Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Axe Cop


This is possibly the coolest comic ever: CLICK HERE

Written by a 5 year old, illustrated by his older brother.

Monday, March 22, 2010

bound for the himalayas!

i have been accepted to an amazing design/build program in Ladakh, India this summer focused on sustainable design! the program is from about june 25 - july 26 and has a group of architecture students from Texas, Portland and Harvard participate in designing and building sustainable and culturally appropriate architecture at an amazing school. Ladakh is in the northernmost region of India located in the Himalayas. It is a Tibetan town and the school is focused on maintaining the traditional Tibetan culture in Ladakh.

there is a 25-minute television program about the school and the area. it was made by pbs and is narrated by brad pitt and is really well done. definitely check it out when you get a chance and see where i am a-headin'. here is the link:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/67733/design-e2-the-druk-white-lotus-school-ladakh





sufficiently bent after my bender



so, i am back in school after a week of spring break, which happened to coincide with south by southwest. i am going to do my best to recruit some of you fools (chase, this particularly includes you since i know you read this) to come and experience the wonder that is sxsw next year. it is absolutely amazing! here is my pitch:

i did not spend a dime and every day at several bars/clubs i:
*drank free, endless (often very good) beer
*ate tons of free food
*saw dozens of pretty good bands - a couple great ones
*was given things like free t-shirts and sunglasses
*enjoyed the greatest people-watching tht can be done this side of odessa
*went to a lot of parties with more bands, free food and free beer

so, if that doesn't sell you - there is a movie festival that makes up the first few days of sxsw and many of the movies are also free, again with parties to go to, etc.

my final selling point is this - there are pancakes. and not just pancakes. free, delicious pancakes from a spray can with the most wonderfully disturbing name imaginable:



oh, and i played some serious disc golf and we have some fantastic courses in austin.

so, 2011! - who's with me?

Sunday, March 21, 2010

ham and cream

so, for whatever reason, a scary amount of great architects have ended up dying poor and alone. it is almost comical how often this is the case when you look into an architect you come across. however, i think that the great adolf loos may take the cake for the harshest bio i have come across so far.



Born in 1870 in Brno, Moravia, Loos was only nine when his stonemason father died. A rebellious boy who rather lost his bearings, he failed in various attempts to get through architecture school. Contracting syphilis in the brothels of Vienna, by 21 he was sterile and in 1893 his mother disowned him. He stayed in America for three years, he had an uncle living in Philadelphia, he visited the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, appreciated the work of Louis Sullivan, visited St. Louis and did odd jobs in New York. He somehow found himself in that process and returned to Vienna in 1896 a man of taste and intellectual refinement, immediately entering the fashionable Viennese intelligentsia. His friends included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arnold Schönberg, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus. He quickly established himself as the preferred architect of Vienna’s cultured bourgeoisie. Diagnosed with cancer in 1918, his stomach, appendix and part of his intestine were removed. For the rest of his life he could only digest ham and cream. He had several unhappy marriages. By the time he was fifty he was almost completely deaf; in 1928 he was disgraced by a paedophilia scandal and at his death in 1933 at 62 he was penniless.

i mean...how do you compete with that?

so, you have probably heard of the great american architect mentioned in the bio, louis sullivan. he completely changed the rules in architecture, was the father of modernism, the mentor of frank lloyd wright, and often referred to as the inventor of the skyscraper. ...yeah, he died alone, penniless and drunk.

i am going to go ahead and start drinking heavily, hitting the penicillin pretty hard, and eating ham and cream out of dumpsters now in hopes of becoming a great architect. who am i kidding, i have been doing two out of those three things regularly for years. i am on my way, guys. i am on my way.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Morning Miscommunication

Baby Quinn was eating, made a squeak, which made Dylan bark. Cue the commentary...

Dad: "Dylan! Relax, it's just the baby eating."
Edie: "Baby Eden?"
Dad: "No, the baby eating."
Edie: "Baby Eden?"

You say "tomato," I say "potato."

Thursday mornings are like Christmas for the girls because we get our box of organic fruits and veggies delivered from Nature's Garden. They love unpacking the box and celebrating the species of plant inside. This morning one of the interactions went like this:

Meka: "A tomato!"
Edie: "Potato?"
Meka: "Tomato."
Edie: "Potato?"
Meka: "TO-MA-TO."
Edie: "Potato?"
Meka: "TOMATO."
Edie: "Potato?"
Meka: "TOMATO!"
Edie: "Potato?"
Meka: TOMATO!!!!!"
Edie: "Potato?"