tidbit

I really like using paint chip colour sample as bookmarks.  They’re the best free bookmarks going. Paperclips too, although some people (JP) get all angsty when I do that.

 

overdue learnin’ & loft livin’

It’s December, mid-December actually, and well above freezing. It just seems strange. The semester is over, and yet I have roughly half the work left to do I did in mid-November. A bit pathetic actually – the extent that graduate school allows one to procrastinate, self-doubt, dabble and miss. Oh, add stress in there too.

So, I am going to write the rest of an overdue paper, and explore just what Sharon Zukin and other urban scholars have to say about loft-living and add my own two cents about the potential for live-work apartments in urban areas as a housing type. An under-researched area of housing policy – some might even say not part of housing debates at all – and I decided to tackle it because it was neat.

Yeah, neat and messy and complicated and … I find myself half advocating gentrification, urban elitism, industrial displacement, adaptive re-use of buildings, Floridian creative class bullshit, and a quest for the authentic. I feel dirty.

 

Fugly yet fun

A tad vicious, but delicious. Go Fug Yourself offers cutting criticism of celebrity (lack of) style.  (Oh, Britney.)

 

13fish2mice

Browsing fellow WordPress blogs, I happened upon the artist Adam Stennett’s work. His paintings are whimsical and remind me of a children’s story I only have scattered memories of… something about a rat pirate king, a mouse boat and war over an abandoned nursery room. (It’s hard to know where the story ended and my immagination began; not knowing the book title makes it difficult to look up.)

13fish2mice: oil painting by Adam Stennett

 

JensenAcklesFan

Now, I like trash. I admit it; I revel in it; I still feel like the lanky teenager whose secret stash of Judy Blume and Seventeen magazine were discovered by some vengeful older brother whenever I search for the likes of Jensen Ackles.

Don’t know the man. But am inclined to think well of him. Firstly – he delivers. His playful hard-bodied characters – often troubled and always devilishly handsome, hyper-masculine and irritatingly hot (alright, it’s cute) – are exactly the Harlequinesque escapism which suit the modern day woman. (In fact, I would not be surprised if he reads ChicLit as study material.) Chiseled jaw and overactive imagination aside, J.A. is a very good actor. Versatile and with a range of subtly, J.A. is convincingly psycho, caring and sexy violent.

Back to my dirty linen. I blatantly checked out JensenAcklesFans and was impressed beyond what IMDB could offer (Devour was a miss). How can you not like someone who admires Paul Newman, Nina Simone, and is down with Jeff Buckley’s performance of the dirtiest Cohen’s Hallelujah. (I’ll forgive you The Fountainhead because you play soccer… oh, oh, and McGyver!) And while I would add a full bodied red to his midnight snack preference of dark chocolate and animal crackers, and hope it’s a T-bone medium rare, I have to admit – Jensen Ackles approximates perfection.

- Jensen, if you are ever in Toronto, call me. It’s cool, Joanna has nothing to worry about; I’m engaged. In fact, we’ll have you over for dinner. You bring the animal crackers and I’ll get the Bordeaux. -

Plus, he’s from Texas. Now, I’m not a Texan, but Texas wants me anyway.

 

moving pictures

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.

 

City Museum

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.

 

star sighting

That’s right, the heart-throb rocker Geddy Lee from Rush and I went for lunch. Ok, so actually he was at the same restaurant, Crush, where I was having lunch with former coworkers. And, he has no idea who I am, and until yesterday when my former boss got giddy with excitement and hushed across the table “It’s Geddy Lee, from Rush” and I silently wondered: “is that some kind of band?”, had no idea who GL was. But now I know, and saw him in the flesh. And while I cannot boast to have heard his songs, I can say with certainty that I saw someone famous recently. So congrats – you’re reading the blog of someone who saw someone who was once famous and influencial.

Geddy, on the far left, apparently has good taste in restaurants.  

 

Art

I am not exactly sure what it is about some works that make them timeless, that make them ruthless and powerful, or even just neat. But in art, as with all things, it is important that it be beautiful, even if jarring – a piece that does not engage the senses is simply an idea. Here are (shamelessly drawn from their artists’ sites) some visual stimuli that I find work.

But first, my favorite artist is the elusive Tamara deLempicka. She inspired my current ambitions: to be a Russian emigree, American divorcee, and fine all the while.

And as for contemporary, local artists, I have been taken with the work of a young man who likes both guns and birds. http://www.scottwaters.ca/

The pigeons in particular remind me of this pair who live in my loft’s lightwell.

 

An oldie but a goodie – my friend Jasmine is getting married soon, very soon indeed and I am sad to not be at her wedding this weekend. Shown here with Ararat actor, David Alpay at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival.