This book (thanks Jamie) is so amazingly cool, both as art and as architectural history. It’s primarily composed of catalogue pages from glass companies promoting ultramodern “visible storefronts” in the modernist tradition, including sketches, floor plans, and construction materials. It’s incredibly beautiful.
And it’s a happy birthday to my dad, who is (in case you were wondering) recovering quite nicely from his surgery last month. He’s already ditched the walker and he’s even started driving again.
I hope I’m that resilient when I’m his age. Come to think of it, I wish I were even that resilient at my age.
In case you care, you can read an interview with me on Yahoo! Picks Profiles today. It’s a followup to when this site was a Pick of the Week back in 2001.
Reflections on my first week back in school (among other things) are yet to come, but it’s been sort of an all-around crazy week, and the weekend isn’t looking much calmer, so it may be a while.
But just so you’ll know I’m still alive, here’s a random shot of downtown Winston-Salem that has nothing much to do with anything I’ve said here.
We’ve moved way ahead in our ongoing dream of transforming the Tiki Room into Morticia Addams’ conservatory. All that’s missing is Cleopatra, the venus flytrap.
Yes, this will no doubt be remembered as the week we got serious about finally filling up our house. And the thrift stores were as cooperative as I’ve ever known them to be. We’ve fleshed out lots of the empty spaces, particularly in the basement rumpus room, with a sort of 1967 blend of neo-traditional modernism centered around the mint-condition sofa and matching chair, and a low-slung “party table” (it actually says that on the bottom) with barrel chairs. And there are finally curtains in the bedroom.
Ten years ago this week, I was getting ready to leave on the Planet SOMA US Tour of 1997. It was a pretty major event for me: a five-week cross-country (and back) road trip where I’d be staying in assorted motels, and sometimes with complete strangers who invited me into their homes on the basis of having enjoyed my website. I updated almost daily from the road (which was rather unusual in those early internet days) and had a really great time all the way around.
For the next five weeks, I’ll be saluting and remembering that trip, and you can follow along day by day if you like, using the nifty “Otherstream Retro” box you’ll see at the top of the front page. Or you can cheat and read the whole story. Or neither one. Your choice. Either way, enjoy it. I did.
I know I’ve said this before, but my apologies to everyone I’ve completely ignored for the past ten days or so. You can’t imagine how overextended I’ve been between the fact that this is the busiest time of year for pretty much all my web clients and the fact that my first two weeks back in school proved a bit more hectic than I’d envisioned. Throw in one major family gathering, one part-time job, and several assorted minor crises, and you have me, as of today.
It’ll be better in about two weeks.
If you’re starved for content, though, you can watch me being mentioned on the local morning news.
Observation du jour, after a mildly unpleasant Friday: why do so many ad agencies and design firms (disctinctions blur these days) have such a nagging tendency to find the absolute most complicated manner possible of completing any given task? I suppose it’s an easy way to maximize billable hours, which is probably why they also get so bloody territorial about it when you call them on it.
No, I’m not going to be any more specific, because I plan to take a lot of business away from this particular firm as a result of my class, grace under pressure, and old-fashioned customer service skills. Not to mention my humility.
It’s 9:00. May I have my weekend now, please?
No more 1997 road trip stuff at the top of the page. I’ll miss that. Maybe on the twentieth anniversary, I’ll actually post some of the video.
Sadly, I don’t really have anything exciting to add in my first new post in two weeks or so. Life has pretty much been about school, work, and more of both for the past few weeks. We did make it to the fair on Wednesday and to the Jewish Festival in Greensboro with my mom on Sunday. And we successfully avoided the North Carolina Identity Politics Gathering, after accidentally wandering a little too close to the South Carolina version in Columbia the week before.
This weekend, though, I have no schoolwork due, three consecutive days off work, and plans to go someplace relatively far away. Therefore, I will not be answeting the phone or checking email after Thursday night, lest these plans somehow be ruined, as so many others have recently. OK, maybe I won’t go that far, but I really do need to get away for a couple of days.
For your perusal: new photos in the Carolinas photo gallery, including shots of Columbia, Durham, Lexington, Burlington, and Kannapolis.
