never insult a redneck with a chainsaw

so it's been three days since the last time i posted. geez. what a weird few days. i guess i'll start at the beginning.
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.

the predatory wasp of the palisades

geez i haven't been able to post for three days i've been so busy! what an intense week. it was bad and good.
the big news on wednesday was that we bought out tickets to the BAHAMAS!!! hahahah! i feel so bad for spending so much of my parents' money but i'm picking up more hours at the lab and have a pay-back schedule. the big drama was that justin booked my plane ticket to nassau in MY MOM'S NAME! i pretty much blew my stack. i had to cancel that ticket and buy a NEW one. goddamnit. i won't dwell on this event now, since it all got worked out, but i'll tell you what, i was PISSED. my pissiness has subsided, mostly because poor justin cant leave his room he's so sick, he'll puke everywhere.
so we're going to nassau for seven days. now it's all anyone can talk about - it's really only a month away. we're staying in some shitty hotel but it's on the beach, and has two pools, so wtf?
then thursday (yesterday) was weird, we had forte's class where we talked about the NY 1851 crystal palace and the 'handiwork' movement in america, as well as how emerson/thoreau/pugin/aj downing all relate to each other in their notions of individualism and consumerism as essentially similar and natural affects of the american ideology. i feel like we've been talking about 1850s NY for five weeks now, but this particular class was actually very interesting. we saw some slides of 1860s NY 'county houses' and a henry cole painting where he painted one of these weekend houses as a 'frontier home,' made of logs and inhabited by a lumberjack and his wife/kids.
i went to cross county, though the walk was so cold, because i had to change my PIN number for my bank of america account. luckily that was easy and the guy was very nice. i bought a pair of new leggings for the ski trip and a pair of flipflops for the spring break trip. geez i sound like a real jet setter here.
then last night was great - jarett's play 'the big funk,' opened, and let me tell you, it was FANTASTIC. if i wasnt going away this afternoon i'd see it again. i'd also encourage all people to read the play. i HATE theatre - and this thing really resonated with me. i think it's because it's similar in many ways to don delillo's white noise, in the sense that the focus of much of the dialogue is indirectly the state of our society in america and the deep fear of dying that many americans have. that sounds heavy, but it was also HILARIOUS. there were only four characters, jarett, starsha, owen, and a girl i didn't know. i guess the play is referred to as 'surrealist,' in the sense that some crazy shit happens - this girl gets slathered in vaseline and then gets bathed on stage, owen had to be completely naked for his last scene, etc.etc., but really it's sort of poetic realism. but the last scene was intense. they're all eating dinner and owen leaves, and then he comes back NAKED. i mean i was prepared for this - ive heard him talking a lot about whether he should try to uh, 'enhance' his performance before walking out onstage, but man, nothing can compare to seeing the real thing just inches away from the front row's face. mind you, the play was in downstage, so there aren't set seats, it's just a little black box with folding chairs. so i felt okay about seeing this guy naked, no big deal, but it was when he put his robes ON that i felt super embarassed - something about seeing him right AFTERwards was the most nervewracking part. mostly because he takes a china teacup and is supposed to be drinking from it, and his hands were shaking so hard it sounded like an alarm bell. oh god i couldnt even watch when this was happening. but it was really a fantastic play, and for someone like me to say that, i mean it really has to be amazing. plus, jarett is seriously a comedic/thearical genius. i have no doubt hes going to go very far with this. he had everyone in the audience hanging on his every facial expression. i felt very proud of him..
so then we headed out to the malthouse, it being thursday night, and tipped back a few long island iced teas. and a beer. played some darts - im actually pretty damn good at darts! the great thing about the bar last night was apparently they recently got busted for serving underage kids - so last night there were NO asshole freshman filling up the place. we could even sit down. it was great. i talked to this norweigan girl again, and we did a SKOAL. it was like being back in DK. so funny.
this morning i woke up so painfully - i had only gotten to bed at about four. now here i am in the lab - waiting until two when someone is going to come and take my last two hours so i can go get ready for the ski trip, for which we leave at four. im pretty excited about it - were staying at this civil war-era bed and breakfast and skiing saturday and sunday from 9-4. granted, i was nervous cuz both jiddy AND katie cancelled on me, but at the orientation meeting i met a few really cool people and me and this girl estelle agreed to room together - she seems so awesome. im excited. also, mom told me that upstate NY just got like 100 inches of snow, so maybe its heading for the catskills? im pretty foggy on NY geography to be honest. but i can hope. right now theres a 23' base - hah, imagine just a month ago i was skiing in four feet of powder! ah, like i care. i grew up skiing the anthills of the east and for that i am grateful. as i told the group at the meeting, if you grew up skiing on ice (in the east), you've got one thing going for you: you're not afraid of anything. you just go with it. of course there are a bunch of westerners on the trip who were getting their panties in a twist over the lack of base. dorks.
im panicking, because im nowhere near done with our pondfield model. but fuck it. im a second term senior. everyones just gonna have to deal with possibly not having a fly through. IM GOING SKIING

nassau

well, it's official - our pondield road exhibition opens on tuesday:

im actually pretty nervous, because the ski trip is this weekend so that's three days of work-time lost. i have to finish our poster and a fly-through animation of our 3D model. yikes. yikes especially because i'm only just learning how to animate in maya. oh shit.
plus, i have to re-do most of the model since i built it in october when i didn't really know how to model in maya. plus, the scale of the buildings is totally off. plus i need to go into bronxville and take pictures of all the storefronts so we can texture them to be realistic. plus i have to find a way to get 'poser,' a software that makes prefabricated scale model people to put into 3d models. no idea where ill find it.
i'm so unmotivated right now. it's like the scarier this deadline becomes, the less i want to work on it. not good.
in other news, i can't wait to go skiing!!!

dark mac lab

oh man i'm bored right now. i'm in hour 2 minute 44 of maya class. heres the gist of what i presented today:




pretty much some bullshit i pulled together in the two hours before class, but i like the pukey-colored one. i think that one is good.
tonight is our first meeting of slc group for design this term, which would have stayed defunct but other people in joe's class kept complaining. so we're having it in jiddy's room at eight. great. i dont have much to say now, im just exhausted.
i went over to the gym today to pay my 100 dollars in cash for the ski trip. i'm just worried about who i'll room/ski/eat with now that jiddy's not going.
i'm trying to type really quietly so claudia won't think i'm not paying attention, but whatever. i have a headache.