1:21 PM *

autohaiku:
take "eric bana" and poetically insert "ben cohen".

 

3:34 PM *

my new favorite rugby drinking song, learnt on the bus on the way back from the Montauk game. i've been pondering the last two stanzas all week.

we're Gotham, we're Gotham
we're so far from home
we're so fucking horny
so leave us alone

we smoke till we're high
and we drink till we're drunk
and if you don't like it
then fuck off and die!

if the ocean was whiskey
and i was a duck
i'd swim to the bottom
and drink it all up!

but the ocean's not whiskey
and i'm not a duck
so let's get to Gotham
and have a good fuck!

 

10:20 AM *

i love this game.

 

3:14 PM *

Today I celebrate the wordless disappearance of the former architecture critic of the New York Times, whose articles, shockingly, rarely merited the description "critical". I was living in despair: couldn't any of his superiors see what nonsense writing he was producing? Why did they bother to print it? For twelve years I've been skimming his work for more than a hint of an initial idea, and I was beginning to think I was crazy for demanding coherence and journalistic integrity. I longed for the days when Michael Sorkin was at the Village Voice making fun of Bob Stern's two middle initials.

Today I celebrate the new architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, whose first three columns give me reason to love architecture, and its siamese twin, architectural writing, again. His first column felt shockingly sedate compared to Muschamp's, as if I was reading a pure news article, not an critic's column.   The writing felt cautious, almost as if Ouroussof was concerned with making any statement that could not be justified by fact, and if none could be made, he would simply report the news. His column today, however, reminds me that a powerful critic, unlike an opinion columnist, filters his opinions through a much denser lens of fact. It is a kind of writing perfectly tailored to architecture itself, which is never reducible to its function, motivations, or circumstances, yet derives its power by being irrevocably twinned to these concerns.

His opinions are well-researched and focused on the urban impact of the architecture he's reviewing. Perfect for the Times. A particular delight is that he considers the urban impact of Beauty, a topic of special concern to my nascent practice. I look forward to seeing how he reflects New York, and in turn brightens it. At last.

 

ps all work in this domain is copyright chad the minx.