I have a lot of randomness for you this evening so brace yourselves. First and foremost I have some responses that I have been promising I'd post for quite some time: The first is from KAH in response to my architecture rant on the 11th of November... Read it. The second is from CLM and pertains to Media Saturation. Enjoy it's heft and girth. Thank you both very much.
I had an interesting weekend. I spent it in lovely Houston Texas visiting my grandparents. It's odd how much my opinion of that particular city has changed since I lived there. When I left I never wanted to have anything to do with it again... this time, however, I had a great time and really enjoyed the city itself. Go figure.
Interestingly enough someone has built a 1/20th (or something) scale replica of China's Forbidden City _and_ the first emperor's terra cotta army. The quality of the exhibits wasn't that great but it did really convey a sense of the incredible scale and grandeur of both subjects. If you happen to be in Houston I recommend taking a look. It was called "Forbidden Gardens", I believe.
My uncle Greg and aunt Barbara have acquired a 24 foot powerboat. While I am not a big fan of powerboats I found this beast to be quite impressive. More impressive yet, they trailer the thing. It's truly something to see a boat this big behind a pickup sailing down the highway at 50ish miles per hour. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties we were not able to put in but we did get to spend a very nice morning by the lake. It was a good time. Uncle Greg, if you read this, thank you again.
I got to drive my aunt and uncle's volvo 850. I suppose everyone has a fetish car and Volvos have always been mine. The swedish tractor joke holds some truth, I'm afraid. One thing I can say for this car, however, is damn it looks cool. It's super black and has these yellow foglamps that, in the Houston winter-evening fog, make it look really evil. Another amusing thing about it is the keys have to come from Stockholm... all I could think of when I found this out was the scene with the mercedes in _Gone in 60 Seconds_... laser-cut keys from Stuttgart.
I think I take my grandparents for granted. This visit made me more aware of that. My grandpa was talking about some of his experiences in the navy in WWII and I realized that I didn't even know he served. I guess I should have known but I had never bothered to find out. It made me really wonder about the vast number of stories the people in my family can tell and how few of them I have heard. I think I'm going to try and find a way to record at least some of them... it seems important.
Everlast. Man. I can NOT figure this band out.
The inimitable Everstar gets kudos for coming up with an online radio station that doesn't suck. Have a look at Radio Paradise. Yum.
The current issue of Wired magazine is well worth picking up. I guess my design fetish is the new fad. If you pick up a copy of this be sure to check out the viridian energy meter and the 4 pages of new materials... too cool. This mag is sooo well produced. It's a shame it has become almost devoid of content. I would also like to know how Bruce Sterling figures in to the design game. Sci-fi author _and_ design guy? Too good to be true. :)
A coworker sent me a very well thought out and well written letter about some of the things I've talked about here. He really gave me some things to think about... so... I'm going to try and think about them and see what pops out but I waould like to thank him for taking the time to shoot me a letter. Thank you sir. You know who you are. :)
Douglas Coupland, in _Generation X_, mentions the importance of story-telling. I have to weigh in on this one. I, personally, have little skill as a story teller but I like to try. Do any of you have stories you would like to tell? I have been thinking that it might be neat to come up with something for the headspace that would facilitate story telling. Any thoughts? It seems like this is one art that is really, for the vast bulk of us, on the verge of dying out...
"Big Box" stores are pretty ugly, but I remember when I was kid in Tulsa looking at older grocery stores, the one with windows in the front, (presumably electric lighting was more expensive when they were built, so the cinder-block- box design we see today was inconcievable) and thinking how ratty they looked with dirty windows and rotting weather stripping.
Big Boxes aside, suburbia surprises by its architectural diversity! In older neighborhoods in the Northeast, everyhouse seems to be identical. In my neighborhood, its block after block of Victorian rowhomes, while in olderneighborhoods, blocks are literal blocks of brick rowhomes. In my neighborhood, nicer homes have wood trim painted bright, garish colors to distinguish one house from the next, but I can't imagine moving to, say, South Philly or Brooklyn, where its one red-brick house attached to the next. It must be disorienting.
By contrast, suburbia seems relatively diverse, with Dutch Colonials, ranch homes, Modern and Modern Electic house, all intermingling.
I was walking though Boston, and I was absolutely awestruck by the John Hancock Building, which is just a really tall clone of "glass slab" you see everywhere. In the context of the older buildings in Boston, its really quite breathtaking, just clean, metallic lines piercing the skyline. I imagine that when the downtowns of Tulsa and Dallas really began to get big and tall, the steel and glass sky high-rises must have announced the coming of the future or the triumph of the industrial age. Now, however, they do seem like a default style, signifying "office space."