showdown in chicago

I’m not eating any wheat, gluten, or bread right now which is crazy. I
actually really like it – I thought I’d shrivel up and die without bread
but it turns out there are delicious alternatives to wheat, like sorghum
beer and rice and almond bread. I can’t wait to go out to dinner with
jiddy when I get back to ny. In other news, I am bored as hell here at
work. Oh my god. It’s beyond descriptions of boredom. The guy whos
supposed to be my boss just made a joke about someone else playing the
skin flute. This presents a dilemma: does this comment open the door for
me user these kinds of idioms, or am I disqualified by being an intern and
the youngest/newest/least paid person in the office? I’m not totally sure
I want to find out – after all these people pray before they eat
applebee’s for lunch.
In other news I am so excited for the fourth of july because we are going
to the horse races in grand prairie! HORSE RACES! Hahahha also they have
fireworks. Holy crap. I have to look into getting a ridiculous pastel hat.
Or is that just at the Kentucky derby? Who cares.
Actually I have a feeling that a more fitting outfit for a horse race on
independence day in ft.worth, texas would probably be a bikini made from a revolutionary-war era American flag and cowboy hat. by the way i am becoming more and more obsessed with abe lincoln, i am at the part of my book where he just gained the republican party nomination.


also, i got some info from columbia, like about ids and email.

iphone approaches

oh boy, either a lot or very little has been happening in my life lately. i have a full time job as a graphic designer for this ridiculously inept "volunteer abroad" company which has seen a 300% increase in sales in the last year, and i'm producing their literature. oy!!! it's run by these two nepalese guys who seem to be.... prismatically transforming business geniuses. they're constantly changing - like friday i made a brochure for one of the other companies they run, this one called global future inst., and the brochure listed them as forestry, agriculture and poverty researchers. wha??? five days a week all i see is them convicing naive college students that the guy meeting them at the airport in nairobi isn't someone they found loitering outside a bus station on their last visit (he is). but they are really nice. it's just been the weirdest experience ever. i overheard a conversation the other day where this 22-yr old canadian volunteer was calling saying they wanted to go home because they got chased by people with machetes. the people at the office were like "we're not giving you a refund, this is all hearsay." booyah!

i have also been living in the loft which i have made into a very cute little place. for two more months i will be here before leaving for manhattan. i can't wait to go back, mainly because all my friends are having parties every night and i want to hit that before studio starts!!! jarett got a part in a production of macbeth, reinforcing the constant stream of people insisting he's going to be famous. justin and he are living together, about 10 blocks from my future abode! or, not having gotten a place yet, neighborhood. this is lucky because it will be easier to join parties, so that we can find justin his future relationship, with someone from the GSAPP. it's his goal for this year and it would suit both of our interests, a marriage!

today my mom is away in madison, having a little reunion party with her best friends from grad school. dad, annicka, and i went to burger bar last night in the west village (imagine prenzlauer berg in berlin, but only 4 years old, planned by a new urbanist, and populated by wealthy texans - albeit fun). it was amazing. i had a turkey burger with cranberries, avacado, pepperjack, and sweet potatoe fries. and the best mojito i've ever had! ever! delicious. like drinking minty heaven. burger bar is this sort of up-scale after-bar hangout, sort of done up in copenhagen-chic --- big huge ambient chandaliers, lots of wood and metal. it stays open til 3am every night so all the dallesiens who can't stand to set foot in a diner love it!

many other things have been happening to me - it turns out i am "on" the celiac's disease scale, though my tests are "overall" negative - so i'm getting on a gluten-free diet! oh shit!!!!! so i have been eating special almond rice bread and cookies, which i actually like better than the gluten-y old kind. plus, i dont feel like puking after i eat it. though, strangely, i've actually been getting more rashes since i started (rashes are a big indicator of celiac's)

i skipped work to meet with an architect here in our neighborhood the other day, who regaled me with stories of working under michael graves at princeton in the seventies and going up to columbia for the football game, and has a son doing conceptual art at harvard. i think i may have impressed him by trotting out my almost encyclopedic knowledge of alvar aalto. he was telling me about how he visited alvar's own house in finland which he'd "never met anyone else who'd been there," and i identified the house. oh yeah! he sent me on my way by saying we should have a beer. awesome.

well on the apartment front i am having a hard time of committing. i am excited for rhode island because i'm gonna take the train into manhattan, sign a sublet or lease, and then take some of my friends back up to the beach houses for a few days. i can only imagine what the meeting of those two little universes will be like. irish swedes and russian jews. remarkably alike, theyre actually almost exactly the same, when you really get to know them.

im sunburned today

pavan

i discovered i really like all bands on 'flogsta danshall.' i wish i had known when i was in dk.. just didnt pay attention i guess. but now im really getting into it. its good for summer. i am obsessed by looking for an apartment in new york. i found the best place ever but it's 20 blocks south of avery, and people say that no one in the arch program should live beyond walking distance since you have to go home at like 5am every night. i dunno, my mom says i'd just have to alot some money each week to taking cabs home. still, it would suck to have to take the subway so much. i mean its walkable but itd take longer. i dunno. plus this place doesn't move in until nov.1 so id have to find some other place for two months??? which would blow. but it's so beautiful, three windows on the 10th flr of a building on broadway and 101st. niiice!!!

i had a job interview today, it went well though it seems like the job might be a little bit boring. basically producing indesign files for a study abroad organization. i mean its full time and pays awesome, but honestly i'd rather not work in an office and have to carry through every day with the awful 9-5 office talk. for some reason that really got to me at my last office/graphics job. it just gets to you after a while. i never expected to feel that way... but right now i just want a job at starbucks and call it a summer.

were going to wisconsin this weekend to annicka's graduation, im really excited. mom and dad are going early to go to a conference in madison, and then on saturday im flying in and then we'll all drive up to appleton. YES! i love appleton! then i am going to drive home in the scion with annicka and all her stuff, which is going to be awesome because on monday we're gonna go to chicago and stay with caitlin, whos gonna be there. her grandma has an apartment really high up on lakeshore drive, i cant WAIT to see caitlin. she's annicka's friend who lives in dallas and is so awesome. but i wanna go see IIT again and then maybe around..then we'll drink that night and so on. oh chicago i love it. then we'll drive straight down through the country, probably stop in omaha to see our grandma jean. then get home. im really excited cuz we'll be able to stop and take lots of pictures and see all the weird stuff along the way. i am personally looking forward to the weird alien nebraska plains myself. last time i was there i didn't have my polaroid out and missed getting a picture of them i think.

so anyways. dallas. weird. ive been riding my bike around everywhere. mom was in dc a few days ago so dad and i were hanging out, we went to little katana where i had the best sushi ive ever tasted, in particular a sunny roll which is shrimp tempura, crabmeat, avacado creamcheese wrapped in some kind of rice noodle with orange and eel sauce and one other i forget.. heres a picture of it

i cant wait to go back and have another it was so great.

holland?

i am cultivating an almost god-like knowledge of summer tv. have you seen the commercials for this new show, "pirate master?" the voice over goes something like this: "it's DANGEROUS!" and this guy says, "to be a pirate, you have to be COOL." wow, that does sound dangerous!!! it's basically a group of idiots running around the bahamas following a "pirate map" that was obviously made by an intern.

i am so bored, so so bored. yet whenever my phone rings, i am terrified that it will be someone wanting me to work for them. my mom is away at a committee meeting in washington so dad and i are just hanging out. yesterday we went to go get these flats that ive been trying to get for like 3 months now but couldn't find in the right color/size, but i found them over by SMU at a store called "cotton island." here they are:

this place is the epitome of the whole dallas/smu culture.. check out this picture of their store:

basically the people who work there are ridiculously done up, tanned, blond girls who are like...so nice. so sweet, so southern. i mean i'm sure it's a front but i love it so much. when we left my dad was like "you know, every girl working there came from the same model didn't they?" SMU is so weird... i'm fascinaed by it, and yet i know i should be repulsed by it because everyone else is. but it's so interesting and weird. forte describes it best, his wife went to SMU and he can do a hilarious impression of dallas women.. "oh youahh're funnn!"
anyways then we went to mockingbird station which is one of these new shopping/entertainment centers that are everywhere here, which i actually kind of like because in dallas' case there's a few that are actually pretty cool looking and have good restaraunts. actually i think the reason i have a soft spot for this kind of expansive and excessive development because it reminds me of oresund in copenhagen. anyways this one at mockingbird station has the angelika film center, which i always thought was unique to new york, but it turns out there's three in texas and one in new york. boyah! my dad wanted to see the new paul verhoeven movie, "black book," which as you might guess, is about holland during world war two. i'm a sucker for war movies so i enjoyed it. before that we went to the adjacent trinity hall for some dinner, and i was excited because they serve strongbow there. we sat outside and for once it was sunny.

ive watched marie antoinette twice today...weird

magasin

oh boy this is really starting to get old. i really hate to complain because i know i'm the luckiest kid... im just running out of stuff to be excited about or something. i guess yesterday was good, we went out to brunch at la duni with burt, the dean of my parent's school, and his wife.. burt is really awesome and loves to talk architecture so that was fun, turns out hes friends with antoine predock so that's really neat. predock is 'kind of a big deal' around here... i drove over and saw one of his houses in highland park last summer, and kinda liked it:

and then later it cleared up for like 5 minutes (it's been raining literally for 8 days straight now) so i took the refurbished bike out for a spin around oak lawn, which was unexpectedly awesome. when i had that bike at school, you know, it's from the 70s, i was always freaked out by it because the front wheel wobbled and the breaks didn't work...now both the iron pig and dad's bike are running like a charm. i took it down to walgreen's to get some pictures developed, and then after dinner, mom and i rode down to the katy trail (one of those rails to trails things that leads from our neighborhood to downtown dallas) and rode all the way down to victory plaza, where the w is and the new mandarin oriental next to it, and not far away from the koolhaas/foster construction sites. its only like a 2 mile ride, you can get there in like 10 minutes. we also found out that the parking lot of the theatre in turtle creek is a popular cruising spot! take notes. anyways i was gonna go back today with my camera to capture the progress on construction, but it fucking poured all day of course.
we went to the mall and i returned these bright blue jeans i bought, cuz it turns out they were just a little too crazy for dallas. that's typical. the color palette here is more subdued than up north, and i forgot that. dad, however, bought all these shirts and one of them is insane - like purple and green with these ferns which mom and i told him look like feathers. we told him to return it but he refuses. we'll see, i know mom won't let him wear it.
but anyways i have been sick for the last week, and ive been taking robotussin nighttime before bed, and its making me CRAZY. like i can't wake up at all during the day, and if i have to do anything within an hour of taking it i can't wake up from this really weird, crazy sleep. i mean people in highschool used to 'robotrip' or whatever, but i thought you had to drink like an entire bottle of the crap to feel any hallucinigenic effect? i'm taking a pretty normal amount, and last night i had a crazy waking dream about "the girls next door." wtf?????!!??!?!? im gonna go get some other kind of medicine if it stops raining ever.
in other news i finished "undaunted courage" and have started on "team of rivals" which is about abe lincoln and his cabinet. i mean honestly, its more of a sleep aide than anything, i read 2 pages and without fail i doze off... but it's really interesting, just really slow. obviously.
i want to go see the new 28 weeks later so bad but no one here will go with me and since my computer is broken my dad is refusing to let me download it on his since he could get in big trouble i guess.
my mom keeps saying if i want to go back to ny right now i can, but i dunno...i need to get a job and save some money before the fall and living in ny i can't see how that would help.

i've got a tigress back at home, and i need someone with soul power

oh god i think i have enough time now to write a post. it's been a WEIRD few days. or i guess, weeks now. i graduated, it was so weird... so fast. the senior donee dinner was amazing: forte brought all his own wine, year 2003 for the year we entered slc, and french in honor of michelle meyers leaving this year. we drank so much, and then it was the faculty show, and then the dance - so funny. then we went to a party in mccracken, and discovered a way to get up on the roof. it was really wonderful, i love roofs. so anyways then graduation happened, i could write a lot about it but you know, it was a graduation!

the real highlight was that night, when we went to AQUAVIT. it was quite literally, the coolest and best resteraunt i've ever been to in my life. just imagine: jacobsen swan chairs, a utzon-esque undulating wooden slat ceiling ala bagsvaerd's outer rooms, poul henningsen lights, verner panton chandaliers...oh god.

we ate in the dining room, sitting in these very 70s textiled booths. each table had a alvar aalto vase with nettles in them. we ordered aquavit to begin with - i chose raspberry lime and tried vanilla, pear and black pepper. if you don't know, aquavit is a scandinavian liquor which is basically ike schnapps or vodka, which is surrounded by a lot of tradition and so on - i remember my swedish relatives challenging my dad and grandpa to an aquavit drinkin contest or something when we visited them. so we began with that, and they bring it in these beautiful chilled crystal glasses which look like shot glasses with stems. also, aquavit is by far the most expensive place i've ever eaten - damn. so of course this is one of those places where they give you 3-4 little tasting plates of stuff the chef is trying out, the first one was mushroom soup with sort of pickled shrimp, and then there was salmon foam, smoked tuna, and caviar. i started my actual dinner with this really famous thing the chef magnus makes, the lobster roll, which is a really thinly rolled thing of lobster, pickled apples, and trout roe...and it comes with this little shot of frozen lemon lime juice! i also had to get an elephant beer because that's a classic thing to drink with fish. and then for our second course i ordered shellfish stew, which wasn't really a stew, it was a plate of one of each: lobster, scallop on mushrooms, something else i forget, and some kind of flower stuffed with crabmeat. and then the water poured this saffron/saslify soup all over it...delicious. and then we had this rose hip soup with lime foam over it, and then we had dessert, for which i had a chocolate truffle with lemon sorbet thing. my mom was so excited, because on the dessert menu they had fruit suppe with pepparkroker, and she said grandma ina and grandpa helge used to make it for dessert, and she hadn't seen it since then.. i am writing all this down because it was literally the best meal i've ever had. whoever this chef is, i guess he's a young swede who was raised somewhere in africa, but he's brilliant. we got little packs of pepparkroker to go, haha!
oh god it was so magical...i just had to write about it so i won't forget.

so here i am back in dallas, bored as hell and both trying to get a job while trying to hold out as long as i can without doing it. it's been rainy since we got back - kind of depressing. i don't know anyone here now that caitlin's in chicago, and annicka doesn't come home for another few weeks. my mom took me to see "the lives of others" which was fantastic. not much to report otherwise...the long cold months of boredom at a crappy job await... i'm okay with it though!

the cops rush in. everyone's screaming

so, i got into columbia...uh oh! this makes the situation next yr infinitely more complex. more on this later.
for now, i want to post my pictures from my time in dallas last week, more specifically, my pictures of the site of norman foster and rem koolhaas' new buildings for the dallas center for performing arts. i posted on these buildings a few weeks ago, and my dad randomly got some tickets to the symphony from their provost the night before i left, so we went. the dallas symphony sits directly adjacent to the construction site, so i was able to run over there before the music started to take some pictures on the rapidly progressing projects!!! well actually, the foster was rapid, the koolhaas was hard to tell. i know they're laying the foundation for the parking garage, though.
this first picture is walking towards the symphony from the nasher sculpture center, where we went for this reception and dinner before the music. it's actually a very nice little promenade, though part of it is next to a parking lot. you can see a few of the 4-5 cranes on the site in the background.



moving towards the symphony, you can see that the construction site is wedged right up next to the building.



here's a picture, standing on the edge of the symphony's site, of the norman foster building coming up. you can tell by the distinctive (and when i say distinctive, i mean that in a slightly ironic way) spherical shape of what will become the theatre (which i included a picture of after this one, and which i think is a blatent rip off of henning larsen's copenhagen opera house).




here's a shot of how the foster project is placed right up against the symphony's side - it seems a little unruly to me, but then again, having them so close together might foster (so to speak) a sense of connectivity and shared experience between the two institutions.

during intermission, i snapped this picture of the foster site viewed from the interior of the symphony. at first, to me, they seemed weirdly placed in relationship to each other - but when i walked around to these windows, the relationship began to make more sense. it will be interesting to see if the foster dwarfs the symphony, especially when you think about the color and materials of the surrounding blocks - right now, it's a lot of sandstone, desert tones, and sea glass. the foster building purports to be so LOUD and laquerbox red.



honestly the foster building could end up being the most beautiful thing ever and i would still have it in for it. there's something snide about it. we'll see. in other news, my parents and annicka, and anne and jim, all went up to the ghost bar in the W (right in this same area) and said it was hilariously awesome.

i'm not sure i could turn columbia down, simply on the basis of how many guest lecturers they have - there's at least one lecture by a practicing architect every evening. i don't know what i'll do. maybe i'll make a decision simply on a financial basis. though they're pretty much neck and neck there, too. my mom is thinking about flying up to NY to drive me to ithaca for the open house on april 10 - that would be so good. i really hope she does. i miss my parents and annicka so much right now. ny just seems so dirty and mean. why hasn't ut austin written me back?

if seeing is right, then look where you're at! andrew jackson, all i'm asking

This has been one of the best weeks. I just couldn’t think of anything better. I haven’t posted because SO much has happened, I keep thinking “I should write this down, I should post” but I can’t even get it down on paper. I wrote on Thursday:

On Wednesday, I was writing a post about henning Larsen and Schmidt hammer and lassen (which I’ll still post), and I was interrupted, because I got an email from cornell university, with the subject line only of “Graduate Architecture Application.” I was like, OH SHIT. This is bad. So I open it up, and it turns out they accepted me and gave me a scholarship. So I dunno. Maybe I’ll end up there.
It was just such a relief to hear from somewhere, and most importantly, get in. I never expected that. I stoop up and went “oh my god?” to no one in the lab, and ran upstairs to tell forte. Then I ran outside to call my mom, who was excited, but I felt bad cuz she’s having a really hard time getting this book she wrote ready for publishing, cuz apparently her editor is kind of not totally with it. But then forte came outside and showed me the rankings, which was nice of him.
This profound weight was lifted so quickly, I’ve felt nauseous for the last 10 hours or so. It’s like going into shock, really – to panic and completely freak out about something for literally almost a year...and then suddenly it’s okay. It’s the weirdest feeling. I went to dinner with Katie and hunter, amy julian, emma and chris too, and they were so cool about it – so nice. Everyone was so nice. I felt like I had just had a child or something.
So anyways here I am at LGA, ready to go home. Damn I can’t wait to see my parents and dallas. I just saw ivanka trump – at first I forgot who she was, and was trying to figure out how I knew her. Then I realized no, she’s just a celebrity.

So anyways, that day I flew home to dallas and I had a window seat, and manhattan was on my side – right at twilight. It was literally hard to believe I was looking at a city and not looking at a model of the city. Everything was gold, red and orange and yellow, and I could see where I worked in dumbo, I could see the atlantic ocean as well as the west side highway and jersey city and everything.
I got home, dad was waiting for me at dallas ft.worth airport. We walked outside and it was 75 degrees – what a relief. What a beautiful place to live. We drove home and talked about everything – dad and I have very good talks about the future and about ‘business’ stuff. Then mom and dad had waited to eat, and we drove to hunky’s but it was closed, and so was uncle julio’s, mia’s, and toy’s. so we came home and at some vegetables and stuff and talked. Mom and dad put one of my old paintings from highschool in a big frame and hung it in our living room, cuz they need more art for the house. theyre getting ready to put up more of our stuff i guess.

Then on Friday they went to work and I slept in and just watched tv and ate stuff, and then we went to toy’s for dinner, which is two blocks away from our house. I hadn’t been there yet, but it reminded me a lot of the thai place on my street in berlin that annicka and I loved so much. We had steamed mussels in coconut milk curry and then I had spicy flat noodles with chicken, and tsingtao beer. Then we drove to la duni, where we had dessert – la duni had the best desserts in the city, in my opinion. I had a limonata which in my personal opinion is the best drink EVER created (like 5 limes, 10 mint leaves, and crushed ice with fizzy water), and my parents had coffee, and we ordered a piece of venezuelan cake and the nutella cake (I forget their fancy names), which of course was my low-brow choice. But wow. Delish.
Then yesterday dad and I took a road trip to AUSTIN!!! (by SOM) I’d never been, and dad said that in the case that I get accepted, I won’t have chance to visit before I make a decision – so better safe than sorry. He really wanted to visit the LBJ library too, one of the main reasons we went is because mom needed to go sit in the callier center and just work on her book for the WHOLE DAY and do nothing else. So we got up at 8, hit the starbucks, dropped mom off, and hit the road. It’s a three hour drive to Austin, a straight shot south on 35E. dad drove, and I djed the music, and took pictures of the weird churches and houses on the side of the road:





We got there, parked, and man was it hot! Like 90 on march 11. we walked underneath the art museum’s awning, which I thought had great detailing:



And then down a beautiful street with huge old trees, and something called “water chilling station #2” whose windows were open – I could see water pouring down inside!






We found the student union, and then found out the school of architecture was next door, on gaudalupe street, which is sort of like state street in Madison (food, urbanoutfitters, etc). The architecture building was locked (spring break) but SO beautiful!!!






then we ate a pita at 'pita pit,' across the street, and dad and i bought matching longhorns shirts (hahaha). dad was gonna buy one of the ones where it's all the orange then just a white longhorn symbol, but he said it was "too much for him" as a nebraskan, to take. so he bought one with the opposite color scheme, like i did. dad wanted to see the state capitol, which is claimed to be the most beautiful state capitol in the country, which i actually could definitely understand. i saw this guy asleep in the back of a truck, it was like huck finn or something.



so we saw the house of reps. and senate meeting rooms, and everything was decorated in the texas star - star chandeliers, star door hingers, everything. did you know that the texas senate and house of reps. only meets every other year? it's the only state government that does that.







then dad wanted to go to the LBJ library and museum, so we went. it was in a building by SOM which from the outside looks so boring but the inside is awesome. lbj's papers are all archived in these red binders with gold seals on the spines, and the 7-story atrium has one wall of windows where you can see them.






there was also a replica of his oval office which was really cool. he had a special marble-topped coffe table built which had a built-in phone. so then it was almost five, time to drive home and get mom, but i asked dad to drive me back to guadalupe street so i could run in and buy these boots i saw. then a few hours later we were home, in dallas.



we went to the bread factory and i had a chicken and raspberry sandwhich, it was great. we sat outside. that night i finished "extremely loud and incredibly close," jonathan safran foer's newest book, which is about this 9 year-old kid, oskar, whose dad dies in 9/11. i expected to be kind of rolling my eyes at the whole thing, but i finished the entire book in 24 hours and cried an embarassing number of times. people say that he's given too much credit, but i think he deserves it. i thought a lot of the psychological symptoms i attribute to being just nuts generally started after 9/11, but i didn't think they were related. all that stuff - the night terrors, the intense fear of flying, the constant thinking about protecting people from harm, the obsession with death, with the media - they're shared by this character. and i never thought they would be verbalized in connection with people my age having this major psychologically transformative experience that year. i don't mean the whole "i knew someone near there, i'm a nyer" thing. i mean, everywhere people changed because of that event, no matter if they were in kansas or the financial district. obviously, it was unfathomably more tragic for the people directly involved - but what i'm saying is i think a culture of 'disclusion' has developed. where people who are from ny scorn those who claim to have been changed by it. i understand this impulse, but i also think they're forgetting to acknowledge that there is a shared national conciousness - across the whole country - that has nothing to do with immediate experience. it has more to do with the media than anything, it has to do with thinking about the country as a history, a story, and a kind of 'whole.' and with realizing that that narrative could be changed very quickly, and in a horrible way - people my age hadn't realized that yet. anyways, i have always been embarassed to say that i think it kind of really had a strong effect on me, for that reason, but this story made me feel a little more.. well i guess i simply comprehended my feelings to a greater extent. and this kid is brilliant - so smart, sweet, sort of insane - the book is very incredible. i haven't liked a book this much in a while.

so i woke up this morning and mom was taking a break from her book to take me shopping and get a pedicure, but then dad said, let's go to brunch. so we tried to go to the dream cafe, and mamitos, and parigis, but they were all suuuuch long waits. so we went to la madeline and sat outside. i had a chicken friand and a ceasar salad, and a raspberry lemonade. we talked about private school, new york, and my mom's cousins.
then mom and i headedy out to northpark mall, which. is. great. fashion week for dallas (wtf??) had just ended yesterday, so the tents were still up.

anyways, we had a very good time. i sensed mom was worrying about her book, though.



so we came home and ate dinner on the balcony:



where it was interesting to hear about pragmatic speech disorders and this center for brain health that just got built at utd. i also got their input on my marshall field project.
then i really started into "undaunted courage," about meriwether lewis, jefferson, and the lewis and clarke expedition. its very good, but i fall asleep every 5 pages, which is nice in a way. relaxing.
so now i'm sitting here and annicka is sending me great songs. but i am worried because she is worried about her finals and stuff..but she'll be home in a few days and will have forgotten all about it!!!
AND on the way down to austin dad played some johnny clegg - OH MY GOD! i knew all the words incredibly, from when i was a little kid! i hadn't heard it since i was probably seven. OH GOD i'm so into it now.

even as i left florida, far enough far enough wasn't far enough

as much as i constantly complain about maya class, i realized today how completely hilarious it is. i realized this as our entire class was crowded around one of the lab computers watching this cartoon of bill gates and steve jobs fighting (here). There's a scene where the Finder (as in the app in osx) is on stage rocking out. anyways we spent like half an hour going over the latest youtube crazes.
i'm going home to dallas on thursday. planning on spending the week at the pool at the verandah. i need to work on my base tan for the bahamas, which we leave for on the 17th. i'm flying from dallas to philly on the 16th, to hang out with amy and stay at her house, and then her mom and dad can drive us to newark the next morning. everyone else is driving or training down from ny. but i guess newark is closer to philly than to ny. amy and i are going to do a little rocky-inspired tour of philly...the art museum steps and everything.
anyways, it's supposed to be 75 the whole week in dallas. i also am gonna go see all the dallas performing arts center construction projects, so i'll post some pictures. and shop. it is disgusting that i am capable of missing a mall. but northpark isn't a mall. for gods sakes, they're opening up a public library there. it's like i'm being sucked into things i know are soulless...as if i'm part of a new mutant breed of consumer that attaches no moral significance to traditionally 'superficial' experiences. i just go on my immediate reaction, which is...wonder? security? the fact that this kind of stuff exists somewhere? that america is a reality and for the first time, tangible?
and i'm finally tired of feigning disgust at this stuff. it's part of my life, and it's part of everyone else's, whether they admit to it or not.
also, listen to the new modest mouse album. the song 'florida' is amazing. the guitarist from the smiths is now officially part of their band - HA! the lyrics are actually pretty much how i feel about florida too.
i feel this sadness when i think about driving through the country during summers, through pennsylvania, wisconsin, nebraska, colorado, nevada, texas. i miss oberlin ohio, eerie, osh kosh, amarillo - their transparency, their invisibility. everything good that happened there. it feels good.
this is what modest mouse does to me. it makes me think about this stuff. even more than every day life already does.

i think i want to drive out through the plains this summer...yeah

rem in dallas, foster ripping off larsen

since i'm going home in less than two weeks now, i'm getting excited to see the progress on the victory plaza/dallas center for the performing arts development about a mile from our house in dallas. basically, we're getting a rem koolhaas! call me a corny, chinzy plebian, but, i love rem. i'm an addict. it's everything that i want in architecture as well as everything i know is cheesy about it. his design for the wyly theatre basically adheres to his "cake-pan architecture" (or whatever its name was) concept published in content a few years ago: you take a cake pan, and you take many different articles (rooms, functions, etc.etc) and you just throw them in there and let the pan form them in its image.
the theatre is going to be eleven stories, and here's a facade rendering from the website.

paradoxically, this design is very dallas. something about the granite and the wide, open walkway. it definitely has a relationship to renzo piano's nearby Nasher Center , but it's also sort of following in the blandly colored new W building, also nearby. i feel that 'starchitects' who come to dallas to build end up bein boxed in by the 'beige,' or 'desert stone' aesthetic of many of the buildings, but conversely, i like a lot of these places and feel proud that there is some semblance of a 'local' architecture, even if it is controlled and created solely by oil billionaires. after coming to dallas i feel new respect for these oil magnates, since they all have given the most insane, extravagant gifts to the arts. it's strange - the place, and people, that most of liberal america villainizes, is actually one of the friendliest and most artistically-well-endowed places i've ever been.
the entranceway:
YEAH!!! this is why i love rem. this is exactly what he's good at. metallic textures, low-ceiling entranceways, de stijl lighting that make you feel like you're in the netherlands even if you're in texas.
moving on to the less render-genic shots, here's the 'lounge,' i.e. cafe:
yeuugh. this is exactly like his cafe for his rottedram kunsthal, minus the good parts. a big grey box, and what's with the weird viewing-room on the right? is that where the oil magnates get to look out over the crowd, reigning over their domain? it's like a scientist's one-way mirror wall. actually, this also reminds me of DIE ZOLLVEREIN, in germany, which is an old abandonded industrial site that koolhaas re-planned and is now a design center. it has all these big, empty concrete mixing chambers (right) you can walk around in, and this looks exactly like them. except that this one probably cost a thousand times what the german ones cost.
here's a rendering of a theatre:

yikes! this looks like russel crowe should be onstage wearing a blade runner costume. no one wants to see this. looks like a robot's lower intestine.

this is where i predict dallasites are going to begin to get pissed. they all expect a pretty luxurious show for their money, i feel, and by luxurious i mean good lighting, light wood if it's modern, lots of white laminate -- this seriously actually looks like a gladiator's ring from the future. brutal.

rem is a good fit for dallas in the sense that his showy-ness always produces great looking, glossy facades that you can really feel impressed by, even if you are a little weary of the starriness of it all. but these interiors, unless he really spices them up with some weird plastic laminates that are back lit with some crazy colors, or with some bruce mau graphics running along the ceiling or something...i fear he might start to loose the dallas crowd. then again, maybe i'm playing the eastern seabord stuffy closed minded asshole, and dallasites appreciate much more than i give them credit for.

another building in the complex, the norman foster opera house, is a BLATENT rip off of henning larsen's new copenhagen opera house. so much so that it actually kind of pisses me off. he took everything that was good about the opera house and made it plasticy and cheap looking.
take a look:

henning larsen, 2004.

sir norman foster, under construction 2007.
a cantilevered roof over a glass curtain wall and an spherical interior theatre shaped like an egg? with floating stairs and walkways into the egg? really? really norman foster? gee, i think ive seen this somewhere before!
(all images via google image)
"larsen inspired?"
oh, right. copenhagen. plus a bunch of tacky red plastic and minus the beautiful organic massing.