space debris

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:41:56 -0400

I honestly think this recent experience would be great as the first ten minutes of a screenplay: boy...

Mon, 13 May 2013 03:25:00 -0400

I honestly think this recent experience would be great as the first ten minutes of a screenplay:

boy is drunk. beer bottles strewn on dingy carpet of bedroom. dim lighting. jefferson airplane song (“somebody to love”) playing on tinny macbook speakers (song is loud enough to discern but not loud enough to drown out diegetic sound). boy feels around on bed. bright glow of cellphone reflected on glasses (glasses have anti-glare coating on them so reflection is green). boy opens up grindr and starts talking to some blond guy visiting. invites him over. boy downs shot of terrible whisky. cleans clothes up off floor and throws them all into the closet and shuts the closet door. opens front door for blond guy. forced smile. snippets of perfunctory small talk, something about weather and college sports. jump cut to weird sex, not bad, just weird. a flying limb knocks over a beer bottle and it clinks loudly. blond guy makes weird noises. contorted grimace. jump cut to early morning. hangover. outside the window is composed an overture of diesel engines and bird chirps. fan whirs loudly. boy rouses blond guy still snoring and throws him his clothes and kicks him out. passes hapless roommate exiting the shower wrapped in towel. boy frantically brushing teeth and jamming one leg in dress pants. jump cut to boy putting graduation robe on over his head, adjusting cords around neck (honors student!), tying dress shoes. muted bluish colors other than bright yellow daffodils outside as boy walks down sidewalk carrying graduation cap and then knocks on friend’s door. narrow staircase with orange carpet. boy downs another shot of whisky in smoky, hazy room plastered in fading obama posters. white wood paneling. friends stoned laughing. it’s 7:30 am. jump cut to boy lighting cigarette in crowd of thousands of people all in graduation garb in front of giant stadium. discordant and overlapping conversation from excited young adults all around. atavistic cheering of distant bros catches the wind and passes by. group of eight white girls posing endlessly for photoset of iphone pictures. jump cut to boy and friends waiting inside the stadium in large concrete room covered in advertisements. conversation remains the same but amplified and echoing. boy stands silent. jump cut to crowded stadium bleachers, boy surrounded by college graduates. moderately important public figure is orating platitudes about vague futures in a manner that attempts to relate to millennials but sound system of stadium is such that words cannot be made out. obligatory clapping. marching band plays slightly flat, low roar bubbles up from crowd. jump cut to boy jostling through uncontrolled and frenetic crowd of college students and incredibly proud older family members. shoving of limbs. boy poses for pictures looking into the sun with forced smile, almost a grimace, standing for several minutes among small groups performing the same ritual. boy’s robe is worn lopsided such that the parents upon uploading pictures to their computer will make remarks that they should have fixed it. jump cut to much later in the day, late afternoon sunlight, in a sun-dappled and well-landscaped backyard. clinking of plates and silverware, hostess serving heapings of food onto plates of guests with large spoon. large display of hors d’oeuvres on festive plastic tablecloth purchased from national discount retailer. indeterminate but happy-sounding utterances from slightly drunk and raucous older relatives of friend. champagne bottle pops, scattered applause. jump cut to late dusk. well-positioned and slightly out-of-focus strings of lights. boy and friends drunkenly dancing on patio to early 2000s pop hit. boy is noticeably less animated than friends and his facial expression is one of drowsy satisfaction. boy takes sip from glass of champagne. jump cut to SUV slowing down. now it’s nighttime. sound of tires braking on gravelly asphalt. boy in back seat. boy gets out of car to hug parents, his father first briefly, then his mother, lingering. boy smiles faintly as he watches his mother say something that conveys pride and happiness. sound of keys jingling. boy watches car drive away up the street. jump cut to boy throwing keys on kitchen table. they make a loud noise as they impact the glass surface. boy throws himself onto bed. we are in the same place we were at the beginning of this sequence. boy stares at wall opposite, traces grooves in white wood veneer with mental fingers. feels around on the bed but stops. tear suddenly streaks down boy’s face but his facial expression does not particularly change. he is too tired to be scared but his face betrays deep-seated apprehension.

Cut to black, or something. Where from here?

Photo

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:06:15 -0400

HIGHEST HONORS YALL also the director of the political science...

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:13:00 -0400

HIGHEST HONORS YALL

also the director of the political science honors program made posters for everyone’s theses and framed them and gave them to us

also I’m cool

Your va-jay-jay called! It wants to talk about...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:39:00 -0400

Your va-jay-jay called! It wants to talk about anarcho-syndicalism.

real talk

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:53:42 -0400

real talk

Photo

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:33:00 -0400

“Ездят такси, Но нам нечем платить, И нам незачем...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:34:19 -0400

“Ездят такси,
Но нам нечем платить,
И нам незачем ехать,
Мы гуляем одни.

Видели ночь,
Гуляли всю ночь до утра.”

From the Wikipedia article for “Pregaming”

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:08:04 -0400

From the Wikipedia article for “Pregaming”

George McGovern campaigns during the 1972 election (source)

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:00:03 -0400

George McGovern campaigns during the 1972 election (source)

Photo

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:02:03 -0400

Happy International Women’s Day

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:21:00 -0500

Happy International Women’s Day

Illustration from Unimark’s Graphics Standards Manual, for...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:50:00 -0500

Illustration from Unimark’s Graphics Standards Manual, for the New York City Transit Authority. 1970. More illustrations here.

These are currently my top three artists in Spotify oops

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:37:30 -0500

These are currently my top three artists in Spotify oops

Yugoslav advertisement for the Zastava Koral (Застава Корал),...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:33:17 -0500

Yugoslav advertisement for the Zastava Koral (Застава Корал), better known as the Yugo. 1970s.

Dead of winter (2013).

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 02:43:25 -0500

Dead of winter (2013).

Vladimir Horowitz plays Schubert’s “Ständchen”

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:18:40 -0500

Vladimir Horowitz plays Schubert’s “Ständchen”

"A scientific event removed one of the most important obstacles from my path. This was the further..."

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:43:00 -0500

“A scientific event removed one of the most important obstacles from my path. This was the further division of the atom. The collapse of the atom was equated, in my soul, with the collapse of the whole world. Suddenly, the stoutest walls crumbled. Everything became uncertain, precarious and insubstantial. […] Painting is like a thundering collision of different worlds that are destined in and through conflict to create that new world called the work. Technically, every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos – by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create out of the cacophony of the various instruments that symphony we call the music of the spheres. The creation of the work of art is the creation of the world.”

- Wassily Kandinsky, from “Reminisces.” 1913.

Breathing, you invisible poem! World-space constantly in pure interchange with our own being....

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:32:00 -0500

Breathing, you invisible poem!
World-space constantly in pure
interchange with our own being. Counterpoise,
wherein I rhythmically happen.

Solitary wave,
whose gradual sea I am;
most sparing you of all possible seas,—
winning of space.

How many of these places in space have already been
within me. Many a wind
is like a son to me.

Do you know me, you air, still full of places once mine?
You onetime smooth rind,
rondure and leaf of my words.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II.1, trans. M.D. Herter Norton

Eric Spiegelman, Untitled (Open House). 2011.

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:10:27 -0500

Eric Spiegelman, Untitled (Open House). 2011.