stephanieNY

someone sublet my roooooommm!!
I'm trying to sublet my room for the summer, so that I can reside in Boston for a few months before my last year of school. I (1) haven't found anyone to stay in my room and pay my rent and (2) haven't found a job for the summer. The numbers don't add up...so I'll need one or the other to happen soon.

I've posted fliers at school for my room (see below the sad state of my flier with only 1 piece ripped off) and on craigslist relentlessly. There have been some lookers, but no takers yet. Just yesterday, I checked my ad on craigslist because my inbox was suspiciously empty of responses. It was there, but instead of a picture of my bedroom, I had posted a picture of my sandwich. Ahahaha! So it's this nice ad about an apartment for sublease with a picture of a nice living room, and a SANDWICH. People must've been so creeped out.

...there's a new awesomely horrible thriller in town.
Much to my delight, Adam sent me an IM this afternoon that read: If you don't think we're going to go see Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus this summer, you're crazy. followed by a link to this:

As if I weren't already looking forward to this summer. I can't tell you how excited I am about seeing this movie. As we walk out of the theater, I'll probably say something like, "I haven't laughed that hard in ___."

Oh, and to boot, Debbie (excuse me, Deborah) Gibson is the lead role. Yeah...with Lorenzo Lamas. Awesomely horrible movies can't get any better than this.

Here's the scene from Ghost Ship that sparked my love for awesomely horrible thrillers:
(warning: it's a little gruesome.)

...are well-made sandwiches and periods of time that are actually most efficiently spent by sitting on a bench in a park on a nice day. I experienced both of these today.

About the sandwich: I asked for mozzarella, tomato, and basil on a roll, and got mozzarella, tomato, mozzarella, tomato, mozzarella, tomato, mozzarella, tomato, and basil on a roll. The layers were superfluous, but the TLC was just right.

About the bench: I had some time to waste today when I dropped my files off at the print shop off-campus and needed to come back an hour later to pick up my printed portfolio. Both the deli and the park were the closest things in sight. I got my layered sandwich and sat in Morningside Park for a while and pretty much just stared at the trees.

Today, I extended my culinary explorations to Espana. My first attempt at gazpacho came out....garlicky. I generally like a good helping of garlic, but this is a little biting. I'll try it again (and again) this summer while working on perfecting the essential cucumber sliver garnish.

This time of year, campus slowly turns into a massive stadium. Graduation is on May 20th and the bleachers started going up weeks ago.

Every day, I walk through, wishing it was for me. One more year!

So, I've got this bank of songs I pull from every once in a while when jogged by something I'm doing, reading, seeing, etc. I know this is no phenomenon, everyone's got a sort of internal soundtrack. I was just thinking about mine and laughing because it's generally reeeeaaally literal. For instance, The Mamas and the Papas - Monday, Monday when it is actually Monday; Flaming Lips - It's Summertime when I'm reveling in moments of summer; Bob Dylan - Times They Are A Changin' when reading the news or something. (That one's funny too because I'm 29, not 69.) It's like stating the obvious to myself in song. My favorite and most frequent one is Grand Funk Railroad - I'm Your Captain, but more specifically, the "I'm getting closer to my home" part. I usually start singing it as I'm actually walking home, toward my apartment, and also on the bus as it pulls off the Mass Pike into Boston. It's really fun. And the beauty of this one is that you don't need to know any more lyrics because he just sings that line over and over again, each time more revved up than the previous. It's awesome.

Aaaaaanyway, I bring it up now, because I started singing it silently yesterday as I was powering through my Flash animation final and thinking about this summer in Boston, and again this morning as I sat down to write my history paper and thought how soon tomorrow is. Tomorrow is when I hand both of these things in and complete the finals portion of the end of this semester. The end is near and I'm feelin' it.

Skip to 2:45 to get to the right part. Or watch the whole thing because it's pretty amazing. Shea Stadium, 1971.

While writing my paper for my Urban History class just now, I came across this guy, Robert Owen from early 19th century England, and his novel idea of the apartment building. He thought maybe people could live together in one building, but have their own homes inside of it.

Owen, on apartment buildings:

"buildings, placed under some public control, might be erected for the joint occupation of many families or individuals, and so arranged that each tenant might feel that he had the exclusive enjoyment of a home in the room or rooms which he occupied, and yet might partake, in common with his neighbors, of many important comforts and advantages now utterly unknown to him."

I love the idea that this hypothetical tenant can't even imagine the joys that close neighbors might bring him. This guy doesn't know what he's missing. And it's also so interesting how he puts it as though tenants would almost be fooled into thinking that their rooms were some equivalent to a house.

It made me think of the situation in reverse. If apartment buildings came before houses, maybe Owen would have said something like this:

"homes, private groups of rooms, might be owned by individual families or persons, and so arranged that each group of rooms was allotted its own plot of land, and shared walls and corridors with no other group of rooms, so that its owner might partake in solitary comforts now unknown to him, and might feel that his ownership extended beyond his walls to the earth around his rooms."

Yesterday was our field trip out to the Glass House in Connecticut. It was amazing. When I say "The Glass House", I really mean the site on which the-house-made-of-glass sits among thirteen other architectural structures. It's about 50 acres of rolling hills with architecture sprinkled across them - a glass house here, a brick house there, a sculpture gallery here, and a pavilion over there. It's really pretty brilliant.

So, the Glass House was designed by Philip Johnson as a weekend house for himself in 1949. He eventually took over about 10 plots of land around the site and designed and built more little buildings/sculptures/pavilions over the years. He was a big art collector and swung with the in-crowd - Andy Warhol, Mies van der Rohe were some of his buddies and guests at the house.

There was a lot of question yesterday on JP's originality as an architect. His glass house is accused of being a bad knock-off of Mies's glass house, the Farnsworth House. But, glass and house aside, I thought that his brilliance was in the entire site. What if instead of designing a house with a guest wing and a gallery wing and a place to work and sleep and eat, you split them up and design something purely for each purpose and then place them hundreds of yards apart...brilliant. Then there's the whole walking outside across a field just get a book you want to read issue. Further brilliance I think, forcing contemplation and premeditation in how you go about your day. I'm sure there's some Greek or Roman precedence to this, but to see it done with modern architecture, amazing. According to JP, when you pass through the gate at the driveway, you're then in the front vestibule of his home; and when you approach the stone walkway to the glass house, it's at that point that you're actually at his front door.

Yesterday is over, which means that studio is too. Our review lasted nine hours, I repeat, NINE HOURS. We started at noon (with moi) and sat through 12 presentations and critiques until 9:00. I woke up this morning sore...actually sore...as in my muscles. It felt like I had lifted weights yesterday with the back of my neck, shoulders, and back. Tomorrow I'll get back in the game of finals, but for today my body and mind need a little couch and tv action respectively.

Then, get this, on Saturday my studio class is regrouping and "debriefing" in New Canaan, Connecticut at Philip Johnson's Glass House...awesome. I am now willing the raindrops to disappear under Saturday's forecast.