day 7 of winter break

birthday festivities continued

beacon's closet for b's shirt

dinner at peasant

w/ o, s, b, & i

my orechiette is way oily

otherwise nice ambiance

o gives me an ipod touch

and m gives me a $200 gift certificate

day 6 of winter break

my birthday

look at facebook

go to mexican place

have huevos

drive to ashley's house

b goes to work

drive to b's house with a

change outfit

drive

park

go to dressler very early

drink

s & d are late !

eat first course

drink

eat second course

oxtail ragout—so good

drink

eat third course

drink

eat fourth course

drink

eat fifth course

total is almost $500 with tip

i feel bad about the cost; but also bc of how full i am.

those bottles of wine were not my idea

have a lovely time mostly bc

s can be charming when he wants to be

drive

park

sleep

day 5 of winter break

drive

park car

return shoes

return shoes

return shoes

try to buy scarf

run away

drive

park car

trader joes

buy groceries

feet hurt feet hurt feet hurt

go to bowl land or whatever with n & c; l is there

drink beer

drink beer

day 3 of winter break

saturday

out with suny purchase bushwickers

a group video show in a house

no interesting videos

amazing house though

in other house, less amazing

sat in a small circle and drank home-made wine and cheap beers

lusted after nicely decorated apartments of people much younger than myself

day 2 of winter break

hungover

pee

weird pee

hungry

get food

eat

hungover

weird pee

worry

weird pee

sit around

health center

drugs

pack up

drive

new york

day 1 of winter break

Drove back up to New Haven. Ostensible reason was to watch the rest of my classmate's reviews. Other more convincing reason was to drink and party with those classmates after review.

I drank many drinks. drinkdrinkdrink clinkclinkclink

ginger vodka soda

spinach roll

vodka/ginger ale

vodka/ginger ale

french fries

vodka/ginger ale

beer

beer

beer

=

uti

day 0 of winter break

Had my final review; it went pretty well, but I still had a feeling of disappointment at the end. Who knows why ? Maybe because the leadup to the review wasn't painful enough ? Because I hadn't been working like a fiend in the last week, staying up all hours of the night ?

My own decisions after seeing the work: stop directly referencing other people's work (like John Cage, Proust, and Jabes) not enough room for me in that space.

Stop talking about minimalism. What is my work about ? Good question.

Drove down to New York for B's birthday. He turned 27. We went to The Manhattan Inn. It was ok, but the food took a long time.

penelope cruz

i watched 'elegy' a billion years ago, at the very beginning of the summer, basically because my roommate had downloaded and was watching it. hence, i don't remember it very well. the premise is that of a horny old professor (ben kingsley) falling for a beautiful young student (penelope cruz, i know), and after seducing her not being able to commit to her for unknowable reasons. at one point in the film, it's hinted that beautiful women are ultimately unknowable, as their gorgeous surfaces seem to distract men from ever getting beneath their skin. who knows. in anycase, as far as i'm concerned this film seems like what it really wants to be about is penelope cruz, and just how gorgeous she is. aside from being a totally unbelievable student (do you know any students who look like penelope cruz ?), i guess one could make the argument that the director's obsessive filming of the languid cruz is about consciously reenacting one of the movie's main themes of trying to capture and preserve fleeting beauty. at the end of the film, cruz's character (it's esp hard to separate cruz out from the character she's portraying, since the character is all about her image) gets breast cancer, and loses her perfect beauty.

Revolutionary Road

Didn't really sit down and watch this movie, just caught it in snatches while my brother was watching it on his computer. Directed by Sam Mendes of 'American Beauty' fame. Thought it was just going to be exactly like 'Mad Men' but a movie version, the good thing is that it was a kind of reversal of that. Not the picture perfect couple like the Drapers, who behind their seamless facade, have all sorts of problems, Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet are a couple who somehow imagine themselves to be "special" and "different" from everyone else, but somehow got trapped into a conventional life. What turns out to be the real story is that maybe they aren't different at all, or at least in Leo's case, just don't have the guts to try anything at all, really. They're about to move to Paris, when Leo gets a promotion and raise and Kate gets pregnant. Kate wants to get an abortion and still move to Paris, but Leo tells her he wants another child so he can use it as an excuse to stay. Of course, in the end it comes out that he just didn't have the balls to tell her the truth, she sleeps with the neighbor, gives herself an abortion at home after the first trimester's passed, and of course dies. Last scene Leo all alone at playground, wondering what went wrong. Mendes seems to love tragic endings, and a kind of Sirkian melodrama. Overall, totally okay, except for the real-estate broker's crazy son character who has to spell everything out for the viewer.

i know what i did this summer

Finally got around to reading this thing, which had been knocking around my house for months. Had bought it at Strand, on the wave of the movie marketing, but just couldn't get into it in the beginning because of the melodramatic tone of the narration. Kind of off-putting and intensely nerdy, but once I got into it, was interesting to see how the different strands worked together. Only my third or so real graphic novel (not including my brother's X-Men's I covertly read when I was a kid), after Maus, and some Tomine. In the end, perverse, egotistical superhero who likes Egyptian stuff (oh, right Ozymandias) creates a test-tube alien (looks like a cross between an octopus and a giant pussy) to spontaneously detonate upon its arrival in New York City, whereupon frightened citizens of the world would stop their squabbling, and thereby prevent World War III. Interspersed with "non-fictional reports" relating to different characters in the book, as well as a gruesome fable, "The Black Freighter," wherein a guy makes a float of a bunch of corpses and eats a seagull (plucks it straight outta the sky) in order to make it back to his hometown to his wife and kiddies before the pirates get there. Of course, the pirates had no intention of going there, meanwhile "the hero" has transformed into a grotesque animal, no longer a being that could be loved by his family or be part of society at all, really. Moral of the story ? Don't be blinded by your blind desire. You'll shoot yourself in the foot. Or more like face. I know. Of course, this nicely parallels the character of Ozymandias, who, in trying to save the world, loses sight of what he's doing and willingly sacrifices the people of New York City for his design.  The only thing is that he has no remorse. Is self-righteous till the end. Classic, "Do the ends, justify the means?" kind of thing. "Does that which benefits the majority always a good thing ?" "Who is the majority ?" Rorschach, the conscientious counter-weight to Ozy. While everyone else is willing to sacrifice the truth in order to preserve world peace, he outs it via his journal (mailed to a conservative newspaper called the "New Frontiersman.") "Watchmen" is also ambivalent about whether living by Rorschach's black & white rules (truth above all things, including world peace) is admirable, either. "The Watchmen" leaves things uncomfortably unresolved to the very end, like what the consequences of Rorschach's revelation will be; or even what characters are good or bad. The charm (really not the right word) of the book is that it raises a lot of questions and complexities, and doesn't offer any easy answers. An uncomfortable read, overall: grim, theatrical and dark.

tibor tibor tibor

We're making a series of three books based on a designer. I chose Tibor Kalman, former editor-in-chief of the Benetton sponsored Colors magazine. One about their life, another about their work, and one about their historical context.

lovelist redux

Work-in-progress for a book of lovelists.

movie posters

This assignment is to create a series of posters based on three of the six films we watched for class, which were: 1) Mulholland Dr 2) Tristram Shandy 3) 2046 4) Dead Man 5) Amores Perros 6) Reprise. I chose to do Mulholland Dr, Tristram Shandy and 2046, based on the theme of interpretation. I asked everyone in class to send me synopses of the films we watched, edited them, and put them on these posters.

oscar oscar on the wall

new drawing of oscar. yes, it's in the bathroom.

fruity paper

amazing! "paper" made from very thin slices of fruits and things. i love the kiwi one especially. at new york central art supply.

type specimen poster

Haven't posted in a while. I'm sure everyone has been waiting for updates with bated breath. Anyway, these are initial sketches, and then a larger one printed to actual size (shown in the last two) for a type specimen poster assignment. We had to choose a place and then choose a typeface that evoked that place. My place is a grove of spiky vertical trees by Wintergreen Lake in Rock Ridge State Park, and I chose Nobel Condensed as my typeface because of its geometric-ality. I was criticized for not making a 'postery' enough poster. Whatever.

 

happy (lunar) new year

nom nom nom.

thanks/no thanks

My final infographic about my shopping habits at IKEA. It's totally just okay.

nice to meet you!

This is a book I created as a final project for Keller Easterling's course, 'Globalization Space' on tourism in the DPRK. I'm not really sure if it's any good, but I guess it was an interesting project to attempt, at least. Printing this booklet with its nested pages, and overlapping images also almost killed me. Posters. I'm gonna make posters.

and now back to our original programming

I'm back in New Haven now, getting ready for my second semester. Here are some images from projects that I completed at the end of last semester that I got too busy to post. This is a book that documents my Temple Street Parking Garage interventions. I almost lost my mind figuring out how to do double-sided printing on the plotter. I'm just going to make large posters from now on.