Paste

Paste Magazine rules. They cover music that is at the mellower end of my range, for example this month's issue features articles about Fiona Apple, Wilco, etc., but every issue has over 100 short reviews of new music, movies, and books. The reviews span all genres - it's an awesome source for new stuff.

The best part of being a subscriber is the free "sampler" cd that comes with every issue. Although it's obviously a promotion intended to sell records, it's good stuff - every cd is a thoughtful mix of new music from different genres and every cd has turned me on to one or 2 new artists. This month's cd has an amazing song from Imogen Heap which I never would have heard otherwise. I have a feeling she may be a bit cheesy and techno, but "Hide and Seek" made me stop in my tracks.

Thanks to Maria for forwarding me the magazine suggestion months ago!

Thanksgiving recap

Thanksgiving highlights:

We had snow Thursday morning, I was shocked as was Ripley. Maybe I should check the weather forecast once in a while. Nah.

Dinner at my Aunt & Uncle's lived up to the always lofty expectations. It was great to see everyone, have Katie Bennett and her parents there, and meet Eric G.'s girlfriend Christina. Here's Eric and Christina after dinner; they were still up for dancing which means they didn't eat nearly enough turkey.


We saw The Ice Harvest Thursday night. It was great - surprisingly unpredictable and gritty, reminding me a little bit of George Clooney's Out of Sight which is one of my favorites.

Friday my Mom had the family over for more turkey and Heather drove up to join us. We ate, then napped in front of the tv watching the Texas/A&M game. Is something wrong with this picture?


Then Friday night was dinner with my Dad and Grandmother at a very cozy restaurant in downtown Hudson, which I had no idea was so nice! I hadn't seen my Grandmother in at least a year, so it was good to catch up.

Spent Saturday and Sunday morning in CT with Heather and her family. Heather's awesome friends Kittson and David were in town so we had lunch with them then went to a cider mill and wandered around Westerly, RI. Here are a few pictures of Westerly, which I really liked. Their residential area features some great old houses in a tightly knit neighborhood, but the 'hood seems a bit disconnected from the equally fantastic retail/office downtown and green. Heather and I will be arranging a tour of Westerly and Stonington this spring for CNU NE, so I will educate myself some more.

Town Hall, taken from the town green:


Backs of main street buildings facing the river:


The town green:


Saturday night Julie (Heather's sister) and Juan had a party at their place featuring a football game that ended as soon as Heather's mom's team scored. Hmmm. Diego was the life of the party, of course.

I watched the ND-Stanford game with Heather and her mom, and almost had a heart attack as ND needed a last minute drive to pull ahead 38-31. I'm sure I was more relaxed than my brother, who bought his plane ticket to the Fiesta Bowl more than a week ago...

OJ

I'm glad I'm not in the orange juice business. I had no idea it's so cut-throat.




Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Love thee Notre Dame!!

It was amazing to get back to Chicago and Notre Dame over the weekend. Spent Thursday night in Chicago with my brother then on Friday we headed to South Bend to stay with Heather's sister Erin and her husband Matt. CJ's for lunch Friday, wow, it has doubled in size. They just reopened after fire shut them down, and it is encouraging to see them still swamped with people although it was strange - not quite the old CJ's we all knew and loved. Mishawaka Brewing Company for dinner - good stuff although by that time Heather and I were delerious due to a long day and lack of sleep from the night out in Chicago Thursday.

Saturday - game day. Ah, it feels good to be winning, the atmosphere on campus for #6 ND was electric. Tailgating, complete with cups and a shotgun speech, lived up to the memories, but unfortunately due to road relocations (!) the moon tower lot is no more. Here's Heather at the cups table, she proved to be a natural and for the rest of the day was highly recruited to be on teams at this winter's Cups VII tournament in Chicago.


Here are the siblings: me and my bro, Heather and Erin. The cool siblings are the ones with sunglasses. Obviously.


ND coasted to an easy win on a cold, crisp fall day, and being inside the sold-out stadium again was a huge rush. Saturday night Erin and Matt had a party at their house, their friends were very fun and the night ended with a 2am guitar sing-along. Good times. Yesterday we had brunch at Tippecanoe on Matt's excellent recommendation, I don't remember them having brunch when I was there, it was awesome!

The weekend spent wandering campus, driving around South Bend, tailgating, and getting back inside the stadium reminded me of how much I love Notre Dame and need to get back way more often...

GO IRISH!!

Busy week

I think anyone that has creamy peanut butter in their fridge is just plain crazy. Sorry Heather.

I still think about going back to grad school for urban design. Maybe next year.

Heather and I are heading out to ND tomorrow night for the Syracuse game this weekend. The temperature in South Bend is 29 right now, and rain/snow is expected Saturday for the game. Yikes.

Check this list of Mitch quotes. Here's one I found there that I had never heard. I didn't know that was possible.

This one time I was in a convenience store, and a guy came up and asked me, "What's the score?" and I said, "What is the game? If it's a competition between me and you, and the object is to ask the other guy questions he doesn't give a sh*t about, then you are winning, one to nothing."

Weekend

A pretty relaxing weekend, poor Heather has been very sick so we laid low. Went to work Saturday morning for a while, then we had very important visitors.....Heather's sister Julie, brother-in-law Juan, and 16 month old nephew Diego! Here's me being very serious and giving Diego some Lucky Charms.



That kid is hilarious, he's just beginning to talk but learned a bunch of sign language first, so he waves his hand in front of his stomach to say "please" and touches his fingertips together to say "more". I was playing guitar and stopped, and he looked at me with an on the verge of crying glare and made the "please" sign for more. Or maybe he was begging me to stop and I just caught the sign a bit late.




Saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Saturday night, which I thought was great except for a few super cheesy scenes that kind of ruined the credibility of the movie as a whole. But Tim Burton is a stylistic genius, and the imagination and color were there as always, but I still pick the old one.

Hell freezes over

Wal-mart invited a group of leading New Urbanists to Bentonville, Arkansas, a.k.a. the innermost circle, to talk about the possibility of designing an more urban Wal-mart model that fits into the surrounding context. Hmmm. I'd like to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.

Coolidge Corner

Ok, here's the analysis I did of Coolidge Corner as a retail node surrounded by tight, well connected residential blocks. The 1/4 mile 5 minute walk "pedestrian shed" radius is overlaid, with MBTA stops aligning. Usually the edges of 2 pedestrian sheds would touch, but Brookline is high density and green line stops are more closely spaced in this area.


Major thoroughfares show the transit and major intersection coinciding.


Existing green space shows small residential "pocket parks" outside the 1/4 mile retail core radius. Within the radius, the busy pedestrian oriented streets define the public space.

Miami - Day 3

Just now getting to posting about it, but Day 3 may have been the best. Up early again and we spent the day with Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Dean of the architecture school. She gave us a lecture about the Charter of the New Urbanism and her views of the state of the movement and challenges confronting us, then we had hands-on urban design training from Geoff Dyer, urban designer from Calgary, which might have been my favorite part of the trip. I did an analysis of Coolidge Corner in Brookline with 4 sketches analyzing existing street network, green space, and existing retail. As soon as I can figure out how to scan the oversized sketches, I'll post them.

Then lectures from Jamie Correa, architecture professor, about the charrette they ran in Punta Gorda, Florida after the hurricane there last year, and from Chuck Bohl and Dean Plater-Zyberk again about the post Katrina mega-charrette in Mississippi. It was especially interesting to hear about the management challenges they faced. Here are examples of draft plans for Gautier and Waveland that the community could use as a guide, if they choose.




Check this link for a list of example plans.

Dean Plater-Zyberk took us out to dinner at one of her favorite spots on Miami Beach, which was incredibly generous of her. Even after such a great day, it was a huge relief to get back to my hotel room and have time to myself again. I'll be catching up on sleep for a week...

Miami - Day 2

Another exhausting and fulfilling day here in Miami. Woke up early and went for a 4 mile run with Glenn Kellogg, an urban economist from Washington DC. We saw some interesting residential neighborhoods with amazing Mediterranean architecture, and quite a bit of hurricane damage and debris. I feel like the situation down here is not adequately reported up north, especially after Katrina. The director of our program still doesn't have power and is staying with the fellows here in our hotel with his wife and 3 kids, and Kim, who works for the program, is still without power and living by candlelight and taking cold showers every day. Driving around the city we see piles of debris several feet high pretty much the length of every neighborhood street, and maybe one out of 10 traffic lights are still out. Very strange.

After the early run and breakfast, we headed out for a tour of Coral Gables given by Ari Millas, a local architect, who was charming with his interweaving of local history (Coral Gables was founded in the 1920s by Fred Merrick, from Boston), current politics, and his unique view of architecture. We met the mayor, who entertained us in City Hall for about 10 minutes before being pulled back into hurricane relief. Here's a picture of CIty Hall:


Coral Gables has a thing about designing parking garages to fit into the community. Taxpayers pay for garages like this:


Lunch at the local bookstore, followed by an extended roundtable back at the University where 5 of us presented what we're working on and thoughts for our reseearch over the course of the next year. My favorite part of the trip so far - a group of 12, including an architect, an urban designer, an engineer, a writer, an artist, a municipal planner, an urban housing representative, a city liason to one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods, a landscape architect, and a developer. Obviously, some thought went into the professional makeup and geographic mix of our fellowship class, and it was so fascinating to combine the different viewpoints when talking about specific projects and challenges.

Tomorrow includes a lecture from Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Dean of the Architecture School and one of the principal co-founders of the CNU, who just returned from awarding Prince Charles the Vincent Scully prize in community building for his work across the pond. Here's a link to a story about it, for some reason I can't directly link from my laptop right now: http://www.europaconcorsi.com/db/rec/inbox.php?id=7600. Then hands-on urban design drafting training, and a lecture about the massive CNU charrettes to help rebuild the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Katrina.

Ok, long past bedtime, I leave you with a picture of my new favorite building at night:

Miami - Day 1

What a whirlwind day here in Miami, well, Coral Gables actually, on my first day of the fellowship program. We met up for breakfast and grabbed cabs to the brand new building at Miami's architecture school, designed by renowned European architect, inspiration to New Urbanists, and my hero Leon Krier. The building houses a technical classroom, gallery, and auditorium. It's amazing.


My fellowship class is made up of 12 mid-career professionals, and interestingly, only 1 architect. Lots of mini-presentations today, a tour of the Miami campus (a lot smaller than I expected), and dinner outside at a great Italian restaurant. Tomorrow - a tour of Coral Gables with a past fellow and the mayor, presentations from each of the fellows about our work and research (found out about that today!), and dinner at a local Greek restaurant. Doesn't look like we'll get to South Beach this trip!

the Dresden Dolls are the future of music performance

I have to think about it, but the Dresden Dolls show at Avalon last night may have been the best concert I have ever attended. It wasn't a concert though, it was an experience. I almost hesitate to try to describe it, because I can't do the night justice.



The experience began outside on Landsdowne Street. Halloween, and the freaks were out in full force. Fairies, butterflies, goth outfits of all shapes and sizes, and lots and lots of makeup. Heather and I felt like we barely escaped notice as way too normal with our all-black outfits and my creepy eye makeup. Not any Rainbow Brite costumes at this show, that's for sure. I can't believe I forgot my camera.

The Dresden Dolls employ a circus of performance artists and they were scattered throughout the crowd: the eerie all-purple butterfly creeping around slowly and pawing at you as you went by, scantily clad goth men and women, not necessarily dressing their gender, stationing themselves here and there and not moving a muscle, the bloody and drugged-out bride holding up a "long live the bride" sign.

Opening acts included a 3 piece klesmer style band, two acrobats who flung themselves around the dance floor in a huge metal ring, a weirdo acoustic guitar lady who should stick to her day job reading tarot cards and not freaking people out at concerts with her strange antics, Lexington High School interpretive dance troupe, and Devotchka, who were dressed as Halloween mariachi and won the crowd over with their style of gypsy rock. There were no breaks between bands, as every spare minute was filled with some sort of odd entertainment or weirdness.

Boston's own Dresden Dolls are often described as "punk cabaret"; their show is a blend of sight, sound, and performance art. Their music is a rock/punk/piano/drums/emo mix, and it was executed to perfection last night as Amanda belted out her emotional and personal songs, one leg resting up on an amplifier, barely keeping herself in her chair, a truly ass-kicking frontwoman. Brian may be the best rock drummer I've seen live. Arms flailing and often jumping out of his seat, his drumming was pounding and propulsive, always creatively filling the space between Amanda's keyboard and vocals. They are definitely way tighter since I saw them last about a year ago; I'm sure their recent stint opening for Nine Inch Nails was a huge boost.

Their makeup amplified every emotion as they interacted with each other and the crowd, and the visuals weren't limited to the two of them. During their show they had frequent visits from their rotating cast of freaks, all dressed up exquisitely and adding eerie atmospherics.

Only four songs in Amanda jumped on drums and Brian picked up an electric guitar and they tore into Joan Jett's "I Love Rock n Roll". In the hands of a lesser band, this risk could have killed momentum and lost the crowd. The Dolls nailed it, and the emotion and crowd energy went over the top. They opened their encore set dressed as the White Stripes and played that damn doorbell song. Hilarious, and by the way, I like the Dolls version better. Other covers included Bright Eyes and the finale, "Let the Sun Shine", with all the night's participants together on stage.

The Dresden Dolls were transcendent last night. If their songwriting can maintain, expect to hear lots more from them in the future...