Angles, Operas, Flowers and Towers

Here are some pictures from New York!
(As usual, I believe all will expand upon your significant and definite click upon their displayed surface.)

Aren't the angles in this view incredible? Some of the best architectural art is the unintended, in my opinion.



This is Act Two of the scene sketches by Robert Wilson for the opera, The Civil Wars. It was up at the MOMA. More about that later, perhaps.

After a long day of activity, the flower was near the end of its life.


This is actually in Connecticut. It's the Heublein Tower. As I remarked at the time, if we didn't have the sort of crazy rich men who liked to build towers on top of hillsides for no good reason, then we might not have culture at all. At least until the Internet.

I didn't take many pictures this trip, so this is probably all that would interest you folks. Except--I do have some pictures of an abandoned college in the Harlem Valley, but those are on the "real" digital camera, so they're going to wait for another post and perhaps some proper editing.

Where They Make that Good Salsa You Can Actually Pour Out of the Bottle

If you follow my Twitted feed you may have picked up on the fact that
I'm in New York for the week. If you only follow my blog feed than
you've probably only said to yourself, "Hmm... No rants from that Adam
for a bit, maybe he finally got that drink he so desperately needed.".
Or perhaps you follow none of these things, and have been continuing
to discover my "Greek Animals" post through Image Search just as you
have for the past year and a half, and my actual Internet prescence
means nothing to you. If that is the case, enjoy the goat and dog
pictures, strangers caught in the eddies of the tubes!

I've been missing blogging, and I am filled with various ideas for
when I return to the proximity of a real keyboard. Most are possibly
quite-long essays. At least one I hope will make it to the
Brutalitarians' online pages, which means fewer of you will read it in
the long run. I always hesitate a bit to put good stuff there, because
I like when people read my stuff (maybe you do too?) but perhaps we
can steadily build up a readership for The Brutalitarian as well. I
know--it would certainly help if it had an RSS feed. But there doesn't
seem to be a good method of syndicating Google Sites. Because of this
I've been considering experimenting with Word Press (for the Brute
Press side of things) but yet to make the move because of the hassle
of switching DNS and such things. But this is all very uninteresting
to you; just take away the promise of interesting writing to come, in
some format or another, about such fun things as Czech novels and
film, machines and human bodies, narratives and modern dance, and
angry cartoon squids. Also some pictures, perhaps.

NYC is looking good for the most part. Conspicuously more vacant
retail space than 2 years ago, and conspicuously similar amounts of
vacant gazes. A lot of stares at my hair--maybe I was too used to
Portland. Megan and I have been loving the subway and eating too much
expensive food, and generally wandering around between places and
events with no responsibilities in the way NYC will let one do, so
that this drifting phemnomenal consumption feels as if it has
aesthetic purpose rather than the soft, fleshy sensualist absorption
of a floating sea sponge. An interesting thing about the Porifera is
that anything too big to be absorbed through the skin must be eaten
and expelled through the same orifice.

But the food has been delicious. Also some good and not so good
performances, used books, public transportation, and the fun of
dressing nicely without people feeling the need to ask what the
occasion is. All in all--New York City. I totally remember why we
moved to Portland, but also I've been acquainted with a fact; I will
live in this city again. I hope to live in many more cities around the
world (there is an informal list), and I am not a New Yorker by any
sense of definition. But this city catches up with you in a way I
haven't fully understood yet, and I know I'll be living here again in
the future.

There's probably a metaphor related to an idea for a very short story
idea I had while riding the subway some years ago, which would help
explain this pull. But it involves cyborgs and synth-pop, so I'll
leave it alone for right now.

Embedded Linx

I came across this game on some of the architectural blogs: pairing up architecture with representative music. (See list at the bottom for the other players).

Now, I know next to nothing about architecture, but the game of pairing music with things is too good not to play. So instead of picking examples of various architecture movements, which would be silly for me to even attempt, I chose places in New York City. This is something I do know something about, and place is certainly representative of the aesthetics of space in a big way, if a bit more of a milieu, rather than positive design.

Anyway, here we go! Welcome to New York! (more esoteric bullshit will certainly follow in later posts.)


Queens

and


Tribe Called Quest (Watch at the same time if you can.)

*********************************

Times Square

and


Coltrane (I wrote an essay about this once.)

*******************


Chelsea

and


Velvet Underground (if you want to talk about architecture, listen to the song with headphones. Take one headphone off. Put it back on. Take the other one off. Put it back on. Repeat.)

***********************


Canal Street, Manhattan Bridge

and


Eric B. and Rakim (its cliche to talk about hip-hop and 'the streets', but New York streets, the actual physical streets, are something else. If you listen to hip-hop and pound the pavement, you totally know what I mean.)

***************************


The Bowery


The Ramones (what's a bigger cultural force? Punk or hip-hop? Both born in NYC.)

************************


Brooklyn


Modern Romance (what's old is new. What's lame is hip again. Damn it, brooklyn.)






Original posters, and originators of the game:

"Nasty, Brutalist and Short": this
"Fantastic Journal": one, two, and three
"Mockitecture": aay, bee, and see

MD + WV = OH!

Baltimore was a blast. Veeger made it through ok, though she drinks coolant like I drank Nattie Bo. I got to see the venerable Deejay Gonzo rock the house, got to eat several fatty breakfasts, and got to chop wood and chill in a backyard.

Visiting Adam is always a trip, because it's a mix of hanging out with cool theory/academic minded people and people from the party/club/dj scene. It actually works very well together, in pretty good proportions.

I caught Gonzo at the Ottobar, at his weekly Wednesday night. That's him to the left on the 1s and 2s. He spun a lively collection of hip-hop, soul, funk, and dance remixes, and got the whole place dancing. Me too, after I'd enjoyed a few National Bohemian beers. And at the end of the night, my bar tab was a whopping $17. I'm so over New York City. Why would you choose to live in a city where a decent night will run you $60, when you can have just as much fun and spend 1/4 the money? So you can go to places that you read about in a magazine? Worthless. Nothing that hyped can ever live up. Life just isn't that fabulous.

I heard some material from Gonzo's upcoming mix as well, and its hot, so be on the look out for that. Right now the title is Dance Party for Dummies Vol. 2. I'll definitely post the link once he gets it recorded. If you missed my post with his link for Vol. 1, you can find it here.

After Baltimore, I headed west through Maryland and West Virginia, which although is still a tedious drive, is still much better than driving through Pennsylvania. In West Virginia I stopped at the Sideling Hill observation site. Check out the strata, yo! Tractor-trailer truck included for scale. The earth's skin is some tough stuff. Supposedly the light, curved patch right about where the semi cab is used to be a river, some millions of years ago. Amazing!

Long live plate tectonics!

Now I'm in Cincinnati, visiting Charlie, the author of the Liquid Crack Depository. He's sitting across from me at the internet cafe, editing a paper, purportedly about classics. Tomorrow is Chicago, where I'll be for a number of days.

Time to G.T.F.O.

So I haven't been posting very much recently, because I have just finished grad school, I am attempting (slowly but surely) to find a job, and I am fixing to move myself and all of mythings out west to the fine town of Portland, Oregon, which while perhaps being a cliche location for a young, creative, twenty-somethings with few realistic prospects to move to, it certainly seems to be a la mode for good reasons. These reasons do not include hipster fashion, because I certainly had enough of that here in New York City. One reason actually is that it was the number one city that I should move to on this internet quiz, Find My Spot.

But besides the possible benefits of "following the hipster herd", the point is that all these processes leave me little time for posting to my really important blog. But isn't this the most cliche blog post of all? "Sorry guys, I'm posting to tell you my lame excuse for not posting to make myself feel better about my actually having to do things..." Really sweet, Adam.

But never fear. I'm researching some dope shit as we speak that will TOTALLY make up for the loss. And then, next week we'll have big things going on, because the

Long-Lost Friend Reclamation / Mediocre City Exploration Project

will totally f-ing commence. I will be driving to these fine locales and exploring all they have for me, as I slowly but surely make my way to the BEST CITY IN THE NATION (for my personality, anyway, as understood by internet questionnaire). I'll be posting really poignant city reviews, pictures, and hipster death sightings.

So until then, enjoy this lame post, and get ready for the good stuff. Are you ready? Not yet? How about now? Yes? Good.

A New Adam City

Well, its now just over a month until I leave this city for points west. I've done a lot of bitching and moaning about the parts of New York City that I don't like. But, that doesn't mean that I won't miss anything. I'm sure that there will be many more self-reflecting interludes of the next few weeks, but let's start with saying that it sure is much more pleasant to be here when the weather is nice. Like it was this weekend, when it was beautiful. Here are some pictures, just because I think they came out well, whereas most of the time I take pretty stupid pictures. Also, you always see identifiable pictures of New York City, with landmarks and such, but these are a few of the scenes that I like much better, because normally one would just walk past them without noticing how nice they can be. "Beauty in the mundane," as I like to say. To myself. When no one is around.

(click on the pictures to take advantage of my camera's many megapixels)

This is a cool building that stands out. I think its on Broadway, around 11th or so. Yup, cool building.

A drive through the park on 86th looks different if you're the one in the park.

Those are some kick-ass conduits on the back of that building. The picture came out really clear, too. What, you don't like conduits? Engineering can be art as well, not only archetecture. Jerk.

The Bronx can be quite haunting if you accidentally fell asleep on the subway and woke up at Allerton Avenue at 4am. It can also look even more haunting with Photoshop.


There will probably be more series like these, now that the weather is nice. I'm going to go to Coney Island soon, and no doubt those pictures will push our aesthetic sensibilities even closer to the sublime! Stay tuned!