An open letter to architects published by Pidgin, the official publication of the Princeton School of Architecture:
“…Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true…”
“…Perhaps if you didn’t talk about it so much, I would be more interested. When you point to a glass cylinder and say proudly, hey my office designed that, I giggle and say it looks like a bong. You turn your head in disgust and shame. You think, obviously she does not understand. What does she know? She is just a writer…”
“…And then you say now I am designing a lifestyle center, and I ask what is that, and you say it is a place that offers goods and services and retail opportunities and I say you mean like a mall and you say no. It is a lifestyle center. I say it sounds like a mall. I am from the Valley, bitch. I know malls…”
“…Architects love to discuss how much sleep they have gotten. One will say how he was at the studio until five in the morning, only to return again two hours later. Then another will say, oh that is nothing. I haven’t slept in a week. And then another will say, guess what, I have never slept ever. My dear architects, the measure of how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve accomplished is not related to the number of hours you have not slept. Have you heard of Rem Koolhaas? He is a famous architect. I know this because you tell me he is a famous architect. I hear that Rem Koolhaas is always sleeping. He is, I presume, sleeping right now. And I hear he gets shit done. And I also hear that in a stunning move, he is making a building that looks not like a glass cock, but like a concrete vagina. When you sleep more, you get vagina. You can all take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas…”
“…So, dear architects, I will stick around, for only a little while. I hope that one day some of you will become doctors and lawyers or will figure out my taxes. And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you’ve never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built. But even if that day doesn’t arrive, give me a call anyway, I am free.”
I especialy like the part about the “lifestyle center”. For some reason, architects and architecture students (including me) love to design “centers”, even if they’re really just clinics, studios, schools, or offices. Everytime I hear someone designing another center, Ben Stiller pops into my head screaming, “a center for what? a center for ANTS?!”
From PartIV.
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Tales from Toy Con 2007
Where geeks of all shapes, sizes, and unfortunately, costumes, congregate in that great big shoebox in the middle of EDSA…
***
Interrupting a Transformers Trivia Contest, a 6-8 year old boy comes up on the mainstage, followed by one of the organizers. The organizer grabs the microphone and, thinking he was oh-so-very witty and funny and probably original, goes on to say (as he holds the boy’s hand)
“Attention, Mr. XXX, I think you forgot someTHING very VERY important.”
(because apparently the best way to deal with a kid clearly lost and has totally no idea where his parents are is to make fun of the situation and to refer to said child as an OBJECT)
Suddenly, a guy raises his hand. Everyone in the crowd turns to him, and the organizer exclaims,
“Ah! Mr. XXX!”
At which point, with everybody in the hall looking at him, the guy gives a weak smile and shakes his head. Just kidding!
(as if the quota for douche bags wasn’t already accomplished with the host, this guy actually thinks it’s even more hilarious if he pretends to be the father to the kid)
Not to be outdone, the organizer puts a twist to his initial, “witty” comment and says,
“Mr. XXX, if you come up on stage, there’s a VERY SPECIAL PRIZE waiting for you!”
(I guess the boy is supposed to cheer up now that his status has been upgraded from inanimate object to inanimate prize)
The same asshole as before then raises his hand AGAIN, but now points to his friend as the “father”, laughing all the way.
(clearly they think that a lost child is the absolute funniest thing in the world)
Finally, the organizer realizes that maybe it isn’t a very good idea to merely hint that someone’s child is actually missing and at last says,
“Mr. XXX, your son is here waiting for you!”
Nobody from the crowd responds. A good ten minutes later, we hear the organizer still looking for the parents of the kid.
Happy Father’s Day talaga.
Presumably the parents claimed the kid a few hours later, as the announcements stopped shortly before the Cosplay competition starts.
***
While ordering a schublig in the food area of the con, two guys fall in line behind me. The first guy is almost twice as big as I am, and is talking to his friend.
“Dude! do you know what’s the best part of graduating?” The big guy asks.
“What?” His friend replies
“You get to stay up as LONG AS YOU WANT!”
***
Announced over the speakers during the con:
“ATTENTION Mr. YYY, your MOTHER is at the entrance waiting for you.”
***
One of the first few contestants during the Cosplay competition was this guy who dressed up as Brawl from the Transformers. The crowd goes wild. One of the hosts then shouts, “Transform!”
The guy then grabs his crotch piece (WTF?!), puts it on his head, crouches down into a fetal position, and “transforms” into a truck. The crowd goes even wilder.
Subsequently after that, every time a really really bad cosplayer comes up onstage, like, say, a fat guy dressed up as Sailor Moon (true story), someone from the crowd (actually, Ben) would shout “TRANSFORM!!!”
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Just For One Day
With the last episode of Heroes for this season finally over, the first volume of the saga of a band of brothers with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men comes to a close.
As a whole, the entire season itself was entertaining. It’s probably up to par with the other long-form serial dramas in TV right now (Lost, 24, etc. etc.) although I can’t really tell, because I don’t watch them. What I can say is that it was good superhero fiction in the Mighty Marvel Manner. Yes, sometimes the dialogue is a bit awkward (‘Love is all that matters, Peter’,’Don’t die officer Parkman! You’re my HERO!’) but it wasn’t as bad as the Star Wars prequels, and cheesy dialogue is part and parcel to superhero fiction anyway, so it didn’t bother me that much.
In the end, I enjoyed it because it set realistic goals for itself that payed off really well in the finale. Most of the questions regarding the characters were answered (Noah, for example) without spoiling the bigger picture too much that there’s still enough material for a couple of other seasons. More importantly, it also set up everything for season 2 without it being too much of a cliffhanger as to torture everyone who’s a fan for the next three months the same way they did while the show was on hiatus.
So yeah, good series.
Something interesting I realized while watching Heroes all these months though was how each (or most, depending on your perspective) of the characters were created with a certain dash of the oxymoronic. Meaning,
- Peter Petrelli was the unselfish guy that gets to have everything.
- Nathan Petrelli was the most grounded, the most practical, but has the ability to fly up in the clouds.
- Nikki Sanders, the stripper, was also Nikki Sanders, the bouncer.
- Hiro Nakamura, the pencil-pushing ‘dilbert’ that’s powerless and ineffectual in the real (read: corporate) world has the most powerful ability.
- Claire Bennet, the popular blonde-haired, blue-eyed, suburban white cheerleader who conceivably and possibly has the safest and most secure life among all the characters is the one who can afford to live dangerously.
- Micah Sanders, a 10-year old kid living in poverty who probably has the least access to technology because of his situation is the one with ultimate control over technology.
- Matt Parkman, who can’t even talk to his wife is very very good at ‘communication’.
- Isaac Mendez as someone who works in an industry in love with its own history (read: comic books) gets to be the one to see the future.
- Sylar was a machinist/watchmaker who spent more time dissecting people instead of machines.
- DL Hawkins was a convicted criminal who can never stay in prison.
- The Haitian who everyone seems to remember seeing (Parkman and Sprague for example), is the one that can make people forget.
- Eden McCain was the small, petite, unassuming neighbor who can apparently make anyone do anything she wants.
- Ted Sprague who was his wife’s ‘teddybear‘ was the one that made her sick.
- Molly Walker, the little girl who was hiding can actually seek anyone she wants.
- Candice Wilmer was the beautiful girl who makes other people see her differently.
- Linderman was a gangster who killed as much as he healed.
- Charlie Andrews, the redneck waitress who ended up being really really intelligent.
Admittedly, some of these might be considered a stretch, but like I said, it all depends on your perspective.
In any case, Heroes season 2 is coming soon. Surprisingly, I’m not that excited for it. The addition of a Heroes spin-off this early in its run looks to be ominous. The fact that Heroes: Origins is going to be Who Wants To Be A Superhero? in the Tim Kring universe doesn’t bode too well.
What I really want at this point, if they want to do a spin-off or something, is the prequel story behind the original group of heroes in the series - the Petrellis, Mr. Linderman, Mr. Nakamura, and Mr. Deveaux who, as I guessed correctly, is alive and well thanks to what seems to be his ability to enter the Dreaming.
Now that would be something.
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At World’s End
Just a few comments about the movie based on the ride that was more a ride than a movie (that is, forgettable, but exciting).
No, I’m not going to talk about its empty promises of an fleet-wide battle between the East India Company and the United Pirate Nations, or the utter waste of time that was Calypso, or convoluted plot that made it very confusing to follow who betrayed whom and why.
Spoiler warning for those of you who didn’t see the epilogue after the credits.
For the last three movies, Keira Knightley’s been yammering on and on about how it’s the pirate’s life for her, endangering the lives of her friends and subsequently leading to the deaths of her then-fiance and her father…
…and in the end she becomes a housewife to an OCW?
Don’t get me wrong. As Arroyo, Estrada, and Ramos all consistently say, ‘Ang OCW ang bayani ng bagong milenyo’ There’s nothing wrong with Orlando Bloom becoming a ‘bagong bayani’ so to speak, only getting to come home every ten years with balikbayan boxes probably in tow. But for Keira Knightley, all this… for that?
And one more thing. Since Keira Knightley was voted Pirate King, does that make Orlando Bloom (by marriage) the Pirate Queen?
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