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New Orleans, Beijing: Same Difference

Nicolai Ouroussoff: still here, still batshit-crazy. He asks why, if China could make a major architectural statement out of Beijing, the U.S. won’t do the same in . . . New Orleans. No, really.

Somehow, he misses the points that

  1. Beijing is the capital of a burgeoning world power, while New Orleans’ economy is driven almost entirely by drunken tourists,
  2. New Orleans, we now understand, faces destruction by flood every hurricane season, thanks to its georgraphy, a series of incredibly short-sighted development decisions, and the admitted incompetence of the Army Corps of Engineers,
  3. “New Orleans” and “coherent vision” don’t belong in the same article.

Maybe he’ll propose Frank Gehry to design new curved levees.

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Chronicle of a Death Footnoted

Condolences to the family of David Foster Wallace, after DFW hanged himself on Friday.

My brother-in-law’s sister killed herself last week, so I’ve spent a bunch of time in the last few days thinking about the frame of mind someone has to be in to commit that act and leave family/friends to pick up the pieces.

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Little Fluffy Tight Ends?

I feel kinda bad that I stopped paying attention to Hurricane Ike once it took New Orleans and environs off its itinerary. Sure, the people of Houston and its environs have plenty to worry about, but hey.

In fact, Ike’s change of path may have an added benefit! In addition to an election season where we have our first sorta black presidential candidate and our second female vice presidential candidate, Ike may have revealed to us the first out gay player in the NFL!

The Houston Texans, concerned about the timing of Ike’s landfall, have pushed their home game against the Ravens from Sunday afternoon to Monday evening and rescheduled practices to allow players and office staff to take care of their families. But buried in the middle of the article is this paragraph:

Texans tight end Owen Daniels said the hurricane isn’t a distraction and is a bit intrigued at the prospect of going through one. He has a degree in atmospheric and oceanic sciences and hopes to be a television weatherman one day.

Far be it from me to stereotype an entire profession, but I think it’s pretty clear that all television weathermen are gay. (Don’t believe me?) Every single one of them. (Especially him.) I’m not sure why that is, but it adds some color to the local news, I guess.

Now, I may be wrong; maybe Mr. Daniels wasn’t speaking in lightly veiled code about his sexual preferences. Still, I hope he embraces this role in bridging the hypermacho NFL and the hypergay weathercasting worlds.

(And I hope that Houston doesn’t get pasted too badly by the storm. Good luck!)

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Me and Client 9

It turns out Cardinal Egan, Eliot Spitzer & I have something in common, besides virtually nothing! We all read the Official Newspaper of Gil Roth! In an article about how past governors, pols and other NYC figures want the NYSun to stay in business, they somehow managed to snag the former governor’s first public statement since his resignation:

“The Sun has been a spectacular addition to the city’s political discourse and is one of the finest papers in terms of editing, writing, and analysis that one can find anywhere.”

I’m gratified to know that other people were actually reading this paper.

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Fables of the Reconstruction

I’m no knee-jerk fan of either major party, so the ugliness of this election season has triggered one of my depressions. For me, these are characterized by what I call “wheels within wheels” phases, in which the world seems to reduce to the meshing of an impossibly complicated set of gears. I get stuck probing away at the mechanisms, trying to make sense of a planetary gearset that leaves no room for randomness, irrationality, or serendipity. It’s paranoia both grand and personal, but I’ve gotten better about getting it under control.

More importantly my wife helps ground me and elevate me, and that’s why I love her so.

This morning, I considered what I want to share with you about 9/11 this time around, and that’s when I reached the conclusion that the reconstruction of Ground Zero should remain perpetually in progress. After all, anything that actually gets finished will only be a letdown after all this buildup. Plus, it’ll boost employment among construction workers, city-state-federal lobbyists, starchitects, and Sheldon Silver.

And most importantly, it’ll be a fitting symbol of our state of endless war.

In the words of James Brolin, “Happy 9/11!”

In the words of my wife, “I hope Josh got his mom’s brains. Whoever she is.”

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Six-month chipmunkiversary

On our evening walk yesterday, it occurred to me that it had been six months since Rufus joined our home! I felt bad about missing the anniversary, but since we brought him home in the evening(ish) last March, I figured he wasn’t holding it against us.

So, after getting him home, I headed down to the supermarket to get him a present! (the pet store in town was closed). Without further ado, our anniversary celebration!

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City of Glass

This week’s ish of New York Magazine has a neat article by Justin Davidson; it consists of a meditation on NYC’s architecture boom and how it fits in the city’s history, complemented by 50 before-and-afters of recent buildings. I’m conflicted about some of his points, especially on the relationship of new buildings with their neighborhoods, and the “walking travelogue” aspect gets a bit precious, but I think it’s an awfully worthwhile article, with some good conversation about the nature of the city. Mr. Davidson cops to a certain sadness to all the buildings that are lost, but, also understands that freezing any one moment in time is impossible:

Intelligent preservation is precious, but nostalgia is cheap, and every era nurtures its own variety. Those late-nineteenth-century Upper West Siders who still thought of Broadway as the bucolic, elm-lined Bloomingdale Road of their youths resented the incursion of brownstones in the 1880s. Their children must have been horrified in turn when those same houses were wiped away by the now-classic apartment buildings that line West End Avenue. Bitterness springs eternal.

I suppose I’ll always have Ben Katchor‘s Julius Knipl comics to fall back on, for That New York that I’ve lost.

As a plus, the article also turned me on to Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York!

Oh, and the “history of Columbus Circle” sidebar sent me spiraling back to 1982 or thereabouts, when my dad took me to a gift trade show at the New York Coliseum for work. I hadn’t thought of that day in decades, and thinking about it now makes me a little sad, because of all the other memories locked away in time’s vanishing city.

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What It Is: 9/8/08

What I’m reading: The Death of Ivan Ilych, Montaigne’s essays, and Berlin: City of Stones.

What I’m listening to: Pure, by the Golden Palominos.

What I’m watching: Almost done with the final season of The Wire! Aaiee! What’ll I watch after this? Well, at least football season has started!

What I’m drinking: Yuengling lager

What Rufus is up to: Holding it in, as he refused to crap Saturday evening during the tropical storm that was belting the area. That said, he was willing to brave the elements for a pee-break or two, from which we returned looking like a pair of drowned rats.

Where I’m going: Nowhere, although I really oughtta get into NYC for this Charles Burns exhibition.

What I’m happy about: That my in-laws’ homes didn’t get demolished by hurricane Gustav! (Oh, and that I got a new dishwasher last week. And that when Lowe’s sorta screwed up and overcharged me by $50, they called a few hours later and credited me.)

What I’m sad about: That my pal Tom got mugged in Rome last weekend, and that I got this news five minutes after receiving a not-so-nice letter from the IRS.

What I’m pondering: How and when to rip up all the forsythia in the backyard and transplant 3 or 4 of them in the side yard.