A guy walked into a Clinton campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, with what looks like a bomb taped to his chest and demanding to “speak” with Hillary. She’s not in New Hampshire. Track the story for now here. Health-care reform? Campaign financing? The Sopranos spoof? What’s on his mind?
If you were nominated by your major media bosses to cover the presidential campaign, congratulations and, I’m sorry. Although an important beat, it has also got to be exhausting, repetitive and overwhelming. The email alone must be mountainous, amounting to an inbox in every account, personal and professional, stuffed to the brim with messages from the campaigns.
Our own P+P destination site for these messages—PopandPresidents@gmail.com—is definitely suffering from a lack of attention, or information overload. Either way, there are quite a few messages that have yet to be read. And it’s not because we don’t care what the campaigns have to say, really. We simply don’t have time to hear about the latest in fall gear from the Obama campaign or to plow through a lengthy update from the Huckabee camp all about how Huck’s been “Chuck Norris Approved.” I kid you not.
M.I.T. is suing famed architect Frank Gehry.
A Gehry building that cost the school $300 million has been leaking, molding, and generally busting its metallic seams.
Gehry’s pieces are remarkable. They’re strikingly original edifices that bear the stamp of the Canadian architect in their waving, tortuous, serpentine forms. I personally can’t help staring at and enjoying them. They’re a writer and photographer’s dream: impressive and bizarre.
But I also can’t help taking issue with the man and his apparent ethos. He seems to operate by the credo that “If it doesn’t bankrupt a city, it isn’t architecture.” His Guggenheim museum in Bilbao is a titanium whale. Why titanium? Because other metals “just wouldn’t do”.
Okay, fair enough, titanium’s resistance to corrosion is impressive and it’s twice as strong as aluminum, though 60 percent heavier. We definitely appreciate its powerful nature when it covers our airplanes. But does it need to form a nuclear-looking shell around a museum all the more imposing because it graces the river bank of a small industrial town in the Spanish Basque Country?
I fail to see the necessity of such high expenditure for what could otherwise be visually accomplished through a cheaper medium.
Granted, Frankie’s work has hauled in a good deal of tourism to an otherwise desolate city, but I ask again…titanium?! Really.
When it came to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, arguably the jewel of Downtown Los Angeles, Gehry knew better than to pull the titanium card (maybe he guessed it would never fly with the much wealthier but more self-sustaining metropolis). Yet he managed, sans titanium, to make a memorable and not a little beautiful building.
But.
Did the stainless steel (a concession we all appreciate) building really have to cost the Disney family and Los Angeles County a staggering $274 million?
It’s hard to say; I’m neither an architect, an engineer, a tax collector or a bond monger.
What I can say is that a piece of art that must also be functional, such as M.I.T.’s controversial Stata Center and Disney Hall, and that also happen to come with extremely high price tags, should not, after all dues are payed, present any problems.
Although Disney Hall has neither leaked nor rotted, its steel exterior generated enough glare to unite the neighborhood in complaining about the heat the building was producing: the sidewalk out front was apparently steaming hot at 140 F. Gehry resorted to sanding his baby’s panels to reduce the glare.
But he shouldn’t have had to do that.
While I said I thought his pristine pieces lovely, they do look alarmingly like crumpled pieces of paper. And paper, that isn’t even paper, shouldn’t come at such a high price.
Even the Simpsons take a stab at that. And who can argue with the Simpsons?*
*YouTube seems only to have “The Seven Beer Snitch,” the 14th episode of its 16th season, in Spanish, which perhaps considering the Guggenheim’s location in Spain is…a propos.
I hope someone filmed the productions of Waiting for Godot director Paul Chan put on earlier this month in the open air of New Orleans. Wendell “Bunk” Pierce as Vladimir and J Kyle Manzay as Estragon, holding forth while waiting for that which will never come amid the slumped houses, skeleton trees, post-Katrina emptiness of the Ninth Ward had to be a pop-political event that should be available to cable and iTunes viewers everywhere.
Here’s Chan on why Godot and the Ninth Ward: “The sense of waiting is legion here. People are waiting to come home. Waiting for the levee board to OK them to rebuild. Waiting for Road Home money. Waiting for honest construction crews that won’t rip them off. Waiting for phone and electric companies. What do people do while they wait? They banter and entertain and it’s a form of keeping hope alive…”
Pierce says the location in this case really was the play. In fact, the theater company reportedly reserved seats for the performance for President Bush, Governor Blanco and FEMA officials—all of those they call the “Godots of New Orleans.”
Read more about the production at NPR and an excerpt from the play after the jump.
Facebook continues its campaign for global media domination, announcing a partnership with ABC News designed to bring the campaign trail to the top of the news feed.
The goal, as the New York Times reported Monday, is to draw Facebook users (read: 18-29 year olds) into political coverage, creating a web of information and opinion for audiences younger and more tech savvy than those still watching the nightly news (!) (read: AARP members).
ABC News President David Westin, whose Facebook account is viewable only to “friends,” told the Times that the partnership hopes to tap the constant buzzing discourse of the online community. “There are debates going on at all times within Facebook. This allows us to participate in those debates, both by providing information and by learning from the users.”
