w3someday

[w3someday]

I miss you Pittsburgh!!! Here, I made this for you. #byebyegradschool #thesis #mastersdegree #architecture #watercolor #universityofnotredame #structuralbrick #hilldistrict #pittsburgh #traditionalarchitecture #urbanism #urbandesign #teenieharris #daiseylampkin #centreavenue (at Notre Dame Architecture) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxIdIJ2BaI1/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1xbvdgj2v9h4b

[w3someday]

Batthyány tér market hall (c. 1890) drawn up by the city engineering department, with occasional supervision from architects Pál Klunzinger & Itzván Rosina. Enjoying the view as I contemplate using it as a precedent for my thesis project. #architecture #hungary #budapest #thesis #gradschool #goodengineering #brickwork #markethall (at Budapest, Hungary) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvs37DGB6-x/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=csf3y4da3txa

[w3someday]

This one. (at Shoreline, Washington)

[w3someday]

New Toy!!!! #watercolor #windsornewton #painting #sketching #pleinair #architecture #rendering #levelup (at Paris, France)

[w3someday]

Deco Goth apt. tower from sketch to presentation. Bonus points for naming my primary precedent! . . . . . . #architecture #prismacolor #sketchup #france #artdeco #apartment #drawing

[w3someday]

Provided

It was a patch of dirt road by the tracks.

It provided access.

It was dug up elsewhere,

but not far:

dried and wet again,

laid and set,

vibrated,

compacted,

  then it was left alone.

Cars occasioned,

trucks also

drove on it.

Trains went by:

countless trains

ringing and rumbling.

  It was wet in late October,

soaked through,

but instead of drying

like before

it froze:

hard wet,

the next day

soft again.

 In January, a crack formed,

in March a rivulet,

by May a crater.

It is a pothole

in the dirt road

by the tracks:

it provides impediment.

[w3someday]

Review: Four Movies

I’m writing this because I don’t want to go to sleep.  So the need for high purpose will have some time ago been supplanted by a longing for any purpose whatsoever.  That said...

I’ve seen four movies this past week because I’m essentially alone and do not yet have a social life in my new city.

1. Maggie’s Plan w/ Greta Grewig Dir. Rebecca Miller

2. The Shallows w/ Blake Lively Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra

3. The Neon Demon w/ Elle Fanning Dir. Nicholas Winding Refn

4. Indep. Day Resurgence w/ Liam Hemsworth Dir. Roland Emmerich

It’s also important that you know that I am an inveterate contrarian who only leaves unscrutinized his own ideas.  Therefore, here are the ways in which reviews for each of the above are completely totally wrong... in reverse order.

Indep. Day is not a bad movie.  It is in fact, a rather complicated cultural artifact.  It takes the “dream of the future” trope so common to lefty liberal sci-fi (I am a proud lefty liberal) and sound bytes it to absolute green goo oozing death.  This dream of the future is not idealized and neither rhetorically nor philosophically sharpened. It is instead a dream of having a true high purpose.  It is a dream of the world uniting... but only at a shotgun wedding.  It is a dream of everyone’s having an assault rifle being absolutely essential.  It is a dream of human spirit, and gruffness, and false modesty, and one liners actually being significant to the universe.  It is the dream of Cmdr. Data (no seriously, Brent Spiner is in the movie) apologizing to you for ever thinking that something more advanced than a human was possible.  It is the kind of dream it’s so easy to believe in if you just close your eyes to the actual world and never NEVER open them.  It is a dangerous dream.  It’s also rather repugnant.  But the movie cannot be so simply described as bad.  No, actually it’s remarkably and yes dangerously enchanting.

The Neon Demon is not an artifact of Refn having taken his visual meditations on violence too far, nor is it his most emotionally detached film.  This is Refn at his MOST restrained when it comes to violence.  He so often chooses here to film not the act but the facial expression in response to it.  This is true especially of the photo-shoot, and the break in.  We’re not seeing much of the actual violence, we’re seeing the reactions of Ms. Fanning.  She’s a bit (more than a bit) detached sure, but you can’t call the film detached because it’s lead character is herself detached.  Her detachment is part of the story.  When Refn goes on Q with Shad K. and blabs on and on about narcissism and Elle and back and forth, you can be pretty sure that the detachment was on purpose.  Refn’s restraint earns him the cresting of not just one but two catharses: one false top in the morgue when we really do see the act and think, oh ok, I guess that was it, and then finally, and truly, in the aftermath of the grand feast.  So much corn syrup, and especially in the mouth.  There must have been at least three quick stops per-take for mouth syrup replenishment.  Now that’s what’s missing from the diner down the street: mouth syrup replenishment.  The rest of the movie makes really no sense, and that can be fine, but it’s not my particular thing to have so much left unclear.  Why introduce a whole set of symbols and suggest the fringes of a complicated ritualistic culture to just abandon it in tatters on the floor? A fashion industry metaphor?  If so, it is both clever and well executed.  But I think we both know that this was just an excuse for Refn to put the rest of the weird shit in his head on screen.  I do however appreciate the slow slow crawl of the shots and of the development unlike some.  Ultimately, my feelings were mixed.  Inattentive reviewers may also wish to return to their source material to see that in fact, despite everything you were told about the movie before its release, no, nobody here has fangs.  Metaphors have instead simply come to a rather more ordinary life, and it’s awkward for everyone.

The biggest letdown of The Shallows is not the slow first 30mins.  Firstly, they’re not slow, really not slow enough to build the kind of suspense you can get when everyone knows it’s a shark movie.  And trust me, everyone knew.  Nor is it the repeated “crotch/boob shots” throughout those first 30 minutes.  Again, it seems like reviewers weren’t actually watching the movie, because the most uncomfortably repeated shots were neither of crotch nor boob but rather of the purportedly “Oakland Booty” (sorry Blake).  Though, that is what people wearing bikinis look like when they surf.  I’m all for shooting from the water’s surface, but I’m pretty sure that without putting a burkini on the woman, there would have been ways/angles/body parts to shoot that made it less straightforward to sexualize this truly bad-ass (having nothing to do with that ass) surfer.  And the script tries so hard to prove to you that it’s feminist, that girls rock: they surf, and they’re doctors, and they (megalo-spoiler) kill enormous sharks without any weapons even when starved/injured/dehydrated/about to pass out.  Nope, sorry, still not convinced.  Too many butt shots - and that was almost the worst part.  But the ACTUAL biggest letdown of the movie is NOT TELLING YOU WHAT THE NAME OF THE BAY IS, EVER!!!  This is such a missed opportunity.  This film loves little details, like how the prominent earring gets re-purposed, and the journey of Steven Seagull.  So WHY NOT GIVE THE BAY A KILLER PUNCHLINE STORY ENDING NAME???  No satisfaction.

Maggie’s plan was actually a delightful movie and I don’t think reviewers got it wrong at all.  As A.O. Scott says, it is a late period Woody Allen neurotic masterpiece, but then it isn’t.  Ms. Miller breaks Woody’s mold by making it (I mean obviously) about Maggie’s plan not John’s (played by Ethan Hawke).  She breaks her own mold by nudging closer to classical Rom Com structure.  Julienne Moore is also brilliant.  I’m becoming aware however that these depictions of late-twenty somethings is how the world sees my generation.  Those judo pants Mr. Pickle/Sperm Donor man are an UNACCEPTABLE representation of my generation.  Notice how I’m worried not at all about the pickle making or the sperm donation.  Good lord, I don’t care if you’re foreign, find yourself a pair (or even two) of proper trousers.

I guess it’s time for bed now.

Grumble, grumble, harrrumph.

[w3someday]

Recommendation: pause occasionally to appreciate the beauty of a deserted street.

[w3someday]

Recommendation: Give up some part of yourself to forces beyond your control.

Source: Paul Allen

What is the use of following a sports team?  I mean, really, what is the utility? Are we not actually able to carry the full weight of our being within this causally structured secular reality?  Must we set aside those heaviest portions of our self-conception to be borne by tall sweaty men on a burnished wooden floor, or by a side of underpaid women who run more in an hour than I do in a week? Must we volunteer for the kind of suffering that comes with such burden-sharing to also reap its benefits?  Are there really benefits?  Are we not - after all - simply replacing old-world religious practice and civic pride with comodified, comfortably estranged, and merely parallel ritual?  Are great works of bodily prowess now the truest inspiration for faith? Weren’t they always? Is Steph Curry the best basketball player ever?

Therefore we proclaim the mysteries of faith.  The best have retired, the best are playing now, the best will play again.  Alleluia.

Go Blazers.

[w3someday]

Baroque Obama

[w3someday]

Source: Chris Stapleton 

 Sing we the dead, for the dead die sweet songs. 

When the toils of old coils spring lightly away, 

 They bound for a piece along strings of a piano, 

Grand chords and sad tunes emanating therein. 

 Where man and girl wise crouch to catch such vibrations 

With butterfly nets and ears sharply pricked, 

There music is tethered to earth's revolutions. 

There we go daily to sing them: the dead.

[w3someday]

Source: Jamie Oliver Wouldn't your mother like you better if you served her slightly burnt and more flavorful food? Yes, yes she would.

[w3someday]

Recommendation: Give Blood

Source: Citizens who participate meaningfully in their communities

Giving blood sucks.  You often have to schedule it in advance.  You lose up to an hour of your day.  You get stuck with multiple needles.  You temporarily lose the use of one of your arms.  You may experience dehydration, chills, bruising, nausea, unconsciousness, lightheadedness, and a feeling of unique unawesomeness persisting days into the future.  You will be discriminated against if you enjoy certain kinds of sex, like to travel, use drugs, are prone to needle sticks, are skinny, are iron deficient, or have experienced strange diseases.  You will receive useless crap or a strange t-shirt as token compensation.  You will be told to sit still for 5-15 minutes and will have crackers and apple juice thrust upon you.  You will loose a quantifiable amount of physical fitness that will take weeks to regain.  You will have yellow crap on your arm.

You will also save lives.

[w3someday]

Source: British Science Ministry

Sometimes when you ask for help, you get ignored.  Eventually you come to count on this, like when you call your boss planning to just leave a voicemail.  Strange things happen indeed when your boss picks up and you’re forced to explain the origin of your sudden onset highly virulent 24 hour bug that also does not preclude you from sounding absolutely fine until half-way through your awkward excuse when you realize you should be coughing and croaking.  Well played.  Enter the British Science Ministry who asked for help from “the people” and instead of (as seems to have been expected) mostly nothing got Boaty McBoatface as the winning popularly selected name for the above vessel.  I say the rendering was really asking for it: that is SUCH a boat face.  In a sudden and saddening aboat face however, the Ministry has declined the popularly selected option in favor of the decidedly non-boat faced moniker, RSS David Attenborough.  However, because sometimes even though your boss knows you’re still full of crap unlike you’re claiming to be, he or she will still let you off the hook, when the great crane hook of the selfsame RSS David Attenborough scoops up from it’s hold a shiny new submersible vehicle to place delicately and ceremoniously into the windswept arctic ocean, emblazoned on the side of the mini-sub will be the name Boaty McBoatface.

[w3someday]

Recommendation: Be Wrong

Source: Brillobox Pub Quiz

No. You're not allowed to defend yourself. Just sit there in your wrongness and be wrong. I was wrong in at least two different ways last night for instance. Initially, I was wrong that The BIC company's first disposable product was a razor. It was a pen. Later on however, I realized that the more significant way in which I had been wrong was about the possibility for there to exist in the world a certain type of person. The existence of this seemingly impossible person was initially revealed by their knowing, unlike me, that BIC pens came before BIC razors. Then other remarkable things about this person came to light... man. Eventually, I was forced to sit back and enjoy my wrongness. It continues to be pretty enjoyable.

[w3someday]

Source: Motor City

We all need a break.

[w3someday]

As the story goes, when Chris Thile was selected to eventually take Garrison Keillor’s place on Keillor’s trademark radio show, Prairie Home Companion, Thile was a bit weirded out by the thought of taking on the combined mantles of Guy Noir, Lake Wobegon, and the stains that indicate freshness (Thile seems to go through life at least marginally weireded out anyway).  In seeing this, Keillor - from one weirdo to another - said essentially, “Hey there Chris.  You seem to have friends, ideas and talent.  Why don’t you set a course for the show uniquely pleasing to you and set off thattaway!”  I assume that at this, Thile shrugged, smiled sheepishly and awkwardly, and then broke the hearts of everyone in earshot by - instead of saying anything in reply - casually noodling out a song like this one.