zzz

another friday afternoon/it's the perfect time of year

2008-10-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

this morning/this afternoon

2008-08-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

mac and i are leaving today. before work (around 8:30am) meredith baked a cake and got bagels for breakfast.

like the day before, during our lunch break we went and looked at another old building on mass moca's complex. this one still has old sprague stuff in it.

and after this, i said my goodbyes, took a taxi to the airport, boarded a plane, and came back home to minnesota. and thus ends a very, very good summer.

yesterday

2008-08-22T08:48:00.001-07:00

meredith, gene, kendall and i explore mass moca's building 6 on our lunch break.

someday this space will be turned into a gallery, or possibly a performing arts space

materials, in this case, bomb casings, left over from christoph büchel's non existent show

looking up into where the floor collapsed

lunch at the roadside dairy bar

because i am a SAP

last week

2008-08-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

summer/sol lewitt intern bbq sendoff kinda thing on friday night.

greatly out numbered by sol lewitt interns

charlie burnham plays on saturday night. it was really chilly and quiet and he played really great blues music.

my last saturday night after a show spent backstage and on the loading dock.

bonfire on sunday.

monday or tuesday, meredith, mackensie and i went up to a lookout point to watch the thunderstorm that was going on. it stopped raining by the time we got up there. this is what it looked like afterwards.

we walked even further up and got to what was practically the top, and a large grassy clearing where you could see lights from towns away, and the clouds down in the valleys. we watched the sunset and it was pretty awesome, of course. i unfortunately did not bring my camera up there, but this is what the sky looked like when we got back down.

view from that lookout point (sans horizon) in the daytime. photo courtesy meredith boggia

walk back from work.

we eat like a family

wednesday night is north adams' downtown celebration. we man the mass moca booths and try and get the locals interested biospheres, sol lewitt, and contemporary music.

buffalo wings!

yeah, i think i'll miss this place.

winding down

2008-08-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

last week we (interns) had to put together a concert for this program aimed at teenagers called the grooove cafe. there's three o's because all the kids are '100% substance free'.

the bands were mostly the screamo/emo/metal kinda stuff that the kids are into nowadays. one of the bands that was suppose to play was called dead horse fight. needless to say, when they cancelled, we were all pretty bummed.

jo and i hung out on the loading dock waiting for one of the bands, named between now and forever, to arrive for sound check.

the next day, it looked like this all day

but when i was about to leave work, it changed to this

birthday girl aya and meredith under the discoball later that night

we threw aya a party over the weekend, and meredith managed to rent us a bouncy castle. we were all pretty excited.

waiting waiting waiting for aya on the porch, trying not to look suspicious.

she loved it.

yes, somebody bought straws that look like dicks.

and the dick straws reappear, but now as classy cigarette holders.

next day hangover. we cure our stomachs (at least my stomach) with food and drinks from hot dog ranch.

it's an ongoing joke here about how much i love buffalo wings. even for breakfast, i say.

jo invites us over for homemade pasta and salad and other goodies.

and after dinner we walk over to mass moca and watch dark dark dark perform outside.

after the concert, we go back to jo's and eat peach and tangerine pie. jo is about to laugh in the picture.

good stuff.

on Tuesdays

2008-07-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

hillary makes skull shaped pinatas

jo and erin avoid the camera

we sit around in our kitchen

and we make oatmeal, apple, chocolate chip cookies and feast on delicious burritos and dinosaur shaped extra moist cake brownies. followed by a quick dip in the pitch black lake and warm shower thereafter, i lay in my nice cozy bed, go to sleep, and get ready to do it all over again.

and on Mondays

2008-07-28T20:53:00.000-07:00

we (meredith) bake dinosaur shaped brownies. this one's name is frankllin.

franklin, pictured here, with myself and aya.

on rainy Sunday afternoons

2008-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

we spend our day in bed; with the occasional ear candling (pictured above)

a long overdue poster for my dear friend amalia

2008-07-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

NYC continued

2008-07-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

candid breakfast pictures of cynthia

pretty girl

nice show we stumbled into on the way to breakfast. i'm a big fan of that monster head in the back.

notice kevin shaw holding a beer (!!)

bbq on hillary's roof.

sassy

best breakfast of my life/and a good time was had by all

NYC

2008-07-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

notice the guns

picnic in central park on the 4th of July

he says this was candid; i'm not sure if i believe him

morning joints and rice cakes on the roof.

another batch coming very very soon..

lovely fellow interns

2008-07-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

lazy sunday afternoon

quick stop at goodwill. we leave with boardgames, books, shoes, and hats.

peck's falls

the water is EXTREMELY cold. too cold for me, but aya is brave enough and goes underneath the mini-fall.

gratuitous nature shot

monday night after work—

hannah spent the 4th on the cape, and caught a large amount of clams. she decides to treat us all to a delcious clam bake/picnic on a beautiful, albeit buggy, evening.

table shot, plus if you look really close you can see the flava flav clock somebody drew on a plate when they were drunk

tim brings the beer, of course.

jordan, emma, and our resident sol lewitt apprentice/emma's bf sam

me and meredith (courtesy of mackensie)

typical food shot, before (clams, linguini, garlic bread, salad, lemonade and wine!) (and ice cream and strawberries for dessert!)

and after.

to put it simply, mass is good, and this feels like big kid summer camp. great job, good place, fan-fucking-tastic friends; i will be reluctant to leave at the end of the summer.

4th of july nyc photos coming soooon..

white horses

2008-06-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

True "white" horses, especially those that carry the White or "W" gene, are rare. Most horses that are commonly referred to as "white" are actually gray horses whose hair coats are completely white. White horses are born white, always have a white coat with no other color present, and stay white throughout their life.

work by kiki martinez.

True albino animals have a white coat, mane, and tail, with pink skin and pink eyes. However, there is no reported case of a true albino horse. Albinism in horses appears to be linked to lethal traits and albino foals do not survive. Therefore, all living "albino" horses actually have blue or brown eyes and thus are white horses, not true albinos.

"one is light, one is dark"

2008-06-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

an updated view of my desk. a little more clutter. a little more flair

the view outside my window. the building in the center will be the future home of the sol lewitt retrospective (that we'll be getting to do signage for, hopefully before the summer is over). also featured prominantly is the big screen that we'll be watching movies on all summer (including enter the dragon and badlands).

listening to roy orbison/wishing i had photobooth

swimming with the girls after a long hot day of work

fish pond

we are awesome.

the artist formally known as henry gale

2008-06-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

massachusetts, so far

2008-06-08T09:44:00.001-07:00

i'm too tired and lazy to describe what it's like being here. in a word; amazing. and refreshing. and the pictures kind of speak for themselves, i think. many more to come though! i've been here about a week, and the majority of these photos were taken last monday and tuesday.

view down the street from outside the intern house

intern rabbit, bwp bwp :)

intern attic, complete with a few dirty mattresses and a half empty jug of carlo rossi

walk on the way to the museum

the upside down trees

hey abi, check this out!

AMAZING jenny holzer exhibit (for colin)

basement bathrooms

part of eastern standard

big sign

big banners

corner/local

getting a tour of all the secret passage ways at mass moca

and we end at my desk, where i'll be designing stuff allll summer long.

more photos soon.

2008-05-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

A nice segment from the film The Black Stallion (1979).
This little boy is shipwrecked on an island, alone, with only this black horse, who also survived. For about thirty minutes in the film while they are on the island, there is no dialogue. It's quite nice.

The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light

2008-05-07T22:35:00.000-07:00

"As for me, I've decided I'm going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up."

“I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong.”

"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.."

This movie has deeply affected me.
I've been pretty obessessed with the story of Chris McCandless ever since I saw Sean Penn's film Into the Wild. The movie is inspiring, and breathtaking, and absolutely heartbreaking. I'd read the book (of the same name) by Jon Krakauer five some years ago, and after seeing the movie, I decided to reread the book. I've been completely engrossed by the story; by McCandleness, his free spirit, and his choice to live out to the fullest his dreams and ideals; the idea that "the very basic core of man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences," not soley from human relationships.

The official soundtrack was done by Eddie Vedder, but there was one song in particular, not performed by Vedder, that came at a sweetly somber moment in the movie. Another one of those things I can't get out of my head. You can listen to it here if you're so inclined.

One of his last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding hi final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific fareweel. His face is horribly emaciated, almost skeletal. But if he pitied himself in those last difficult hours-because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will had let him down-it's not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.

Note: This blog post does not do adequate justice to my interest in the story, nor to the story itself. The movie is an absolutely beautiful film, and the book is completely engrossing, and I would highly suggest seeing/reading either for yourself. (You can read the original article Krakauer wrote for Outside Magazine in 1993 here.)

Robots are the best

2008-04-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure we've all heard by now, Spike Jonze in working on a live action/cgi/puppetry version of the Maurice Sendak's classic book Where The WIld Things Are, which in turn, is in jeopardy of being heavily reshot, and recasted, while the script that Jonze wrote with David Eggers is looking at being reworked also. Execs at Warner Brothers think the current cut is too scary and dark for their intended kid-oriented audience (a better example, I think, of too dark and scary can be seen here)

This is a great little article about Forest Whitaker, who plays one of the wild things in the movie, and how he disagrees with the idea of kids not being able to handle this sort of thing:

“[The dark scenes] are the point of the movie, and I hope that they maintain that point, because I think children can identify with a character who is upset,” the father of four explained, citing one key scene of destruction as being particularly controversial. “[The main character Max] built this whole city, and nobody likes it, and he tears it all up. He’s like, ‘Well if you don’t like it, I’m just going to tear it up!’ because he wants so badly for someone to like it.”

If you haven't already seen the clip, please do yourself a favor and check this out. It's just really.. beautiful. And magical. And sad. And honest. And all the things the book was..

I think it's a pretty sad state in general when people can't realize that children can indeed relate to something real and honest, in a movie or otherwise. I think most kids are a lot smarter and more capable than we think they are.

Conventions: standing and walking

2008-03-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

Recent trips to IKEA with Amalia have renewed my love of escalators. The escalator at IKEA is flat, it never forms into stairs like the average esacalor (see above), which is why I think it's such a treat.

The longest escalator in the world is in Moscow, clocks in at 410ft (740 steps), and takes almost three minutes to ride. Eight people died and 30 more were injured on February 17, 1982, when an escalator collapsed on the Moscow Metro. The shortest is in Japan, and measures only 32 inches (see below).

"that kid is BACK on the escalator AGAIN!"

You either somebody, or you ain't nobody

2008-03-24T00:11:00.000-07:00

I watched the movie American Gangster this afternoon. It's a worthwhile movie, although I have a hard time with Russell Crowe, Denzel is good as always, which led me to looking up the real Frank Lucas. The lengths drug traffickers go and the depth of corruption is pretty amazing.

In keeping with the theme of drug trafficking, I watched a program on the National Geographic channel (or NatGeo, as they call it now) called Locked Up Abroad. Pretty fascinating/terrifying show; not too sure how real some of the stories are, but it's interesting nontheless. It's shot almost like a mini movie, with actors and some above average camera work, and mostly about tourists who do something stupid and try and smuggle drugs in/out of the country and get caught. The full episode I watched was about these four kids who tried to smuggle gold into India, and ended up spending 8 months in a Nepalese prison. As someone who would eventually like to travel to Southeast Asia, I must say this is just a little nerveracking; not that I would ever try to smuggle gold (or drugs for that matter), but the idea of being detained at an airport in a foreign country is a scary one.

Anyway, if you've ever had an inkling to watch a movie about going to jail in a foreign country (like this gem ), I would suggest Locked Up Abroad instead.