.

Three years ago I finished my first slow pass through all of Chandler’s novels, but that’s long enough back now for me to go for seconds and thirds. Back when I was in college I had tried hard to work in some of Philip Marlowe into the papers I was writing about cowboys and western landscapes, but I never got to go as far with that as I wanted. Maybe the tutors thought that no one student should be allowed to get away with reading both cowboy and hard-boiled pulp when he should be writing on the reading habits of the housewives of 18th-century Maine.

What makes Marlowe a great cowboy is that he’s all in the approach. While description is there in everything written, I think one of the things that makes cowboy lit special is that descriptions unfold over time and space. This phenomenon is hard to reproduce in an urban environment: in the city, you don’t see much until you’re right on top of it. On the other hand, there are few places you get to see farther ahead than in the west and on the plains. From western stories to John Ford, the description that takes advantage of the development of description that begins in the distance and develops as the eye moves slowly closer is one of the key tropes of the cowboy and his environment. It is not merely that detail is added as the context narrows from the long range to the face-to-face. Rather, the long views become retroactively more powerful with every nuance that is added in the approach. Maybe the most hyperbolic expression of this is the attempt to capture a literary technique on film—in Butch Cassidy, where Conrad Hall, the cinematographer, shot the famous chase scenes from miles away using a super-telephoto lens.

The best of Chandler takes advantage of this principle. Like no other character I’ve read, Marlowe is a man of the approaching description. Chandler has taken the unfolding methods from the free range and somehow brought it into the city. A blissfully inordinate amount of time in his stories is spent describing the drives to a small town, or up a driveway, or in the walk across the room. Motion, and the time required to produce it, is the generator of observation. Characters are set not by their physical devices, which are presented late and at close range, but long before as Marlowe drives and walks through cities and buildings. No where else in literature is so much time spent—as it is so freely in film—on describing rooms and places that the character is only passing through, ones where no action or dialogue take place. It’s no accident that the most famous—and most often referred to by the knight-errant crowd—scene in Chandler’s books is the not a stand-off or a bit of dialogue, but in the passage that brings Marlowe from the street curb, up the lawn, through the front door, and back into General Sternwood’s hothouse of orchids. By the time Chandler gets around to introducing the General, its all gravy, because we know so much from the procession we took with Marlowe to meet him.

I’ve been wondering a lot about what Banham would tell me about Chandler. I’m sure he read him, and I’m willing to bet he loved the stories. After all, here’s a Brit who fell in love with the highways and sprawl of LA long before it was fashionable. Banham is hot on the possibility of passage in LA—the way it is a place to move through and a series of environments to be moved between. This seems like a good fit with Marlowe’s approaches, and I’ve been picturing a designer/detective pairing where Daniel Libeskind in glasses motors around with Humphrey Bogart in a fedora. I think USA networks would pick it up.

The latest in this orgy has been reading Killer in the Rain, a collection of the stories Chandler wrote for magazines early in his career that he then recycled into his books. They are shorts and rough drafts of the episodes that would come to dominate his best-known books. They are also filled with some of the most outrageous hard-boiled lines. Let’s end with some highlights:

“The road dropped to the lake level and I begin to pass flocks of camps and flocks of girls in shorts on bicycles, on motor scooters, walking all over the highway, or just sitting under trees showing off their legs. I saw enough beef on the hoof to stock a cattle ranch.” – "The Lady in the Lake," 1938

“The lobby—they called it a foyer—looked like an MGM set for a night club in the Broadway Melody of 1980. Under the artificial light, it looked as if it had cost about a million dollars and took up enough space to for a polo field. The carpet didn’t quite tickle my ankles.” – "Bay City Blues," 1937

Notes From TV Land, Vol. 1

2006-08-16T18:13:00.000-04:00

Not much--actually nothing at all--has been going on here in the Hollow Scene. I remain remarkably jobless. Really, it's not that remarkable, since I've been doing everything I can to avoid sending out resumes. I've been trying to set up a complicated wireless network in my not-exactly gigantic apartment. I've been failing to coax my desktop out of some sort of techie malaise where it crashes every time it sleeps. I've read just about every Stanley Kaufman film review I can find on The New Republic. I think you get the idea.

My listless perusal of all thing not related to finding employment has led to some interesting discoveries. One is that a Netflix cue can only hold 500 movies at a time; apparently you will not be allowed to plan your movie rentals three years from now. Another is the varies and exciting world of daytime cable. Now, anyone familiar with me and my job searching habits will know that I can pack away a solid four hours of Law and Order a day if need be. Every once in a while, though, I need to dry out, and leave the guys at the 2-7 off the tube for a stretch. Woe is, that doesn't mean I turn off the TV.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of why a 28 year-old, presumably well-educated young man would wallow in his burgeoning weight problem and lack of gainful employment by spending so much time exploring the nether-regions of digital cable (will we ever get back to this?--I doubt it), I'd like to make a few comments on what is going on out there past channel 30.

Today's will be on David Foley and Brovo's Celebrity Poker Showdown. This show is a brilliant waste of airtime. The fact that Bravo can eat up two hours of programming at a stretch is incredible, and I hope it led to the rapid promotion of whichever mini-executive for scheduling thought it up. Why is it so clear that this stretch is a stretch, you ask? Because even the host seem bored--so bored that even post production can't hide that he would rather be almost anywhere else. Foley, who one must allow doesn't have a lot else to do with his time, often appears to be using his wildly-spinning eyeballs to suss out a means of escape every time the camera is on. In addition to this all-so-subtle body language, he makes frequent comments on air tipping us off on his desire that "this will end soon" and "it can't go on much longer."

Poor David Foley. He was so brilliant on The Kids in the Hall, and at least he got to make a real income while hanging around with Phil Hartman and Maura Tierney on News Radio, even if he was the straight-man. Now, badly overweight and obviously looked down upon by even the B-list celebs playing poker (how is it possible that the incredibly awkward professional poker player they have as his sidekick is more respected by the guests?), his grey hair and goatee put the finishing touches on his current incarnation as an alcoholic leprechaun. I used to feel sorry for the other Kids in the Hall that Foley, who never seemed quite as good as the rest of them, managed to get a mainstream career out of the whole thing. Now, though, a moment's consideration of how miserable and awkward Foley looks trying to pall around with a bunch of actors cranky for having just been closed out of a poker tournament leads me to the conclusion that they all most be quietly laughing. Can you imagine what it must be like in his special cable purgatory? Your co-host is on the show because he has perfected a card game through thousands of hours of on-line game playing culminating in a week-long tournament featuring guys wearing mirrored shaded and headphones pissing into plastic bags beneath the table. Your guests are always unhappy to see you, because when they do it means they just lost to, or were perhaps humiliated by, stiff competition such as Alec Trebek or Mario Cantone. Your audience is a bunch of Vegas partyers--probably soused--who have run out of money for their own gambling and are thus forced to watch others do the gambling for them. What a dream! This existence makes that of Bravo's other non-star, Kathy Griffin, look like a tropical paradise (hey, she occasionally gets to go outdoors in LA and appears to be surrounded by people who actually love and care for her, although we can't be so sure).

Anyway, I'm sure that Scott Thompson is probably having more fun doing whatever it is that he does these days, probably because he's doing it in chaps.

My Summer Doping Scandal

2006-07-25T23:20:00.000-04:00

What happened to the Cream and the Clear?

It's been a busy period here in the life of your unemployed, pseudo-architect correspondent. On any given year, I like to behave like the nation of France and stop working for the month of July--with a keen eye to not getting much done in August once I flip the switch back to Forward, March! This year I've really outdone myself--quite exceptionally--by using the World Cup as an excuse to get right down to doing nothing much, much earlier than usual this year. June, despite the necessity of packing up my incredibly overstuffed New Haven apartment into a small army of white banker's boxes, passed as if through the haze of the lotus eater as I watched little men run back and forth across my TV screen for days on end. Then came the Tour de France--my usual summer narcotic. It's not exactly hanging with the cool kids to get up at six-thirty every day for a month (while unemployed) to watch a bike race, but it does me a good turn. While the whole thing was much more exciting than it has been for years, what with the subtraction of Mr. Armstrong's tediously efficient winning, I do wonder why the winners have to be so astoundingly ineloquent. In terms of lifetime achievement, Lancie-pooh did take top honors with his style of grunting his interviews in the direction of his left armpit, but just because Floyd manages to speaking clearly at a normal volume doesn't mean we should count him out when it comes to make no sense what-so-ever.

Now the trip is over all over, and my pupils are returning to their normal size. Which is handy, because it's time for me to sit down for some interviews and get a job.

When Will I Leave New Haven?

2006-06-14T07:30:00.000-04:00

In comparison, I watch at a bar with three guys from the neghborhood.

Despite the realities of trying to move out of the palace I live in here in New Haven, I am slowly getting sucked into World Cup Fever. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and instantly pushed aside some boxes so I could get down to scanning the internet for interesting material on yesterdays matches as well as something to let me know which contest would be the better to watch today: Spain/Ukraine or Germany/Poland. Mind you, these are four teams I really couldn't care less about.

Actually, I should care about the Spanish team—after all, it was my time in Seville watching Betis play every week that got me into spectator soccer in the first place, but I've been burned too many times by their national team to let out more that a whimper when they lose early and often. Did I mention early? Also, my prize soccer possession, a Athletic Club Bilbao jersey with four-inch red candy stripes, would probably be less welcome in the local bar where I watch these games (remember, home service is still limited to a fuzzy ABC) than most costumes I can think of.

As one would expect (that means you), there has been a lot of Cup related emailing going on. O has dedicated himself to writing a daily summary email in the most florid and purple style, emulating the best of English Football Journalism. The highlight of yesterday's was "That little move by Robinho was a wonderful piece of class." Never mind that he sent me a text message ("Sick!") every time something special happened—I have no idea what he's talking about.

What I do know is that watching Ronaldinho dribble his way through a scrum of three defenders at once is pretty fun. I also like the way half of the Brazilians wear their jerseys untucked, flapping around like schoolboy's t-shirts. Compared to the all-business-all-the-time sides of Germany and England, it looks like these guys are out for a romp in the playground, and for the first forty-five minutes, that was how they played too.

Aside from commentary from the Purple People Eater, we've been going back and forth with some fairly useless tangential information. My contribution was Franklin Foer's article for The New Republic evaluating the ability of various political systems to producing winning World Cup teams. (TNR has actually been a great source of reading material on the Cup with the blog written by Foer, Alex Massie, and others. To wit, their summary of the Brazil yesterday: "It wasn't bad considering that they played the first 60 minutes with only 10 men on the pitch—and one barely mobile globular of fat with buck teeth." Also, their calling for supernatural destruction of the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn. deserved points for pluck.) Moving back out of parentheses: DC had already offered her favorite source of reading, the entertaining Michael Davies at ESPN's Page 2 (not to worry about him in destruction of Bristol—he's covering this from Germany). Outdoing both of us in sheer volume of material, Swiss Family Robinson emails back with Wikipedia on the Football War in 1969 and a 59-page report prepared by Goldman Sachs on the World Cup ("Brazil is the odds-on favorite with at 12.7% chance to win, according to our model." Thanks guys. Really, good work.) So, I guess his employers are getting their bang for their buck out of him at work these days.

A Cup Between Friends, Sort Of

2006-06-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

So this would have been the state of most of my classmates had we been there.

This weekend passed in a haze—my fifth college reunion and tenth high school reunion fell on the same three days. I tried splitting the difference, and it sort of worked. Well, if by working you mean that I had to stop at my parents' house on the way back home so that I could take a two hour nap and not do something stupod while driving. At both tour stops this weekend, it was the men who looked like we were getting older. Bellies and bare scalps were often in evidence, while the women—for the most past—were free of obvious wrinkling or funny bulges.

Both events mostly boiled down to standing around under tents while doing a lot of drinking. In eastern Massachusetts this was done under torrential rain, and my oil coat was the accessory of the evening. I didn't actually see that many of my college classmates, but I did encounter the phenomenon of multiple female friends who only revealed that they were engaged after ten minutes of chit-chat. I'd like to think this is because I'm making them regret their rash decision, but it is probably more truthful to say that it's easier to talk about grad school that for me to notice the giant rock on her finger. I'm really no geologist, not at all.

We could buy our old jerseys from high school for 2 bucks. No towels, though.

The high school folks were better dressed, although the blustery afternoon led everyone down to the stock room to buy sweatshirts and the old game jerseys that were for sale. I now have two soccer jerseys—both home and away, of course—that I may only get to use on the squash court when losing to one of my old roommates. Now back at home, I find they have a certain smell that I didn't notice when I was buying them.

Appropriately outfitted in green and white, our class managed to stay up until three or four in the morning having a party with the class of 2001 in the common room of a dorm at the edge of campus. It was good fun when a classmate showed up with the ice sculpture stolen from the dinner tent hooked over his shoulder, but it got a little weird when one girl tried to play beer games with her shirt tucked up under her bra. In general, when the scene begins to cross over from erstwhile frat party to wannabe den of iniquity, I take my cue and head to bed. I suggest you all do the same.

One of the five-years playing Beirut wore a smiliar outfit.

My plan for physical and emotional recovery today focused on watching the US play the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a strategy as sure of failure as when I tell anyone I'm actually going to be somewhere on time—within five minutes it is always clear that this is a lie. The game was so depressing I had to come back to my apartment and root through my stack of Play Station games until I found my old FIFA Soccer 2003. I replayed the contest four of five times until I felt the US had finally achieved a moral victory. I then went online and obsessively read everything I could find on the World Cup. Finally, after article upon article about how the US was going to win this opening match and the accompanying post-game report that they had blown it royally, a ray of sunshine broke through when I discovered in Michael Davies' World Cup blog on ESPN.com that the German name for the Ivory Coast, Elfenbeinkuste, translates as "Elephant Bone Coast." As in, "The number one goal of today was scored by Saviola for Argentina against the Elephant Bone Coast." This, I love, and I can finally call it a day.

Dee Emm Vee - A Parenthetical Excursion

2006-06-07T12:54:00.000-04:00

Everybody in there is an antique.

My six years were up on my birthday, so yesterday I gave myself the gift that never gives, a trip to the DMV for a new license. I've always gone to the ol' HQ up in Wethersfield, but this was a chance to try out a new Circle of Hell in Hamden. The Wethersfield office is a giant brick box that looks like a decommissioned school from the street. After parking at the far end (inevitibly) of the lot, one entered into a basement hallway, climbed several flights of stairs (office employees want to be close to the ground to speed evacuation), and enter a waiting room that has been under reconstruction for decades. Current amenities include a plastic-tarp ceiling (holding back aesbestos?), an LED marquee flashing violently with strings of unintellible code (the wires must have gotten crossed when they ripped out the acoustic tile).

Now Hamden is nothing like that. Instead, one enters from the parking lot through a choice of four (unmarked) doors that let directly onto various waiting rooms. Who can imagine the arctic sensations of these rooms in the winter? In he early summer, though, it was pleasant enough. Signage and directions consist of various panels indicating services and their corresponding lanes. Every other phrase or number, however, has been taped over (a tactile delight: sometimes painters' blue tape, sometimes duct tape, sometimes multiple layers of beige packing tape) with new instructions scribbled in.

I waited on line for about two hours all told (not bad for the DMV) before I walked out with my new, thugg-a-licious drivers' license. It was two hours of acting like cattle, though. No one read (I saw only one book: The Chronicles of Narnia under the arm of a twelve-year-old boy), and there were no iPods in evidence. I had my newspaper, but no one seemed interested in borrowing a section. I was amazed; everyone just stood in line, shifting their weight from foot to foot. The crowd spanned all sorts of ages and demographic groups--I guess no one reads anymore in Connecticut. At least on the subway in New York everyone is either reading or plugged into headphones. It made me think of a comment someone made at dinner last Sunday about the surprise of his jury-duty experience: no one brought anything to read there either. These are places where you are guaranteed to have nothing to do but wait, yet no one prepares themselves. I must have a pretty scrawny imagination, because I'd go crazy if I just had to feed on my own thoughts for all that time.

Two hours later, I had the new card, and I was out, out, out.

In 1994 I need a haircut; in 2006 I need a shave.

One Third of Professional Croquet Players Miss the First Wicket

2006-06-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

You haven't won until the final positions are captured in the cameraphone.

Since college I've been pretty obsessed with lawn games.

Sophomore year, Prudy and I discovered a group called Mrs. J's Midnight Croquet playing said game at nearly said hour in the Mac Lawn in Cambridge. We played—in the dark + with drinks = negative balls—with these friendly folks for a while in the spring. When the club president said she had to give up the game during her semester abroad at the Biosphere II we tried to stifle our laughter and quietly wrest control of the club set from the other hippies we played with. We failed in the struggle, and a man with a painfully-hyphenated name took control of the set and moved it up Mass Ave to the center for High-Energy Meta-Physics (HEMP—forgive the Harvard humor, I'm not responsible), otherwise known as the student vegetarian co-op house.

Within months we had control of the set—and got busy jettisoning extra wickets to make more room for bloody mary mix. I also wrote a number of grant proposals to the student council, making note of the dire situation of our club when compared to the varsity status of the Yale team. Grant proposals required the submission of club bylaws to affirm that the group was non-exclusionary. If anyone ever digs up what I handed in for that portion of the proposal, there are probably a number of well-meaning social organizations whose members will never look me in the eye.

Anyway, croquet has, of late, given way to boules and/or bocce (depending on the conditions of play—you know I'm sensitive to these things). First there was a spate of boules playing in San Francisco last spring with Hunter. In fact, an entire Napa visit was basically hijacked by our feverish need to claim a patch of grass as our own by lobbing giant silver balls back and forth until security was required to remove us. This particular team of players has yet to be reunited, despite an attempt to carry on a set of these benign-looking eight-pound spheres for a trans-continental flight to a wedding. The TSA does not look upon these little friends with the same love and affection that I do, and other amusements (mostly dressed in pink taffeta) had to be found on-site.

Recent graduation frolicking has provided a return to the sport, even with the distractions of kite-flying (see below, or just 'look up') nibbling at the corners of my leisure time. Recently, some of this hot ball-on-ball action has even been caught on home video. The freestyle forms of throwing seen in this clip have come to my aid when playing in—what is today an inevitable misfortune befalling the passionate lawn bowler—groups my mixed skill and divergent interests. As I discovered back in my days in the Harvard Mallet Society, when Scarf Girl is just coming to the Sunday morning BM and match-play to practice bending over seductively for the boys in seersucker, it is important to change the rules of the game a bit so she becomes more interested in the game at hand than tempting and tormenting poor Charlie, a young man whose just trying to hang on long enough so he can make it to the priesthood.

I digress . . .

On Friday, I went out for a belated birthday celebration with the nearest and dearest of NYC. Thoughtfully, Teddy Roosevelt chose a bar on Atlantic Avenue with its own bocce court as our rallying point for the night. This was, how can I say, auspicious. Despite the leaking roof that made the red clay at the middle fifth of the court into a water hazard-cum-booby trap, we managed to pack away three matches before the second galvanized pail of Schlitz and Schaeffer cans was emptied into our bellies. It's at moments like these where I realize that erudition and the cultivation of refined habits are their own rewards.

So, if you're looking for a pickup game of croquet, or just want to to hear a complete catalog of college references to the sticky wicket, I think I can point you in the right direction.

Got a Kite

2006-06-01T10:02:00.000-04:00

It was my birthday earlier this week, so we went to a nearby bar for a drink. We, here, being the slowly-dwindling group of ex-architecture students who may or may not have a clear employment future and who are instead living through the beginning of summer as if we just graduated from high school. We're talking Dazed and Confused minus the Moon Tower. As has been proven so often lately, there is only one end game for all of these evenings: small circles of people dancing in a darkened apartment to the extended version of White Lines.

I received five kites. One was a small airplane about three inches across with two tails almost a meter long and made out of recording tape. We figured if we pulled it through a walkman it would either play Cindi Lauper or Beijing Opera. There were other normal kites too—all of this because I was at a house party a couple of weeks ago and there were some kites in the house that I found really relaxing to fly. I don't think I'd touched a kite since I eight or ten, and it was a cool rediscovery.

Then again, it's only so cool to be the one walking around a bar with a bundle of kites. I'm used to being the only person reading a book in a bouncer's line, but having rolls of rainbow nylon under my arm really does make the rest of the patrons a little shifty.

After-school Jobs

2006-05-31T11:12:00.000-04:00

We're getting older now, aren't we?

Last week I graduated from my architecture program. Now you are talking to a master. (I know a few of you hoped that you were talking to a doctor, but let me just say I can make some good referrals, and I'm sure we'll be able to get that rash cleared up in no time.)

Now, Honeymoon week is over, and it's time to get down to do it, whatever it is. I mean something, that is, that makes it sound like I'm not just sitting around catching my breath after architecture school, wheezing and puffing like Mr. Burns after he tries to open a jar of pickles. Afterall, I can only have the "I'm taking the summer off" conversation with so many people before I begin to sound ridiculous even to my own ears.

One of the upshots of my new status as a free man, unchained from from the studio, is some time with the parents. Last week I was at a party with them up in Hartford, and my father and I managed to escape to the front terrace of one of the three real modernist houses I've ever seen in the area. We were talking about my trip last summer to Rome and how nice the lifestyle must be for the expats who tour around visiting architecture and fine arts groups.

My father then told me a story I'd never heard before. In fact, I only know a handful of stories from my father, so I was very interested to hear another. After his freshman year in Boston, he went to Greece for the summer. This trip wasn't paid for by his parents; he had a little study fellowship from the college. The funding didn't cover much, though, beyond the price of his ticket there, and he realized he wasn't going to be able to live on three dollars a day, even in Athens. After looking around for a couple of days, he realized that hey, his was an architecture student! He probably knew as much about the Acropolis as most of the guides up there. So my father went up to the top and stood by the Parthenon where guides and tourists find each other. Pretty soon, my father was giving tours in English, Spanish or French. He did these on and off all summer, and it paid for his travel and fun all over Greece. What was fun, though, was when he realized that the couples and families he was taking around the ruins didn't really want all that much of the ancient and architectural history of the site—instead they were excited and happy to be on vacation, and wanted someone to organize and acknowledge their happiness. As a young man, slightly foreign-looking and educated in several different countries, he was a great companion to these people for a couple of hours—he was part of their vacation.

Sometimes I wonder how all of his initiative got lost in the translation to me. The last time I made a random friend while traveling, it took 150 miles on foot to do it, and I don't think I've ever made a dollar that didn't come in the form of a cheque. Well, now that I'm done with thousands of dollars of school, I can find the time to go busking in the subway, playing my kazoo and squeaky-duck medley.

Charrette

2006-04-24T03:56:00.000-04:00

Nothing like seeing the rock-star side of three A.M. pass by, celebrated by two aspirin washed down with the bottom third of a Venti—by now a vintage cup purchased at 10:30. I had the chainsaw-er's headphones on over the iPod earbuds in order to keep the focus on a growing pile of very small, very oddly shaped slivers of Strathmore art board and grey photo mounting board. Some Colombian mariachi rolled through on the shuffled playlist, and I was going strong.

A little over twenty-five minutes ago, the 100-hour ticked by. All the heavy lifting left in grad school needs to be done in that window. As much as I am ready for this to be over and for some real sleep, it adds a little frisson to the proceedings.

Zzzzzzz....

Awful Music Always Makes the Protestor More Protestant

2006-04-21T15:01:00.001-04:00

You know, the red was looking nice against the spring leaves today.

Hu Jintao, prezzie of China, was on campus today, causing a traffic jam. I rode around on my bike taking photos and some video. Some comments later, but first I wanted to thow online some of the video, posted on a new discovery: Vimeo.

Lining the Street on Vimeo

Wear your headphones for this one: the takeaway has everything to do with the rousing symphonics being blasted from speakers so lound that they drowned out the wind noise in the mic of my little Canon.

The video quality is slightly better on the Vimeo site. Also, I have another clip there with even more tympanum-busting delights.

Health Watch - Or, How Badly Can I Tank In Three Years?

2006-04-17T22:08:00.000-04:00

I do it because it feels good.

It's gotten to that point in the semester again when the words "caffeine free" read to me as "not fit for human consumption." If I don't take in a major dose of the stuff every few hours, things start going a little haywire. For instance, I made the mistake of having a bottle of root beer with dinner. Root beer has no caffeine. (Nor does it—as you know—have any beer, but I'm not getting the shakes on that front.) This means that I've been without a hook-up since about five this afternoon. The result: I can't concentrate, I wander around the place as if I'm having a lengthy cell phone conversation with a long lost friend, and my shoulders are doing a good job at keeping my earlobes from flapping.

The coffee count this fine day in April breaks down like this: one cup Illy homebrew at 7:45 when the store has opened for me to replenish the milk supply here in my palace; mug o' diner-swill at 11:35 after filing three tax extensions and going to my first class; one short Fivebucks latte at 12:10 while walking back from the diner to the studio; a post-studio meeting pick-me-up/calm-me-down dark roast ("room for milk this time, please") at five-ish, procured at the coffee shop whose front door I can monitor from my fourth-floor drafting table; and, now, at 10:20, a mug at home so I can keep working tonight, having forsaken the crazies in the studio for my own home.

Someone actually suggested I switch to tea instead.

Tax Man

2006-04-17T02:45:00.000-04:00

So it's almost 2:30 in the morning, and I just rushed home from studio so I could load TurboTax onto the computer. Clearly this signals that I have not already finished, printed out, folded, stuffed, stamped, and posted my 2005 returns to the hungry coffers of Washington, Hartford, and Boston. Ahem. I was busy doing other things, these last few months.

Things like these: the grand total of today's stay in the studio comes to four of sheets of print-out on which I started working out the plans, a new floor division scheme (doodled in CAD), and two#&8212count 'em—two diagrams. One involved doing about two hours of computer modeling and rendering that I then threw out because it just made everything more confusing. The final result after this anti-render-edit looks like the packing divider to a case of wine. This isn't working out so well.

Now I need to (1) figure out what I need to do to file for an extension of my taxes, (2) read 32 pages in a foreign language that I am becoming increasingly confident I will never master, (3) sleep a little bit, and (4) finally finish drawing the fucking plans I promised, promised, PROMISED myself I would have done by Monday.

Is there any wonder why I am so good at self-loathing? Look at all the material I have to work with!

OK. The bouncing icon tells me that Turbo Tax has finished downloading all of the applicable forms and laws and associated tortures—I should probably turn my attention to that.

Wim

2006-04-16T00:13:00.000-04:00

Chevy cowboy.

Three of us long-suffering students went out in the rain yesterday afternoon to see Don't Come Knocking. I'm a big Wim Wenders fan, although my taste runs to The American Friend over Wings of Desire. Here, we're back in the West, with a movie that looks more like his photography book, Written in the West. I really enjoyed this film—at least partly because shares a confounding of type with the American Friend. While the latter is a thriller without much espionage, this is a drama with a comic script. And while it goes in for some classic Wender's landscape shots and deep camera placements, it also mixes in a handful of highly conventionalized shots for relief. Anyway—it was worth trip to take some time off of studio.

Too bad when I made it home at two a.m. I decided it would be a good idea to pop in the day's Netflix arrival and watch The Birdcage for a full hour and a half. Not worth it. Not worth it at all.

Also, it was disappointing to find out that I've been quoting it wrong for years: it's not "Don't be afraid of my Guatemalan heat," it's "Are you afraid of my Guatemalan-ness. . . . My Guatemalan-ness, my natural heat." I guess I'm not so hot after all.

My heat, yes indeed.

After the fact: I dreamt last night that I was going for a hike with H (in tuxedos) before his wedding. The location was a jumble of real places I know of, but that's not important right now. At the base of the trail, we had to pass through a conference-resort center where all sorts of shady things seemed to be going on. In the end, Sutter, Tim Roth's character from "Don't Come Knocking," showed up and starting chasing us—although it was more of a Le Samourai-chase than a French Connection-chase. I seem to remember that H engineered some ingenious escape, but the details are fuzzy. Apparently writing this stuff down is cooking it together in my head. At least it's more interesting than dreams about architecture.

Spring Sling

2006-04-15T00:37:00.000-04:00

Feeling good, looking good.

Last weekend I went to the wedding of the couple who—in their own little way—started me off on this rather unsuccessful little project. Not that the success business has been their responsibility; it's mine. But to go over to their now-archival wedding website, carefully coded by hand, makes me a little misty-eyed. Or maybe that's the whisky. Hard to tell.

Anyway, above is the man whose white jacket kicked off my sniping. Here you see him exhausted after leading the charge in the wedding weekend at every turn. Right now he's been taken out of commission by practically breaking his ankle on the next-to-last dance. Somewhere, somehow, an aircast and a bag of ice have made their way onto his foot. Soon, he had moved onto the bar in a wheelchair, but that's just because he was damned sure that other people weren't going to be left standing when he wasn't. I sense the outline of an inspirational movie here. Let's just all reflect for a moment what it's like commuting to work in Manhattan when on crutches.

Now I'm back on the other coast. Less than two weeks are left until the final design reviews, and the usual signs of spring are beginning to show: snowy flowers are sprouting from the dogwoods and students are signing out four-day chunks of time on the CNC mill, young love is in the air and architects are starting to fight with each other over how much plexiglass will be available over the weekend, mornings comes with a touch of fog in the air and midnight rolls by with a round of competitive complaining. It's hard to imagine why I'm ready to skip straight to summer.

In the meantime, I can think back to a couple of great days in California. They were spent with great friends—I know 'em when I see 'em, everytime.

Flying a flag.

Extreme Makeover: Wanton Waste Edition

2006-03-21T23:17:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure this man is the devil. Most likely because he "cares."

Every once in a while, when I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I watch a bit of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. There's nothing more upsetting than watching a bunch of insincere showbiz nobodies go in to direct the demolition of more-or-less normal house in order to make room a God-awful McMansion complete with a polyethylene white picket fence and rose-tinted concrete faux-brick walkway. Obviously these guys have an idea about how to solve the difficult and painful challenges facing so many families across the nation: build a small subset of these Americans the biggest house possible—bonus points if it is too sprawling and lavish for the family to afford heat and maintenance on top of their dire medical bills/funeral expenses/crushing emotional baggage/etc..

But I really like it—secretly I do!

It also makes me pleased as punch to watch giant teams of (semi-)custom home builders rush around the site while the clownish hosts bellow through megaphones at short distance to dazed construction volunteers in matching t-shirts. Or better yet, how about when the producers halt all work on the site to organize a landscaping sequence in homage to the rake men of the Yankee Stadium's Seventh Inning Stretch. And I cringe along with the hosts when someone tries to put a hard-hat over his or her perfect hair. Unless said host is wearing a tank top, because then they just look even more badass.

"Yo' momma so fat, when she sit around the house..."

The premise seems to be that there is no such thing as an existing structure that shouldn't immediately be raised to the ground in favor of a new home with a three-car garage planted squarely over where the old hearth used to stand. But how can I blame them? If every project needs to be completed in just five days, why struggle with the complexities of the house that the family is now living in when it can easily be replaced with something constructed with a set of plans bought off the internet? If my heart bleeds when they try to—not kidding here—detonate a Vermont farm house, it is merely because I am a Communist or a sissy, or, more likely, both.

Kind of reminds me of the P.A.G.A.N. cult meeting in Dragnet, minus the fuzzy breeches.

I'll stop. The set-up of the show and it's low-wattage "design team" that just pimps sponsored goods is all too easy to take licks at, time and time again. What really made me lose recently--although I haven't had the pleasure of languishing in the bathos of one of these four projects--is that these Doyens of the Domestic have turned their attention to the hurricane-ravaged portions of the Southeast. I knew it was only a matter of time before they did a project down there, but to see the promos for the show this weekend where clips of a family lustily sprinting through the halls of their new home were intercut with aerial shots of the Ninth Ward under fourteen feet of water really turned my stomach.

It seems that there is nothing more American than this Small Screen Effect, where, if we can crop our field of view down far enough, and then fill it with just a temporary scene of out-sized retail therapy, everything will be all right. While the planning challenges that face the Gulf Coast—we should probably include Florida too—fall of the national radar, a TV show is sweeping in to provide an enormously expensive band-aid that will come unstuck and float away as soon as the water comes up again. The idea that rebuilding a community starts by fitting out one family with a McMansion is vile. Equally loathsome is the kind of self congratulation that surrounds the stars of this show after they dedicate a whole four weeks to the problem. I hope they all step on a rusty nail.

Day of Labor, Day of Rest

2006-03-19T19:23:00.000-05:00

It's Ball Night!.

Today, I worked on my hangover. We had a little architect party over here last night, complete with the usual fall out: models reduced to small sticks and whisps of paper scattered across the floor, a rogue's gallery of abandoned iPods, and Holloween-costume moustaces stuck to just about everything in sight.

We stocked up on Polaroids, which you would think would provide people with a way to get the sick photos out of their system without worry of the pics ending up on the server. Never you mind--somehow all the shots of girls kissing still made it to somebody's digital.

I swear these were cooler last night.

Whatever--at least we're back at work tomorrow morning as if nobody took anybody else home.

Not-So-Skinny on Johnson

2006-02-19T09:26:00.000-05:00

Attendees at the Philip Johnson symposium burst into applause after the finale of Peter Eisenman's Concluding Remarks titled "An Opening Statement."

I managed to get pretty sick this weekend--since Thursday afternoon I've been living liquicap to liquicap in an attempt to get anything done. That hasn't worked, but the upshot has been that I've slept more over the last two nights than I have since New Years'.

The downside to this seemed to be missing the Philip Johnson symposium that started on Friday, an event that I'd actually managed to register for ahead of time. I figured that dizziness and nausea would not be a good mix with the airless environment of a lecture hall; I was heading home to bed.

I did manage to stick around the simulcast room long enough to get a sense of what I was missing. Kurt Forster opened up the afternoon talking about Johnson and "The Autobiographical House." Now, I've spent a semester in seminar with this man, and let me just say that it was of no surprise that, when he fired up the first slides, he said that these were just a foretaste, and nothing like what was to come: "images with the sharp, aged flavor of finely sliced salami." This from a man who once digressed for twenty minutes during a lecture on John Soane to discuss the wonders of Viennese pastry including the etymology and history of the croissant, and, in conclusion, made a young art history student turn pink by describing the sensations produced by the creamy filling of his favorite, the liebesknochen, or, as he translated, the bone of love.

Forster, wearing a Prada suit on location at the 2004 Architectural Biennale, spys a stack of doughnuts just beyond the frame.

Seeing that he was up to his old tricks, I felt comfortable leaving for home, knowing I would be safe in my ignorance. I ate some dark chocolate Petit Ecoliers for dessert, though, just to honor the lecturer.

The real excitement of this weekend was the dueling closing comments by Koolhaas and Eisenman. The Dutch One and The Belly were supposed to go at it back to back in summing up the other's summation. This promised to be a much more interesting celeb scene that Good Morning America coming to tape Zaha giving desk-crits.

In the end, even as I attempted to bear through an increasing haze of illness, it never happened. Rem bailed, leaving Eisenman to hog the stage all by himself. After coming to the podium, taking off his jacket, repeating five or six times that this was "an opening statement, not concluding remarks," he announced that he had left his speech in his Princeton office and would be "winging it." I've seen that one from Eisenman before, and I was out of the building in a flash.

This all seems to convenient--somehow Peter was prepared for Rem's no-show. A classmate suggested that Peter paid Rem off so he could be the star. I'm starting to believe it--this all seems to be of a part with other recent foldings, ducking-outs, and skips. Maybe this is all a part of a three-way deal with Vito Acconci and the LVHRD Duel cancellation.

I'm beginning to disagree with that.

So that sums up this weekend's disappointments. Now I'm going to go back to lying down and feeling awful. I'm out of movies, and the only channel I get on the tube is showing an infomercial on vacuums. The set is fabulous, however. It looks like the inside of a house, but every few feet the flooring changes color and consistency. Maybe this would be more fun with another liquicap.

How Unworthy I Am

2006-02-15T14:29:00.000-05:00

What makes the gutter work?.

Maybe this really doesn't count as a post--writing up something my reading of somebody else's blog-work--but what the hell, nobody's reading anyway.

The point is this: after giving up on The Gutter for a while, I've come back to find that it is really inspired. Mainly, I'm a sucker for anyone who manages to bash Zaha three times in less that 24 hours. (Well, maybe the middle one doesn't really count, but it did keep Zaha-bashing at the top of my to-do list during an otherwise distracting morning.)

Too bad I can't just mimic this type of commentary for our own lovely microcosm here. Wouldn't it be fun to read about how some chipboard model was really destroying the neighborhood around my neighbor's desk? Or maybe that the last review on the fourth floor was an occasion of one-too-many thong-showings? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so much fun after all; I'm running low on people who'll eat lunch with me as it is.

In the meantime, I'll just rest assured that The Gutter has us covered already. How? I will now brandish my favorite news photo of the last few months, uncovered by Gutter.

How sweet it is.

Black on Black

2006-02-14T11:15:00.000-05:00

From the Gutter, intel. from OMA.

I never got around to posting more info on the São Paulo trip, but I think all four readers here will be able to continue with their lives. Anyway, guilt over this failure has kept me away from posting in general. Now I need to get on with it.

This morning I found something to help me get up an go: this ridiculous picture of the OMA-New York office. I was reading The Gutter on my newest heartbreak, the Herzog and de Meuron Schreager-shtick at 40 Bond, when I saw this charming picture that shows that the OMA office is indeed a polycarbonate-sheathed dojo for guys in black jeans and muscle-T's. Amazing, really--these architecture dress codes / markers of cultural capital really effect every corner of the profession. I remember getting grief from people about the SOM dress code (apparently we in New York were somehow responsible for the uniform in SOM-SF of white and black). And just last Thursday a woman from RAMSA joked to us that you can wear just about anything you want to an interview these days as long as you remember to wear a white shirt when you ask for a job at SOM-NY. All this means I was amused by this image that shows Josh Ramus and two of his stand-ins all wearing the same outfit. I thought there would be at least one orange hoodie in the OMA stable.

§ The background at the Gutter.

§ The source of my disappointment: 40 Bond in the Times, and on the web.

Back, Back, Back

2006-02-06T00:07:00.000-05:00

I just made it home from Brazil. I will recount details/upload photos later, but for now let me say it was a fascinating city. LA on steroids, Tokyo in a bikini, cemetery of modernism--whatever I say won't really mean much until I can figure it out for myself. Enough for now to claim that all eleven of us made it through without trying to kill one another and that I took 1 GB and 14 rolls (of 120) worth of pictures. Sadly, the sketchbook got the most action on the plane.

Arriving in JFK to meet the kids who went off to Rotterdam was a shock. They were a little grumpy but glad to be back out of freezing rain. We were dead on our feet and not ready to go from 32°C to 43°F. Then we got on the shuttle to New Haven and sat in a stupor while The Matrix played on and on.

Looking South

2006-01-25T18:53:00.000-05:00

Our site in São Paulo (red). The narrow end faces the Avenida Paulista, home to MASP (white outline).

In just a few days our studio will be off for five days in Brazil, visiting the ersatz site, and hopefully a lot of the rest of the city. We've been working on understanding the World Social Forum through a variety of means: their website, our conception of an institution, the formal arrangement of program in a single surface, etc. Sunil Bald's idea is that by generating a number of attitudes toward the project--none of which have to do with São Paulo--before we go, we will have the maximum 'response' when we do encounter the site and the city for the first time.

This is novel approach--most of my studios have begun with intensive site analysis period during which I become fascinated in a completely unhealthy way with the historical maps available for the area. One can imagine, in this vein, how Studio Krier was one of the most navel-gazing efforts of analysis. Maps of the French military campaigning against the British colonial forces provided ample opportunity for me to tickle myself. Also deadly is any area where I can find several generations of Sanborns.

So Sunil's emphasis on starting from somewhere else besides the site has been refreshing. But I'm really looking forward to what we'll see in Brazil, not the least of which is the Museu de Arte de SÃ£o Paulo by Lino Bo Bardi. It's right down the street from our site, and ever since I saw a lecture last fall by Esther da Costa Meyer on Bo Bardi, I have been fascinated by this woman and her work.

The lecture was the lone history lecture of the semester, but it was probably the best of the fall. Unfortunately, I can't find the Fall series on the school's website right now, but below I've linked to an essay Meyer wrote for the Harvard Design Magazine.

In more mundane observation, the traffic in SÃ£o Paulo is supposed to be truly horrible. Note the response on the picture: all of the high-rise office buildings have the little blue square of a helipad.

§ Esther da Costa Meyer in HDM, After the Flood: Lino Bo Bardi's Glass House.

§ The BBC on SP's helipads.

Can't Get Enough

2006-01-23T12:28:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I found a site with a concise and relatively charming history of Holyoke, but when I wanted to link to it from this morning's post, I kept getting a Java error in my browser. Thinking this was a Safari problem, I waited until I got onto my PC in the studio. The problem persists, so who knows what they did to the site.

In it's place, I offer this truly scary series of images by the Berkshire Design Group, "an award-winning firm of landscape architects, civil engineers and land surveyors specializing in park and recreation design, site planning and commercial development". This redevelopment is in the vein of what has been done to other cities, but, having been to see these canals, I can say that wacky relationship between the scale of the figures and the scale of the buildings would indeed be a problem. These people are out of their minds.

§ BDG's The Holyoke Canal Walk Project

A much more positive event is the sense of humor from the Holyoke schools reunion page: