skiing was awesome - on the ride up to belleayre mountain it slowly began to dawn on me it was kind of a wash in terms of the people on the trip. like, not in terms of being mean, but just in terms of acting like losers. i skied with them for a while thinking, hey, maybe theyre not so bad! no. they were that bad. so after a while i broke off from the group and skied with some other people, and then for a while by myself. the big drama for me was falling on a double black diamond i was kind of forced into going down with the assistant AD of the sports center. i was okay for the first half, and then i stopped and froze up - it was so icy, the hill below me was CLEAR! i'm not kidding. so i went for it and fell for like 55 feet it was such an incline. it was pretty shameful. but i pulled it together and was on what they call 'my a-game' for the rest of the trip. the next day on the lift up, these two kids asked me why i left to ski alone - they were like "because they're so lame?" i thought i was the lone wolf on this trip. i clearly should have hung out with them, the last night they partied with the 45-year old firemen having a big birthday party downstairs.
we stayed in this old civil-war-era colonial inn, that had tons of bears and stags on the walls. the first night there, cool runnings was on the big screen tv in the lounge, so that got me all psyched up to ski the next day. that movie is a true classic.
it was cool to be on the road in the east again - after moving to dallas i havent seem much dreary eastern seaboard highway. before dallas, we were always driving back and forth from ny or to seven springs or somewhere. those drives were always very cozy, hangin out with mom and dad and annicka.
so we got back, and i got straight to work on the maya model for our big pondfield road show that was opening tuesday night. i woke up at 5am with my computer on my stomach and my hand on the mouse. was it ever hot. but we got it done - as rob and big might say we DO WORK. joe came by the lab and gave us all a hug when he saw the renderings. he said "four years ago! i can't believe it!" by the time we hung the show people were so excited - it turned out to be a Very Big Deal. i think joe was probably using it to rouse up excitement and interest for the new Design Studies concentration - we got the atrium gallery and a bunch of profs and people from the administration showed up to the opening. joe brought tons of food and about 10 bottles of wine, but still had to go make a liquor run at about 7pm. the opening turned out to incredible - lots of people, lots of nice things said, which of course was okay with us. here's our section of the wall, with amy looking on
it turned out very well, but the posters could have been spaced better. we just ran out of time.
and we got the chance to take another group picture with joe, to compliment the one we took of our first year studies.
something about the whole night was fantastically exciting for me. it was like our school was transformed into a different place - somewhere where i wanted to be? everyone was being normal, there was great work - work done together! everyone was equally happy and so excited. it really felt sincere, which for me is a rare feeling here. generally there's some element of bitterness or embarassment or the like when it comes to social/academic/art events here - people have too much self-loathing maybe. that night was some kind of alchemical concoction of people who were relaxed but also excited, sharing their credit with everyone else in their groups, all very understated - because you didn't NEED to overstate it, as corny as that sounds. usually openings are all about people making a big show of themselves to some how knit a mythology of 'brilliance' around their art/etc., but in this case people just showed up and had a good time. it was great. as naive as this sounds that's what i hope arch school will feel like. that's definitely what copenhagen studio felt like.
anyways later that night justin, jarett, amy, and i watched casino royale in jarett's room. so great and dissapointing at the same time. one of the first scenes is this badass fight that takes place on a construction site built with what we can assume is "dirty money." there's a shot in there of daniel craig busting through a sheet of DRYWALL haahhahaha running after this guy. at one point they're fighting each other on two huge crains above the site. hilarious. i think they were trying too hard to deviate from the classic bond plot, though - there was enough deviation from the gadget-ish stuff to make it a winner already. they didn't need to fuck with the model any more. but i liked it. the credits looked awesome.
we got some snow on wednesday - well six inches of sleet is more like it. it's still on the ground - but it's completely iced over now, so it's fun to walk on if you're wearing boots. last night we saw evan's new play, "lions," open - written by a grad student. evan played this good ol' boy peacekeeper in an unspecified african civil war situation who dies waving the UN flag over the raging battle below. he grew this molester moustache for the part - he was brilliant! i was so impressed. by far the best actor in the show. the play was actually really amazing - stayed away from a lot of the corny shit i hate about theatre, and made some good and important points about history and how we live and so on.
mr. lif of def jux records came to campus last night, which was AMAZING. an embarassingly small number of people showed up - so few that even WE were in the front row. but he was amazing. so great. we talked to him afterwards and he was the coolest guy. then we went to richard's party in ac9, which was okay at first but then ended up being kind of a bust because it was all freshman. so we drank a few of the beers and went and hung out in ac11. then i went to bed and woke up in a nightmare where this redneck guy had just cut through the skin that connected your thumb and your index finger with a chainsaw - because i had laughed at him when he was telling his girlfriend that they should put up a billboard outside their house that advertised her new job at bare elegance, a strip club in pittsburgh. wtf?? and annicka and caitlin were like michael scofield and link, and had been wrongfully imprisoned. i stumbled out with my hand all bloody and cut down towards the base of my thumb, and i found all of their electronics in the grass where i knew they had been arrested - which in my dream was now right outside of my house here at slc. i scooped all the ipods, slvr phones, and backup phones into my shirt i think. it was so weird. i began to panic because i couldn't feel my hand, and then pins and needles - i woke up and realized that i was laying on that hand and it was in fact asleep. it was still scary though. the goriness of it.
now here i am, fridays in the lab from 10-4. dang.
