Let’s pause for a moment and recognize the energy, work and dedication that goes into random creative shorts, often available online.
For instance, the spunky JCB video animation (http://www.jcbsong.co.uk/jcbvideo.asp), 
the ‘88 Dodge Aries ad – which apparently a friend of a friend’s ex, Tim McAuliffe, was involved with (http://www.break.com/index/dodge88.html) and the MORE short from California animation instructor Mark Osborne (http://www.despair.com/watchmore.html)
which is particularly interesting to watch in conjunction with a Marxist reading of the cultural turn in economic geography and the rise of the consumer society.
… oh, and hot mamma Jensen Ackles’ co-directed Clownana (http://clownana.com/) … good times, good times.
Why no women directing these humourous tidbits, you ask? Good question. There are certainly influential women behind the camera, just not in my tiny sample above.
As part of an effort to explore and understand cities better, I headed to Saint Louis, Missouri. (What? Wasn’t that your first instinct?) And skipping right over one of North America’s largest urban parks, the pervasive and persistent racial divide, a non-existent economic base amidst established wealth, and a 30 year supply of urban industrial building stock ready for the post-industrial condo conversion, let us focus on one of the city’s main features: the City Museum. http://www.citymuseum.org/home.asp
For those thinking the City Museum is a dull narative of failure to adapt and falling so far, featuring lonely men standing tall amid crumbling granite infrastructure as they scramble for legacy, with cameos from redlining, the barge industry, deindustrialization, suburbanization and perverse tax subsidies… think again.
The City Museum is FUN. It is playland on drugs. It is a junkyard jungle gym that recycles materials stripped of value and showcases architectural features that once bestowed it to the (now naked and abandoned) buildings they once crowned. A wall of empty Coke bottles here, a gargoyle there, and an airplane carcass you climb through yonder combine in delight that brings out your inner nine year old. You climb on scrap metal, whizz down slides, swing on ropes, play piano, watch huge fish, have your fortune read, and pound back a couple beers before scamping off to play some more, since, heck – this monstrosity is open ’til one!
It’s as though an architect on acid took on a junkyard challenge and drew his inspiration from Charlie – but kept getting Modern Times and the Chocolate Factory confused. Superb.
