11:40 AM *

among my boyfriend's many talents: booking power travel for people's special parties in remote locations.

 

5:21 PM *

Sunday night, when I was in Anguilla, we were all in a big house, and we played cards and music from our little fierce bulldog podlets, and we were a tiny bit tipsy and really happy. My little temple's second contribution was "The Visitors" by ABBA which Oliver posted a month ago and which was the first time I'd ever heard of the tune and the first ABBA song little wind ever kept in his little memory. Since then I have downloaded every single remix and extended version I could find, and I have listened to the song 19 times, for a total running time of 137 minutes. Everyone thought I was so in the know for knowing it, like I went anywhere near a dance club before 1997 and was such a club kid, but all I gotta say is that it's a big made-up lie, although the tune has quickly become my favorite dance song, even though I've never heard it in a club.

The signal's sounding once again and someone tries the door-knob
None of my friends would be so stupidly impatient
And they don't dare to come here
Anymore now
But how I loved our secret meetings
We talked and talked in quiet voices
Smiling

My third contribution was "Freaky" by Saint Tropez, which Jocko had given me only a few days before. When I put it on everyone thought I was really cool, like oh man this guy knows his funky shit. But it's also one big made-up lie, I don't know crap, I just hear a song, diligently find the artist's name, and download everything they ever did. I have nothing to hide, and am not trying to be in the-know, despite what you may read on other websites. I simply have a structure in place that works, and keeps my little power full of tunes that I really like.



When I was in first grade, and until about six years ago, I really cared about being cool. Then I had a few moments of cool. Then I had a lot of sex. After a while, being cool was really funny to me (like being on the cover of OUT was funny) because being cool is so easy. You don't do anything, you just deliver something that someone gave you, that other people want, too. The fact that I made it out to be some big deal is funny to me, too. Cool is simply being a conduit, cool is having an internet pal send you an MP3 for test purposes only and you just replaying it at the right moment.

But before all that I played Khia's "My Neck, My Back" and we rocked the house with our booty. I take full credit for that one.

There was a new friend there named Colt. He was one of the people who lit up the room that evening. There was very little background to discuss, because he was so Present, as were we, that we simply had fun. Co-fiend and I were mesmerized, like watching Jimmy Dean or Brando or Jesse Bradford on camera. Something beyond simple watching, or simple prescence. He was a huge laugh. He was very smart. He worked for a company that made really smart board games, whose motto is Let Everyone Shine. He was West Coast. He demanded no attention. He offered only fun. He was free. He was self-aware. He did not complain (see previous post on this topic). He was trashy. He was honest. He was sexy. Extremely Everything. I find myself thinking about him this week, and how few people there are like that in the world. I'm happily co-fiended to one of them, so I tend to notice these things.

 

4:11 PM *

I've noticed (and tell me if I'm wrong) that you only give me money when you want me to peek at your tattoos. It's a tiny moment in the deluge of moments the day provides, but it is the most divine thing that happens to me. All day.

 

5:45 PM *

separated at birth, or just the same person?



(sorry, i seem to be a little late posting this one.)

 

3:15 PM *

separated at birth?



corey b and evan braun.


(as much as i want to kill rocco when we're on the pitch together, i think his blog is brilliant).

 

7:51 PM *

Any message communicated by any means that creates an expectation is an act of branding.
Any brand or brands intended to dominate a micro-market is a Micro-brand.
A micro-market can be as small as a one-on-one personal relationship.

Jocko's mashup of my entry and the above:muscle gods or micro-brands?

 

2:47 PM *

Last week, IIT announced that they were auctioning a chance to smash the first pane of glass removed from Crown Hall. Check out the press release.

The cheekiness of the whole event is nothing short of astounding to me. I am appalled, as if someone tried to mug me after I just moved to New York.

I have nothing against the renovation. I get that single-light windows don't meet today's energy code. And I'm not one of those people who thinks the Barcelona Pavilion should not have been re-built in 1986 because they didn't have the original stone slabs to work from. However, the idea that panes of glass that Mies specified and selected are going to be simply trashed, and turned into a public spectacle, makes me nothing short of angry. It strikes me as a rube's amusement, and I fail to see the implicit humor in it. It's just not funny to me.

I suppose being Chicagoans, the IIT folk are still in the Mies-hating period of the late 1980's, and bizarrely haven't read any of the critical theory written about Mies in the last twenty years, including Robin Evans' breakthrough essay from 1990, Mies van der Rohe's Paradoxial Symmetries. The importance of the single pane of glass to Mies' work is well-documented. Mies was influenced by the Crystal Chain, the German movement of the 1910's headed by Bruno Taut. Glass would come to be an almost mystical material for Mies, with transparency being the least interesting quality. It was its prescence, coupled by its transparency, that was important. Double panes of glass dilute this effect. Don't take my word for it, just go to the buildings and notice it.

Mies' frames for the glass are constantly presence-ing the glass, and he created reflections that consistently give one the sensation of having xray vision. The reflections from the Lakeshore Drive Towers (of the highway below: one thinks one sees the highway flowing through the buildings). The reflections from the Seagram Building (one thinks one sees McKim, Mead, and White's Athletic Club behind the facade). The reflections from the Farnsworth house (one thinks one sees through the glass mullion itself into the steel below it).

At IIT, the buildings resonate with each other. It's not difficult to see. When I was there with Juan Abalos and Inaki Herreros in 1997, we were in the very dark lobby of one of the IIT dorms, on a gray February day, and were suddenly presented with a strange red glow. There was no foliage anywhere on the campus, so we assumed the light was from a building across a walk, about 50 feet away. We looked out, and it was a reflection. We walked outside. The reflection was coming from a red neon 7-11 sign in the old student center, tucked deep inside that building, in plane with the building we were in, which means the light was doing a bank shot across 200 feet of dead grass. Every lobby between here and there had a laser-like red line reflecting on it. Some fellow students were tsssking the fact that neon had been allowed to sully a Mies structure, but not me. I cried, because it was so beautiful.

The panes of glass are not small at Crown Hall: they are many meters high and wide (sorry, my fact checker has to get a drawing set out this afternoon). Mies was pushing the boundaries of the glass manufacturing capabilities of his day. Mies conceived of this glass, apart from what the trades thought they could actually make at the time. They don't deserve to be smashed. This ain't a demolition derby.

I propse a different strategy to IIT. Auction that piece of glass for sale. Treat it as an artifact and make some serious dough. Either that, or have the students, or a real architect like Koolhaas (who at least has a fetish for Mies that tempers his patricidal tendencies), discover new uses for those crystals.

 

12:17 PM *

pope, schmope.

 

5:34 PM *

i created a bookmark for you in 2002 titled "killer: hot little wolf cub". and now i know you. i wouldn't call you little, because i've met you, and you're taller than me. i wouldn't call you a cub, because you've made a conscious effort in two years to gain enough weight to be called "bear".

strange how these little electronic postit notes stick around. most of the links are dead. people take their profiles down. why didn't i take the bookmark down? there is no backup. i could easily have deleted these. the creativity i put on them lives a tenuous life, a brackish existence that may last a second or a decade, dependent only on my whim and my skill at hitting the delete key only when i wish to. they are like sketches. sketches of people.

some are much older, passing through life changes great and small. no longer 21. aged 10 years between 33 and 35.

some are no longer strangers, so these initial sketches are either prescient or hilariously flat. or both. but many are contingent acquaintances, just one degree away from knowing me.

wow, i used to live so much of my life on the internet. i still live the same amount there, but have since learned the pleasures of living life right here, outside the keyboard and TFT matrix display.

here are some more, all created in 2002 and early 2003:


boston big in boston
ca palm springs cowboy
chicago jack a: hot trade
dc smart dc hottic short
fla hottie daddy tattie
fla muscle guy looks like jonno
fla one big bottom
fla a guy brad knew
france 21yo swimmer
little tattooed piglet
irish lil hottie from france
london cute english bicep guy
london mec hottie
milan hot musical daddy
nyc scissor sister
ontario really big guy
pa mike bodybuilder arms
sf hot bear on the lake
sf jocko's fan
atl big wrestler and smart
la older and absolutely hot
london new zealand farmboy
nj cute little white guy
nyc dan from 145
nyc hairy muscle guy from the beach
one hot guy
wrestle like a stud
french guy who is free
miami for younger

 

6:49 PM *

You and what pope?

 

6:15 PM *

Define "pope".

 

5:52 PM *

Pope who?

 

6:35 PM *

Of all the hundreds of tasks I completed today, this was my favorite:

Discovering that there were 498,470 trees in New York City in 1995, and that New Yorkers counted them all. Parks lucked out: New York is a city of completists.

 

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