Open Thread

[Shepard]

I couldn't say this in any other thread, but hot dang, I love the Green Line. Even when it's slow, stalled, or broken it makes me happy. Ding ding! All the other lines should have been the Green Line. A wild tangle of green trolley noodles. Who looks at the Orange Line and says damn, that's an attractive line? Nobody. This isn't just because green is my favorite color (even though I think that does play a role to a small extent). Go Green Line!
[/caffiene]

[czsz]

Yeah, I love the Green Line too, unless I have to be somewhere.

[blade_bltz]

I have very mixed feelings about the Green Line. There's a balance to be struck between charm and big-city feel, and don't most of us agree the scale is already tipped in the former's favor?

When I look at the RBO lines, I say, damn Boston is a real city. When I look at the Green line underground, I think, how quaint. As for the surface lines? I guess I think, man, get these jokers from Newton out of here.

[tobyjug]

The Green Line is the coelacanth of transit, a living anachronism, a throwback to the days of street railways and horse drawn streetcars. I wish they still ran those futuristic, wind cheating "PCC" or "BVD" or "BBC" cars (or whatever they call them. Do they still run one or two on that little Ashmont spur?)
The Green Line has real charm. I can't help but smile when I drive past it.

[Ron Newman]

PCC (Presidents' Conference Committee) cars still run between Ashmont and Mattapan.

[ablarc]

They should also run on the Greenway.

[czsz]

^ Too Embarcadero

[ablarc]

^ Too Embarcadero
Embarcadero also has converted maritime warehouses, a vanished elevated highway, periodic ocean views, and tourists.

Too Greenway.

[czsz]

Exactly the point. They shouldn't mimic each other in exactly every way.

[ablarc]

Is it mimicry, or do similar responses make sense in different places?

Do Amsterdam's canals mimic those of Venice? And do Hong Kong's skyscrapers mimic New York's? And what shall we say about all those twin-towered Gothic cathedrals perhaps mimicking each other all over Europe? Those pesky Interstates, they seem to be everywhere; you would have thought one would be enough! And as for ancient temples ... fuhgeddaboutit. :)

Novelty is rarely unique, anyway.

[czsz]

All of those are variations on a theme; you're talking about using a specific type of streetcar in a very similar environment. It would be like importing gondoliers to Amsterdam and building a replica of the Empire State Building in Hong Kong, to apply your examples.

[ablarc]

PCC's were used in every American city where streetcars ran --except New Orleans. The engineering was also adapted for Europe's narrower streetcars, like the ones in Brussels and Zurich, which ended up looking quite different --though a sharp eye could detect their PCC heritage. For a while, I think they even made them in Eastern Europe, though I can't remember which country.

A nice thing about San Francisco's line is that they also run Peter Witts from Milan, and a variety of one-offers from Melbourne, New Orleans, Blackpool --and even San Francisco!!

When you're waiting at the streetcar stop, you never know what will roll up. It's not so dry and academic.

And finally, we could just run the standard Green Line Bredas along the waterfront. Most people don't know they're Italian, anyway.

.

[tobyjug]

^^^
Not only are the Breda cars Italian, but they are designed by the "king" of Italian coachbuilders, Pininfarina. (I am more of a Carrozzeria Touring guy.)

Since the T still runs the PCC cars, it wouldn't be "faux" to run them on the Greenway (if you had to have a street railway there.)

[kennedy]

Green Line cars are designed by Pininfarina?! The Pininfarina? Like, the one that does Ferrari design?

[ablarc]

Hey, who hits a homer every time they step up to the plate?

(He also designed the '52 Nash.)

[tobyjug]

It is the bulk industrial design revenue that supports the less commercial artisan projects. The Nash is an excellent example. I was also going to cite Raymond Loewy, but, then again...

[statler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6xCT2aTSo

[ablarc]

^ One way New York is so much more creative.

You'd be unlikely to see this idea born in Boston.



@ tobyjug: Loewy was more impresario than actual designer. He knew a good thing when one of his creative employees came up with it, so he'd ride their coattails and take the credit. Streamlined locomotives were an early springboard. Then Virgil Exner provided him with the '47 Studebaker to take credit for, and after that came the '53, known as the Loewy coupe, though it was designed by Bob Bourke ?who languishes in obscurity.

Loewy was trained as an architect and gifted his native Paris with its Hilton, a stinker of a building.

[statler]

^^ So you are saying that a city with 6 million people has more creative minds than a city with 600,000 people?

Could be, could be.

[ablarc]

^^ So you are saying that a city with 6 million people has more creative minds than a city with 600,000 people?
I wonder if it's just population. Isn't it possible to imagine this coming out of say, Amsterdam? Prague?

[CDubs]

I wonder if it's just population. Isn't it possible to imagine this coming out of say, Amsterdam? Prague?

It's the same reason that fabulous architects propose fairly tame stuff for the Boston area. As a whole, we're conservative, and we'll find any number of reasons for the architect to not bother proposing his/her most interesting design, and instead be welcome with open arms in NYC. It's definitely less to do with the population size than the sort of individual the city draws from elsewhere. NYC has art, we have technology.

[czsz]

In Boston, everything is institutionalized. All the cultural assets are formal organizations, every bit of public art needs to be approved and installed by some local government committee. It's a combination of creative talent being monopolized by some institutions and snuffed out by others. This leaves very little room for spontaneity.

Everyone witnessed how absurd this was during the Shepherd Fairey spectacle (and to a lesser extent the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident, Martha Coakley's finest moment); Boston won't even let a timid, mediocre, bourgeois logo-artist put anything up here.

It's more like Geneva or the Hague here than Amsterdam or Prague (though the latter has probably grown stale in the last few years) - pretty, but stuffy.

[Beton Brut]

Sorry to come late to the conversation (busy weekend):

Loewy was more impresario than actual designer. He knew a good thing when one of his creative employees came up with it, so he'd ride their coattails and take the credit.

Andrew Geller (http://www.andrewgeller.net/) was one of those people. I really dig his cottages on Fire Island, miniatures in an imaginative brand of Bruce Goff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Goff)-inspired critical regionalism. These little houses presage both MLTW's Sea Ranch (http://media.dwell.com/images/478*290/sea-ranch-condo.jpg) and Charles Gwathmey's vacation home for his parents (http://www.arcspace.com/books/utopia/6.gwathmy-use.jpg).

[ablarc]

^ Like George Fred Keck?

[Beton Brut]

I've heard the Keck (http://www.chicagobauhausbeyond.org/cbb/mission/keck.htm) name before but never bothered to look him up.

This is exquisite (http://jetsetmodern.com/keck.htm).

Thanks for the tip, ablarc!

[ablarc]

It's the same reason that fabulous architects propose fairly tame stuff for the Boston area. As a whole, we're conservative, and we'll find any number of reasons for the architect to not bother proposing his/her most interesting design, and instead be welcome with open arms in NYC. It's definitely less to do with the population size than the sort of individual the city draws from elsewhere.
So what are we conserving? Surely not our tradition of being on architecture's cutting edge?

In Boston, everything is institutionalized. All the cultural assets are formal organizations, every bit of public art needs to be approved and installed by some local government committee. It's a combination of creative talent being monopolized by some institutions and snuffed out by others. This leaves very little room for spontaneity.

It's more like Geneva or the Hague here than Amsterdam or Prague...

Some heritage to preserve!

Clowns.

.

[briv]

^ One way New York is so much more creative.

You'd be unlikely to see this idea born in Boston.


Yeah, but does New York have an electrical box painting program like us?

Didnt think so.

[ablarc]

Yeah, but does New York have an electrical box painting program like us?
Link?

[briv]

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?p=85555&#post85555

I was being sarcastic. Even this relatively modest, noninvasive program caused some controversy in the Back Bay, where the BBAC denied artists permission to paint the boxes within the boundaries of their fiefdom.

I think that a few pictures of the painted boxes have been posted elsewhere on the board.

[statler]

http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2009/10/14/1255575190_3004/539w.jpg

http://aiboston.typepad.com/.a/6a00e554ee71f6883301156f632d1a970c-400wi

http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/system/files/images/Paintbox-Rozzie_0.standard.jpg

[czsz]

^ This is exactly what I'm talking about. An institutional, city-supported program. Art is okay, as long as you have all eight permits in order. Didn't it still cause controversy in Back Bay? Surprise.

In New York these things are tagged head to foot with guerilla art and advertising.

[ablarc]

In New York these things are tagged head to foot with guerilla art ...
Wouldn't be too hard to write an essay claiming all art is guerilla art, including Velazquez, Goya and Boston's own Puvis de Chavannes.

[czsz]

Howso? I think it would be hard to compare official portraits of the Spanish monarchy to ironic stickers illegally slapped on public power transformers.

Of course every artist blends a bit of official work or work-for-hire with his activities on the side, but V and G weren't taggers. They kept their independent activities to the side (note Boston doesn't have many of these people anymore, either, if it ever did).

[bostonbred]

IAM agreeink but some SAY What son? ANd the shark get squares RIGHT in middle of Back bay TO PROVING this POINT that betteroff gone but not ded here. Artisicly speeking that is.
Back bay peeples NOT understanding this ARTSY things!!! NOT likeING THE firefighter memorials TOO. BUT it OK if mens die saving BBpeeples but NOT ok for bronz thanku.

[ablarc]

Howso? I think it would be hard to compare official portraits of the Spanish monarchy to ironic stickers illegally slapped on public power transformers.
Aha! You've missed the delicious, mocking irony in those official portraits of the Spanish monarchy. Back to your history books, my man! :D

(Or just look again, and look closer.)

[czsz]

Oh, okay, that. Suffice to say I'm glad we live in a society where we don't have to resort to such subtle criticisms all the time.

(Still hard to find that sensibility among official artists in Boston, anyway. Maybe the deeper problem is too much reverence. A lack of irony.)

[ablarc]

... the deeper problem is too much reverence. A lack of irony.
Exactly.

[bostonbred]

That being SO truthness

[statler]

Well, Boston has bostonbred, so there's that.

[ablarc]

ANd the shark get squares RIGHT in middle of Back bay TO PROVING this POINT that betteroff gone but not ded here. Artisicly speeking that is.
Back bay peeples NOT understanding this ARTSY things!!!
Watson and the Shark by Copley. (http://www.nga.gov/feature/watson/watsonbig.shtm)

[statler]

Nice catch ablarc!

[vanshnookenraggen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbGtbfkWolA

[ablarc]

I couldn't say this in any other thread, but hot dang, I love the Green Line. Even when it's slow, stalled, or broken it makes me happy. Ding ding! All the other lines should have been the Green Line. A wild tangle of green trolley noodles. Who looks at the Orange Line and says damn, that's an attractive line? Nobody. This isn't just because green is my favorite color (even though I think that does play a role to a small extent). Go Green Line!

It was even better when it was all PCC's. Their drivers would actually accelerate into the stations to produce a merry and raucous clatter. Each and every arrival was thus celebrated, while Japanese tourists scattered in alarm.

[kennedy]

...while Japanese tourists scattered in alarm.

That's a great image.

[czsz]

Speaking of which, the subways in Japan are so orderly they're quirky. I love how everyone lines up on the mark to enter the car.

[Beton Brut]

There's a lot to love about public transport in Japan. The seat cushions on the Keihan Line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keihan_Main_Line) are velvet.

[czsz]

The seat cushions they have are so deep and plush! I wonder what kind of capital punishment they mete out for knifing them?

[blade_bltz]

Boston once drew noticeable numbers of Japanese tourists? Musta been during the early 80's.

Blah, not a day goes by when I don't miss riding the rails in Tokyo.

Another awesome thing about public transit in Japan: the ticket kiosks, many of which look about 20 years old, accept big bills (all the way up to 10,000 yen notes) and actually dispense change in the form of bills when appropriate...not a sea of coins like a Vegas slot machine (this happens nearly every time I ride CalTrain or BART). You can even stuff a stack of bills simultaneously and the machines have no trouble processing them.

Also, who would have a knife in Japan besides a yakuza, who'd be riding around in some black German-make auto and not stooping to ride the train?

[czsz]

Another awesome thing about public transit in Japan: the ticket kiosks, many of which look about 20 years old, accept big bills (all the way up to 10,000 yen notes) and actually dispense change in the form of bills when appropriate...not a sea of coins like a Vegas slot machine (this happens nearly every time I ride CalTrain or BART). You can even stuff a stack of bills simultaneously and the machines have no trouble processing them.

And if one of your bills gets stuck an attendant will POP OUT OF A SECRET HATCH IN THE WALL OF THE STATION and hand it back to you. I had heard about this but it didn't stop me from being amazed when it happened.

[briv]

Boston once drew noticeable numbers of Japanese tourists? Musta been during the early 80's.



You've obviously never been in the Back Bay when Matsuzaka starts?

And Van, I have no idea what the hell that was that you posted, but it's absolutely amazing.

[Ron Newman]

I've seen huge Japanese tourist groups wandering through the North End during the summer. And one just yesterday, taking up almost all of MIT's Lobby 7.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Found it on Twitter, I have no idea either. I want a Boston version!

[blade_bltz]

You've obviously never been in the Back Bay when Matsuzaka starts?


LOL no, I've had to watch the whole DiceK, uh, spectacle from afar. But I'd assume that crowd would consist of Japanese nationals living in Boston/Cambridge, affiliated with some university or other, rather than tourists per se (like the big groups Ron describes).

In my neck of the woods, the Japanese tourist stereotype has been discarded in favor of "Asian tourist" more generally, since it didn't take long to realize that those equally well dressed businessmen are speaking Mandarin, not Japanese. Something about the economy or something.

[czsz]

Japanese tourists and Chinese tourists behave so differently I'm not sure how anyone can confuse them.

[bostonbred]

is it Burbeery cloths?

[kennedy]

What? Burberry clothes?

[bostonbred]

yes IAM seeing this on the Newberry ST w. the rainscoats AND the plaidshoes annnd scarf und PUPPY poop plad BAGS,

[czsz]

Not the way they dress, the way they act.

I don't think there are many mainland Chinese tourists around Boston. People would notice. There's a much less formal vibe than one sees with Japanese tourists.

[bostonbred]

we saying SAME think here. Birdbery VERY butoning down like STICK up back

[palindrome]

ugh. Got way too drunk last night....

[tobyjug]

Pre-moonbat San Francisco:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINOxRxze9k

[JohnAKeith]

Anyone else use twitter and have the new local trends? It's useless, so far.

Trending topics in Boston right now include:

* #90stweets
* #protestagainstjype
* #februarywishFebruary
* iPadPeople
* Hamm
* Haiti
* Buble
* SNL
* Valentine
* America

[czsz]

Surprise! Most people in Boston (or is it for all of MA/New England?) are into the same mainstream/boring shit as the rest of America.

[kennedy]

Damn too bad Boston isn't, like, uber unique and different like the hipsters in Union Square!

[statler]

Boston has two Athenaeums
Both on Beacon Hill,
One is for scholars with books by the score
The other for lads who seek life in the roar.
The Boston Athenaeum?s lights are bright
But the Howard Athenaeum?s locked up tight
Some Purist got himself a Jurist
And slapped a padlock on the door?
?Some Coward Closed the... Old Howard?

? song by Frank W. Hatch

Link (http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/features/enterprise-articles/2010/02/scollay-squares-gift/)

[JohnAKeith]

Wonderful.

Frank Hatch, the politician??

Also, anyone know of the poem about the Common and Garden? I saw it once in a book at the Athenaeum but haven't been able to find it, since.

It's something about "the Public Garden belongs to the city but the Boston Common belongs to all of us ..."

[statler]

Hey AoM, what did you post on the Kwan article (http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/olympics/articles/2010/02/02/kwan_puts_skating_career_on_ice_boston_globe/?comments=all#readerComm) on Boston.com that they didn't like?

READER COMMENTS (33) Sort: Chrono order | Latest first | Most recommended
Report item as: (required) X
Comment (optional):
User Image
We removed armpitsOFmight's comment.

[palindrome]

Sometimes this forum reminds me of a sailboat stuck in the middle of the ocean with no wind.

[kz1000ps]

You think it's bad now? Wait until Russia Wharf is done.

[blade_bltz]

Hey AoM, what did you post on the Kwan article (http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/olympics/articles/2010/02/02/kwan_puts_skating_career_on_ice_boston_globe/?comments=all#readerComm) on Boston.com that they didn't like?

LOL I saw that too, but though it'd be too creepy to mention. Even if it is APOM.

[JohnAKeith]

Yes is playing at the House of Blues, tonight. Doors at 7PM, show scheduled for 8 PM.

Tickets at the door (I don't think they'll sell out ...)

Current troupe has several long-time members: Squire, Howe, and White. Benoit David is the vocalist (no Jon Anderson) and Oliver Wakeman takes over the keyboards for his dad.

I'm not old enough to be an original fan (I'm more '90125' vintage) but I love enough of their songs that I might make it. (They only play "Owner of a Lonely Heart" from that phase, btw.)

Starship Trooper p.1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68tv_w1zUJQ

Starship Trooper p.2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHsfvRxf72s

[jass]

Brand new streetview imagery is up at google maps. It was put online within the last week, looks like the pictures were taken in August. Maybe someone can find a more accurate date?

Im looking at BU Stuvi 2 and people are moving in....early september?

Kenmore square has an interesting mix of new and old

[TikiNYC]

Yes aint Yes without Patrick Moraz. I like Wakeman, but...

Relayer '75 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGZ4K-_nRSs&feature=related)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4eSbge6UN4&feature=related

[JohnAKeith]

http://i.imgur.com/ebjiX.jpg

[czsz]

Hahaha.

Blunch?

And "Parent notification by email"? Wow it feels it's been awhile since I was in elementary school.

[kz1000ps]

Once again I find myself wondering how Michael Scott ever made it out of grammar school, let alone into the world of middle management.

And "blunch" is B Lunch, as in the second lunch period.

[czsz]

I knew that, just thought it was funny.

[kennedy]

Alright, who posted this?

(203):
I can't, I'm busy. I've been walking around Tokyo on google maps for an hour.

[kz1000ps]

Any reggae fans here?

Boston's own Spiritual Rez (http://www.myspace.com/spiritualrez) is making a tour stop at the Middle East downstairs tomorrow (Friday 2/26) night and my band (www.myspace.com/gentlemenhall) is opening for them. We go on around 10, and after the show we'll be having a massive party, our treat!

It's 18+ and $15, but if anyone is interested in coming send me a PM and I can try to get you on the guest list.

[bostonbred]

IAm wanting to HEAR this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8qmdmtRxs8

[kennedy]

I just watched Fight Club for the first time. I'm glad I didn't see it when I was 14, like everyone else seems to have done.

Is it ironic that I paid to see it from my couch with a credit card through On Demand?

[Suffolk 83]

Holy Cow!!! Get outta here!

[bostonbred]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6suhk7hMNs

[kennedy]

Fuck Canada.

[statler]

Nah, it was a good game. If any team other than the US deserved to win it was them.

[czsz]

Fuck Canada.

Oh boo hoo, the US didn't get to add to its already towering medal heap, so let's take it out the country that cruelly denied that marginal benefit!

[kennedy]

I'll give up 10 other medals to get the gold in men's hockey.

[blade_bltz]

Early on in the Games, some writer on yahoo sports showed that Germany and Norway led the US in medals not awarded by judges. I'm sure that still holds now (along with Canada?).

(Not that I care either way about what is legitimate or who is "winning" the Olympics...not a big nationalist fervor kind of guy)

PS kennedy - I wish I could take credit for that textfromlastnight. Hellz yeah I streetview my way around Tokyo on the regular!

[bostonbred]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100206/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_human_rocket_failure

[Shepard]

^ Wishing your Old Unkel a full recovery!

[bostonbred]

that GOOD ONE!!! he see it. Say he shoot missle at Commies in the CHILLY WAR. Not shooting COLD ones at clam bar

[Lrfox]

Snagged this from Dudeursistershot's Facebook page.

http://img37.imagefra.me/img/img37/2/3/1/jfoahs04/f_l4bfgy8dnt4m_d098a33.jpg (http://imagefra.me/)

[vanshnookenraggen]

That is obviously a joke but I've seen a real mannequin wearing 3 popped polo shirts at a store before.

[kennedy]

Solved the problem of wearing polos in winter.

[Lrfox]

That is obviously a joke but I've seen a real mannequin wearing 3 popped polo shirts at a store before.

Really? I've seen two at a few stores, but never three. That's a bit over the top.

[statler]

Speaking of Canada:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/nonsense/batchcanadasm.png

[statler]

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x176/bstnstatler/AB/alone.jpg

This strikes me as a poorly constructed map. Perhaps I'm not reading it correctly.

[vanshnookenraggen]

I saw that one too and I also find it hard to read. AND I MAKE MAPS!

[kennedy]

McDonald's shouldn't have been black, for one thing. And perhaps they should explain what territory dominance means. Highest density of franchises in a specific area, I guess?

Weird that Sonic absolutely raped Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

[bostonbred]

Weird that Sonic absolutely raped Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9R4t_Nwy5E

[czsz]

Weird that Sonic absolutely raped Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

This just conclusively proves Texas is another country (yes, I'll let them have Oklahoma and Arkansas, too...yuck).

[Shepard]

McDonald's controls Canada, Mexico, the Great Lakes, the Gulf, and both oceans

[Suffolk 83]

Sonic is borderline great if you only eat it once in a while I don't know what you fools are talking about.

[kennedy]

Sonic is great when you're bored and buzzed. It's where everyone in suburban St. Louis goes after high school hockey or football to get in fights and be a general pain in the ass to the public.

[palindrome]

Kennedy,

Have you ever attempted the Pointersaurus?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XX2HiCoSE4I/ShXh5WqUKWI/AAAAAAAAAJY/NsCzoyOwu-k/s400/IMG_0466.JPG
(not me)

[kennedy]

Never even heard of it. St. Louis pizza, as a general rule, is terrible. One might even question if it can be called "pizza." Only the places that imitate SF, CHI, or NYC are any good. I'll have to check out this "Pointersaurus."

[bostonbred]

Iam WORYING about theold UNKLE who visitin the Londres seemin DANGER UXB place now!!!!!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524833.000

am ading this VIDEOPS to you SEE the probs here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHIXMT4sDSs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUACtRTrAN4

[kennedy]

Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZzCHcMKyDc

[statler]

It has been discovered that on the extreme left of the fa?ade front of the new [Boston] Public Library building are chiseled in tablets the following names: Moses, Cicero, Kalidasa, Isocrates, Milton, Mozart, Euclid, ?schylus, Dante, Wren, Herrick, Irving, Titian, Erasmus. These names form an acrostic, the first letters spelling the names of the firm of architects which has furnished the plan for the building. A representative of the architects [McKim, Mead and White] says he can assign no reason for it except that it was ?a prank of some of the boys in the office.? Three of these names, Dante, Milton and Titian, appear on the other tablets and in their proper places. This duplication is another proof that the acrostic was intentional.

? The Critic, June 4, 1892

(After a public outcry, the inscription was removed.)
Source (http://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/03/08/hidden-billing/)

[JohnAKeith]

http://z.about.com/d/animatedtv/1/0/l/A/ralphnose.jpg

[statler]

^^Going back to your old nom de plume?

[kennedy]

Coast 2 Coast by Sam Adams a.k.a. Wiz

He's pretty legit, especially considering the hip-hop anemia Boston seems to have. Definitely someone to pay attention to, he's sort of the Asher Roth alter ego.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQdumxOr4AY

[kennedy]

Other favorites by him are Comin' Up, Driving Me Crazy, and You Girl.

[statler]

Weekly Dig (http://weeklydig.com/news-opinions/media-farm/201003/barstool-battle)
WE ARE LOATH TO side with Barstool Sports?hell, we hate looking at their website, since there are all these naked ladies on the side banner, and god help you if some intern walks by when you land on a "Guess that ass" post, leaving you no choice but to shout, "THIS IS RESEARCH!"?however, last week presented us with a local internet feud so ass-backwards, we've got to vote in their favor ... sort of.

It started when 22-year-old Sam Adams topped iTunes' most-downloaded hip-hop tracks. This surprised almost everyone who doesn't think beer pong is the American cultural equivalent of tea time. It was a real shock for the Boston hip-hop community, which couldn't believe they'd let this one slip by them, or that some white kid from Cambridge would be the Boston artist who'd win recognition (apparently, they'd blocked out Marky Mark's existence).

The local hip-hop experts at Jump the Turnstyle declared last week "Sam Adams Week," making a lot of recycled jokes about beer and dead founders, before the big reveal: a post claiming many of the iTunes purchases were bought on one credit card (probably Daddy's).

In a stunning turn of events, multiple music industry insiders, including the head of a major independent record label, an employee at iTunes, and an industry source at a major digital distributor (who have all asked to remain anonymous) have confirmed the following allegations to be true; close to 75,000 downloads of Sam Adams iTunes debut were charged to a single credit card. That's right?Sam Adams has used the age-old industry trick of record buy backs to blow up.

The Turnstyle blogger behind the post (known as "Sleezy Trees," no doubt for his love of botany) didn't acquire any proof. He came from the ol' "I heard this rumor ... Did you hear it, too? Great, that's confirmation" school of journalism (an online degree program). It probably helped that Adams, a SOCCER STAR at Trinity, seems like the type who would pay to play (and that guys at Barstool knew who he was first). Trees thought he'd picked up on something no one else had, and he wanted to break the news and draw some credit (and page views) to his site.

Well, he did get attention, but not the kind he wanted. Sam Adams had booked six dates on the Barstoolpalooza college tour before the EP dropped on iTunes. Barstool's owner, Dave Portnoy (aka "elpresidente"), posted an email exchange between himself and an anonymous Turnstyle follower ... in which he came out looking like the bigger douche, even though he was in the right. ("I could fucking care less whether he is good or not. I know I can sell 2,000 tickets in 30 minutes to any show in New England right now.") Barstool's following then flocked to Turnstyle, to do the internet equivalent of stuffing nerds in lockers.

Meanwhile, Trees got his proof ... that the claims he'd published were false?a "3,500 page document" that proved sales' legitimacy. (He also got a cease-and-desist order.) "Why would my trusted industry sources lie?" he asked (in boldface font, for some reason). "They are shook because a kid appeared out of thin air and seemingly overnight blew their whole business model apart."

Several posters unironically commented "VIVA LA STOOL!" without realizing they seemed to be leading the Great Spanish Shit Revolt. Trees had inadvertently drawn more attention to the artist he despises, yet he'd drawn a surge of hater traffic to his own website.

Turnstyle definitely won the pissing contest, however. They've posted items for their new fanbase all week, like:

I hope this will increase our readership amongst dudes who listen to WEEI all day, vote for Scott Brown, and think that Bronson Arroyo is a musical genius. And really, this is just the beginning. On a personal level of branding.. [sic] When I go out (to Fanuiel Hall and other various Irish Pubs to drink my Bud Light) I will only wear blue or white button down shirts (preferably with some sort of mosaic or dragon stitched into it with gold threading).

But by far, the funniest jab came from a commenter known as wite, who wrote a Sam Adams-inspired rap that is pure chart-topping poetry:

i got groupies in the stands, you know how the game go/
juggle with my knees then transition to a rainbow/
pass, kick, score, then i slide on my shin pads/
7 thousand sold out the pouch on my gym bag

[statler]

Is this his early stuff?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0

[kennedy]

Nah, that's early Allen Jokers that I posted awhile back.

I thought that information came out that proved he didn't buy his own album, but who the hell cares? It's pretty good music. Nothing revolutionary, but he's a 22 year old white kid from Cambridge/Wayland/Trinity - give him a break.

[czsz]

If you're a white boy who goes to Trinity it's pretty likely you've gotten enough breaks already.

I mean, did the Weekly Dig article not allege he paid for 75,000 iTunes downloads himself?

[kennedy]

That's a big bet to place on yourself, no? Even the guy, "Sleazy Trees," that made the allegation rescinded that statement. Apparently after a cease and desist. I don't know, but $75,000 is a lot of money to spend on trying to top the charts, and somehow, I imagine it would take a lot more than 75,000 downloads to make a big enough dent in popularity to the point where it would matter.

[statler]

Can I hate him because he uses auto-tune? This has become something of an unpardonable sin for me.

[kennedy]

Yes you may. It's not even subtle, that's what irks me about it. He would probably sound alright if he just gave his voice a little work, too.

On a related note, we've had various tangents dedicated to music, be it how Toronto has better techno, how techno is music, how KZ is playing somewhere, and stuff like this. Why don't we have a dedicated music thread? What kind of music do a bunch of architecture nerds listen to, anyhow?

I'm partial to rap, some alternative rock, and (dare I say it) some pop. Kid Cudi, Austin Hartley-Leonard, Spoon, Atmosphere, Jay-Z, MSTRKRFT, Little People, Ratatat, etc.

[czsz]

Oh god, I just listened to it; he's like the Dane Cook of music.

[blade_bltz]

Boston already has some legitimate rappers to its name. Edo G is a legend. I'm a fan of Guru from Gangstarr myself.

There are definitely others, but I'm not the right person to ask. I must say I find the Sam Adams thing kind of irksome, though. I have nothing against the dude himself, but it's annoying to see this minor media frenzy, with white kid bandwagon soon to follow, while the rest of the Boston hip hop scene remains in total obscurity. You'd think in this era of YouTube more people would seek out guys like Edo.

[statler]

Oh god, I just listened to it; he's like the Dane Cook of music.

This is why I wanted a 'Comment of the Year" award. :D

[KentXie]

So...how's the fucking weather?

[statler]

Currently? Wet.

Sunny and 70's this weekend though!

[statler]

Man, the weather gets nice and this place just dies.

[kz1000ps]

Oh god, I just listened to it; he's like the Dane Cook of music.

Bravo. I just checked his stuff out recently as well and came to the same basic conclusion. But it is interesting to note that (finally?) white rappers are rapping about typically white stuff and not trying to go the "urban" route. This is potentially a big sea change in the way whites relate to rap. (Still, I'd much rather listen to Eminem over Asher Roth)

Can I hate him because he uses auto-tune? This has become something of an unpardonable sin for me.

News flash: just about any record with the slightest bit of commercial orientation from the past half-decade has a good amount of Auto-Tune on it.

I used to hate it, and now I merely dislike it. Considering I'm around it on an almost-daily basis, I'd go batshit insane if I still hated it. But I now see how it can be integrated into a song without being obnoxious.

The bigger problem is that once the fad of using Auto-Tune in a blatantly obvious way dies out (which it will), people will still be using it to imperceptibly correct pitchy vocals both in the studio and live . . . it's done to music what Photoshop has done to pictures: the realness of everything you see and hear is now always in question.

As for what I've been listening to lately, my favorites are:

Toro Y Moi (fav new artist)
Dam-Funk
Empire of the Sun
LCD Soundsystem
Neon Indian
The new Gorillaz album (soooooo hot)
Sa-Ra

and I just got the new Mos Def and Erykah Badu, but haven't had a chance to listen yet!

[Suffolk 83]

^ If you're looking for commercial rap that your girl can dance to, by all means bump it at the club. This does not represent Boston, underground hip hop, or even mainstream rap. It's just a white kid who CLAIMS he reps Boston. Nothing more. It's called trash from what I know/where I'm from. It's called trash from what I know/ ppl I know who know real Cali rap... etc NY, south (atl), south (tx).

Autotune is disco. Bottom line. Getthefuckouttahere with anything that says otherwise. You're an ant following the smallish colony if you listen to this. You're a homer if you like and listen to this. You have terrible taste if you like/listen to this. Period end of sentence, move on. End thread.

[kennedy]

The only people who like regional rap are the people from that region (vast generalization, I know); if I listen to Talib Kweli in St. Louis, everyone thinks it's trash. Sam Adams does nationalized, super generic rap. The entire country likes it, and he drops "Boston" in each song. He does a better job of representing the city than Edo G. ever did.

I'm not trying to say he's some revolutionary underground rapper who will bring change to the industry, but he is a (white) rapper who comes from Massachusetts, and is blowing up. That's probably a first.

[blade_bltz]

Tell-tale sign you weren't born here #57: you give a shout-out to "Jamaica Plains" in a song allegedly repping Boston. God, it's almost as painful as "Boston Commons"...when will these people learn?!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBNiY6OPS04

[statler]

I heard that song when I was hangin' down the ball field in Hyde's park.

[kennedy]

Every damn state has one of those now. I like the New Hampsha one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7nQrCgALM

[kennedy]

(I like the Robert Frost verse best.)

[Suffolk 83]

Kennedy Edo G and da Bulldogs were pretty big, and EVERYONE respected him. I think this was probably before you were born so maybe you shouldn't comment. And Talib isn't regional rap. Regional just means no one knows you and you probably suck.

[kz1000ps]

Autotune is disco. Bottom line. Getthefuckouttahere with anything that says otherwise.

What?

T-Pain is disco? getthefuckouttahere

You're misunderstanding what I said, which is that AUTO-TUNE IS USED ON ALMOST ANYTHING. Just because it isn't there in an obvious way like T-Pain doesn't mean it isn't being used. There's a billion different settings for it, and most of the time it's used to seamlessly correct vocals, and you'd have to listen very, very closely to notice it, if you could notice it at all.

PS, Auto-Tune is hip hop (everyone on the radio), Auto-Tune is pop (Miley Cyrus), Auto-Tune is rock (Passion Pit, Ladyhawk)..... it's everywhere.

[JohnAKeith]

Boring. Bye.

[statler]

Whoa...

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/redeye-puzzler/assets_c/2010/04/Pi-thumb-580x243-110735-thumb-580x243-110736.jpg

[BostonUrbEx]

Sam Adams (rapper) had a page in today's Metro.

[palindrome]

Whoa...

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/redeye-puzzler/assets_c/2010/04/Pi-thumb-580x243-110735-thumb-580x243-110736.jpg

my mind was just blown.

[kennedy]

The Greeks have a deadly sense of humor.

[Beton Brut]

Man, the weather gets nice and this place just dies.

Ain't that the truth. I spent a week in Southern California at the beginning of March, and I continue to have difficulty "engaging" with the board.

Why don't we have a dedicated music thread? What kind of music do a bunch of architecture nerds listen to, anyhow?

Heavy Rotation @ Chez Brut:

The Clash -- Give 'Em Enough Rope
Carl Nielsen - Symphony No. 3
Sonny Rollins - Old Flames
Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician
Johannes Brahms - String Quintet No. 2
Mos Def - Black on Both Sides
PJ Harvey - Uh-Huh, Her
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
The House of Love - Babe Rainbow
Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman


Speaking of...Discovered this over the weekend. Stunning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aGTNS13SDU

[JohnAKeith]

My favorite video, ever.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ0pnC9bAd0

[vanshnookenraggen]

Man, I had avoided watching that as just another meme but that was frickin cool.

[AdamBC]

Woo! National Champs!

[Lrfox]

Woo! National Champs!

Congrats. There was never any question about that game. I watched them play Maine a few weeks back. THAT was a fun game to watch.

[AdamBC]

Congrats. There was never any question about that game. I watched them play Maine a few weeks back. THAT was a fun game to watch.

The Hockey East tournament final (7-6 OT) and the Yale game (9-7) were some of the more over-the-top-yet-close games I've seen in a while. Whatever Coach York told these players after the Yale game should be bottled and given to all the BC teams.

I've heard that for many the Frozen Four this year was a bit boring - played at a football field, all all the games were blowouts by the end. I guess it's good to be on the winning end of that situation, but I see their point from the perspective of a 'casual hockey fan.'

[jass]

Google has covered more of mexico with streetview!

I suggest you all take a tour of Guanajuato, it's an amazing city. It has a network of underground rivers that have been converted into roads.

Unfortunately, it means the google forward/back system is screwed up.

Tunnels:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&ll=21.017054,-101.250418&spn=0.005288,0.009645&z=17&layer=c&cbll=21.017126,-101.250452&panoid=bkTxOZGWNJzNMP-9oYa5OQ&cbp=12,352.49,,0,-0.27

Very colonial
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&ll=21.017019,-101.254554&spn=0.002644,0.004823&z=18&layer=c&cbll=21.016911,-101.254225&panoid=cbnT-EE6_sTUCfRX_ESzgA&cbp=12,137.69,,0,-0.01

Dont forget the scary mountain roads!
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&ll=21.031775,-101.247704&spn=0.005287,0.009645&z=17&layer=c&cbll=21.031834,-101.249033&panoid=h16Qhb7a8mE_zRosBuCasQ&cbp=12,154.71,,0,9.51

Even scarier
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&ll=21.022682,-101.244249&spn=0.010576,0.01929&z=16&layer=c&cbll=21.023132,-101.246471&panoid=i9GsBG3KkWgFyWJkgvL6Ig&cbp=12,243.69,,0,2.1

[BostonUrbEx]

That first link, you can get into the tunnel, just have to double click on it:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&ll=21.017054,-101.250418&spn=0.005288,0.009645&z=17&layer=c&cbll=21.017126,-101.250452&panoid=bkTxOZGWNJzNMP-9oYa5OQ&cbp=12,352.49,,0,-0.27


I wonder what it's like being the Google Streetview Car Driver.

[Shepard]

Great find!


Elsewhere... a bus stop in a cave?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&layer=c&cbll=21.015872,-101.253284&panoid=dxpso3mGXNspT01XyCHNlw&cbp=12,185.76,,0,5&ll=21.016383,-101.2497&spn=0.005398,0.009624&z=17

[vanshnookenraggen]

Great find!


Elsewhere... a bus stop in a cave?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=guanajuato&sll=20.879343,-99.733887&sspn=10.744119,19.753418&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Guanajuato,+Mexico&layer=c&cbll=21.015872,-101.253284&panoid=dxpso3mGXNspT01XyCHNlw&cbp=12,185.76,,0,5&ll=21.016383,-101.2497&spn=0.005398,0.009624&z=17

That isn't so far fetched, NYC had a few of these as trolley stops in various tunnels and under-passes.

[Ron Newman]

Not really that different from the Harvard Square underground bus stop.

[Shepard]

Oh yea. Obvious! Duh.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wb8bAl1P-N0/SuHBnKF0ppI/AAAAAAAAK1c/YkCjddI53jM/s400/05oct2-captain-obvious.jpg
(^ illustration of obvious, absolutely no offense meant)

[kennedy]

Day of Silence? Not particularly effective if you ask me. Wouldn't the best way to let those that are oppressed know that they can come out, be to literally speak out in their defense?

One fantastic comment in the school paper, in response to the Day of Silence:

I think it's dumb, I mean, why do they get a whole day when we can't even get a day for Black History Month?

[vanshnookenraggen]

Not really that different from the Harvard Square underground bus stop.

Yes actually since the Harvard Sq bus tunnel was built for that purpose, as a transfer to the subway. This is just a regular bus stop... UNDERGROUND!

[jass]

Yes actually since the Harvard Sq bus tunnel was built for that purpose, as a transfer to the subway. This is just a regular bus stop... UNDERGROUND!

Exactly, these were all underground rivers, they werent built as roads.

Although this one appears to be more manmade

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1196133539_f.jpg

This one too
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1195600192_f.jpg

There are some interesting pedestrian areas

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1196461656_f.jpg

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1196550951_f.jpg

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1195086961_f.jpg

Heres a view of the tunnels

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1196634121_f.jpg

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1195660175_f.jpg

One of the buses
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1195433923_f.jpg

http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1194992581_f.jpg


I visited in 2007.

[jass]

Dont let the talks of drugs wars prevent you from visiting mexico. There is no reason to visit the drugs areas (the border cities) all the good stuff is in the middle, which is pretty safe.

A couple of other cities:

San Miguel de Allende
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1196972500_f.jpg

Queretaro
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1197156648_f.jpg

And of course, pyramids are pretty common
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1197415543_f.jpg

These dudes, less common (Tula)
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/11/43/jass/1197344556_f.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

That place looks amazing, thanks!

[Lurker]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-anti-american-fallacy-15402?page=all

The Anti-American Fallacy

Fred Siegel From issue: April 2010

In 1928, D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem entitled ?How Beastly the Bourgeois Is? in which he compared the middle class to a ?fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life/sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life than his own.? Lawrence?s contempt for the bourgeoisie was part of an intellectual tradition dating back to the 19th century, when English aesthetes such as John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde, German sociologists such as Ferdinand Tonnies and Georg Simmel, and French litterateurs such as Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert made careers out of flaying the middle class. They defined it as comprising, in the words of the great French historian Francois Furet, ?petty, ugly, miserly, laborious, stick-in-the-muds, while artists were great, beautiful, brilliant and bohemian.? Flaubert, for one, argued against democracy on the grounds that ?the whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.?
It was only in the 1920s, the same decade in which Lawrence wrote his poem, that such contempt for the bourgeoisie?and with it a deep hostility toward the United States?s position as the quintessentially middle-class, democratic, and capitalist nation?found a wide audience in this country through a new generation of writers such as Sinclair Lewis and H.L. Mencken. Weaned on the work of H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw and their loathing for conventional mores, Lewis and his confreres became the dominant force in American letters, and their views went largely unchallenged in the literary world. It was left to a critic named Bernard DeVoto to issue the first serious and meaningful challenge to their worldview?the opening salvo in a brave and lonely battle that still resonates, even though DeVoto and the book in which he took up arms for the United States against its own intellectuals are both forgotten.
A self-described ?literary department store? who published essays and histories and novels, DeVoto was best-known in his lifetime as the author of the Easy Chair column for Harper?s, which he inaugurated in 1935 and wrote monthly until his death in 1955. During that time, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Across the Wide Missouri, an account of how the Mountain West was settled, and edited a bestselling abridgment of the journals of Lewis and Clark. He first made his mark in 1932 in Mark Twain?s America, in which he challenged the depiction of Mark Twain by Van Wyck Brooks, an intellectual mentor to writers of the 1920s, as a mere humorist and literary failure who had been hamstrung by America?s Puritan tradition.
Brooks and his ilk, DeVoto vehemently argued in what he called ?an essay in the correction of ideas,? misunderstood the genius of Twain?s vernacular writing because they misunderstood America. In 1944, DeVoto published The Literary Fallacy, his most important book, expanding on the ideas he had first laid out in defending Twain?s American voice 12 years earlier?and in so doing, he illuminated the inner life of modern liberalism as no one had before or since.
The literary fallacy, DeVoto explained, is the claim, new to America in the 1920s, that a culture can be judged solely or even largely in terms of its literature. America, the argument went, had failed to produce great writers, and that failure demonstrated the inherent inferiority of American life. DeVoto described the efforts of a coterie of writers (Lewis, Mencken, Brooks, as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sherwood Anderson, among others) and their denunciations of American society. Their villains were ?the Puritan and the Pioneer,? whom they believed were the source of America?s dreary commercial culture.
These two archetypes?the holier-than-thou believer and the unwashed land grabber?had, the coterie believed, crushed the creative life on these shores. Even worse, America?s decision to enter the First World War and the Red Scare of 1919 that followed had, they argued, discredited the American democratic experiment. And it was not just American democracy that had been discredited: the prosperity of the 1920s had even invalidated capitalism, which had produced, in the words of literary critic Malcolm Cowley, a ?repressive progress.?

The upbeat public mood of the 1920s, buoyed not only by prosperity but also by the arrival of electricity, the automobile, and the radio, was the coterie?s Calvary. Even the new breed of sports celebrity was a mark of cultural rot. ?Baseball,? explained the essayist Waldo Frank, is a ?mechanism? run by a ?mastermind (the manager) who sits on the bench. . . . The Babe?s home run is an effort on the part of the machine to connect with the crowd. . . . Babe Ruth is the demagogue of baseball.?
The creative class was being crucified, asserted Mencken, by the inferior breeds of humanity who had presumptuously betrayed their proper role as peasants in Europe past by crossing the Atlantic and breeding each other into idiocy. Mencken and his fellows grew ever more vitriolic in their criticisms of the United States even though, as DeVoto observed, American writers had become ?more widely read, more enthusiastically applauded, and rewarded with greater wealth and public honors? than ever before. But still ?something oppressed them,? DeVoto quoted Cowley as saying. ?Some force was preventing them from doing their best work.? What was this force? It was, Cowley said, ?the stupidity of the crowd, it was hurry and haste, it was Mass Production, Babbittry, Our Business Civilization, or perhaps it was the machine.?
Cowley?s cenacle, DeVoto noted, spoke of a materialist ?conspiracy against the good life,? as their heirs in the 1930s would speak of a ?capitalist conspiracy.? Americans, they said, were ?morbid? and ?bloodless?; their existence was, in the words of Van Wyck Brooks, ?death in life.? The ideal was Europe?s hierarchical social order, in which writers such as themselves were an academy empowered, as they understood it, to set the standards of society. Mencken found his ideal in the Kaiser?s Germany; others were drawn to France, where some of the post?World War I generation took up exile from these barbaric shores. Innocents abroad, they were largely unaware of the ugly undercurrents that would burst forth in the 1930s. Their motto was, in effect, ?they do it better in Europe.? Their Europe, DeVoto wrote, was the place where ?thought is free . . . art is the universal goal of human effort, writers are universally respected, and human life has a claim on the interest of literary men which in America it assuredly has not.?
These writers were to be America?s ?awakeners,? as they saw it:

They are to break our trance, refine away our dross, purge us of unworthiness and evil and Philistinism and materialism and the profit system, bind us together in the collective life we have never had, give us grace and thoughtfulness and health and spirituality, exorcise the Puritan and Pioneer, vitalize our experience, lead us to the great society . . . at last.

In The Literary Fallacy, DeVoto did not pass aesthetic judgment on the writers of the 1920s. The decade proved to be, he acknowledged, ?one of the great periods of American literature, and probably the most colorful, vigorous, and exciting period.? DeVoto?s objection was to the ?ignorance? of American history and life displayed by his targets. They threw around a term like ?Puritan? as an epithet while knowing little of the development of religion in America. They confused Puritans with their rivals, the evangelicals, who were in fact the primary object of their ire in the 1920s, as evidenced by Lewis?s 1926 novel, Elmer Gantry (DeVoto had himself, as a young man, written a not-very-successful novel about evangelicalism).
As for the pioneers, their supposed individualism was one of the coterie?s b?tes noires. But DeVoto explained convincingly that the dry lands of the Mountain West from which he himself had hailed?he was born in Utah to a Catholic father and a Mormon mother?required not individualism but a cooperative effort to cultivate the land. The literary intellectuals presumed knowledge they simply did not possess about the country they felt free to criticize so confidently.
Thus, even as Mencken and Lewis were inveighing against the Puritan-Pioneer influence of their time, they seemed unaware that they were living through a period of unprecedented upheaval in which technological change was fast untethering the country from its past. As DeVoto explained, the advent of the automobile and the radio meant that even as ?space shrank and man had a new freedom,? long-rooted traditions and the certainty of a social order governed by local authorities, from preachers to politicians, had been diminished. ?All freedoms,? he insisted, ?have a price and the modern world has found that its freedoms must be paid for with strains.? The coterie was thus blind to the vitality, tensions, and dynamism of American life?the very complexities that could offer a thriving literary culture just the subject matter it longed for.
Sinclair Lewis, America?s first Nobel laureate, saw his writing, in DeVoto?s words, ?as an exercise in expressing the contemptibility of small town American life.? But what, DeVoto wondered, was Lewis?s point of reference? The novelist was never able to extract an ethic from his negative aesthetics other than to imply that those who recognize the ugliness of American life thereby constituted the carriers of a higher morality that entitled them to lead. ?It appears,? DeVoto wrote with stinging sarcasm, ?that the Village Virus which has poisoned America consists of the failure of small towns to support productions of the one-act plays of Eugene O?Neill, to provide candlelight at dinner, and to sanction lounging pajamas as evening wear for housewives.?
Referring to Ernest Hemingway and the poet Robinson Jeffers, DeVoto argued that while some of the coterie made a fetish of American inadequacy?businessmen, for instance, were viewed as impotent, barely able to reproduce?another branch, led by Jeffers, went so far as to describe them as inferior to animals. ?It is a short step,? DeVoto asserts, ?from thinking of the mob to thinking of the wolf pack, from the praise of instinct to war against reason, from art?s vision of man as contemptible to dictatorship?s vision of men as slaves.?
DeVoto saw both strands reaching a literary culmination in T.S. Eliot?s poems ?The Waste Land? (1922) and ?The Hollow Men? (1925). ?This entire movement,? he argues, ?agreed to find its age expressed in The Waste Land.? The masses depicted in ?The Waste Land? are personified by the repellent old man ?with wrinkled breasts? and ?the young man carbuncular??the first unnatural, the second diseased. In ?The Hollow Men,? Eliot could see only an ignominious end??Not with a bang but a whimper??for these forsaken people.
But, DeVoto argued, when the end of the world nearly came with World War II, ?no whimpering was to be heard.? The ?young man carbuncular? decided that the world should not end. ?When the bombers came over London? and ?the shock of Pearl Harbor traveled across this country,? he wrote, such men proved themselves anything but hollow. ?War,? DeVoto observed, ?provided an appeal of judgment. The typist and the clerk had fortitude, sacrifice, fellowship; they were willing to die as an act of faith for the preservation of hope.?
DeVoto insisted on ?the democratic view of life . . . that holds quite simply that the dignity of man is unalienable.? What the courage and sacrifice of World War II demonstrated was that the word bankruptcy best described not the lives of most Americans but rather the ideas of the literary culture that had so cavalierly pronounced judgment on the freedoms of modernity. It was ordinary men and women steeped in a way of life supposedly not worth saving who stepped forward to defend the freedoms on which the literary men depended.
The writers made famous by the 1920s not only ?failed to safeguard our democracy between the two great wars?; they had, DeVoto believed, given aid and comfort to our enemies. ?There is,? an angry DeVoto told his readers, ?a striking correspondence between the Spenglerian description of America? as a decadent mechanized mass of festering foolishness and ?the description of America embodied in American literature of the 1920?s.?
As late as 1932, the architecture critic Lewis Mumford returned from Germany enthralled by that nation?s anti-technological ?cult of the sun.? DeVoto noted that by 1941, some of the coterie, Brooks and Mumford in particular, had changed their minds and enthusiastically supported America in its war against Hitler. Mumford, in his newfound ardor born of guilt for his early philo-Germanism, wanted to suppress the free speech of the anti-interventionists. DeVoto would have none of this. ?I cannot believe,? he wrote, ?that ignorant love is more stable than ignorant contempt.? He saw that their embrace of America was probably but a passing moment:


The literary man associating himself as with brothers of one heart with the democracy who were yesterday the boobs, the suckers, the fall guys, the Rotarians, the course-souled materialists of all the world. Well, maybe. . . but probably not for long. [Soon enough,] one eyed literary folk will once more be beholding the land of broken promises, inhabited only by inferior people who destroy individuality and break the Artist?s heart.


A thoroughgoing iconoclast, DeVoto was certainly no conservative, judging by the meaning of the term in his own time. In the 1930s, he gave the New Deal critical support even as he skewered Communism. In the 1940s, he flayed neo-Confederates like the poet and critic Allan Tate, who tried to paint the old South in a lustrous light. In the early 1950s, DeVoto taunted both J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy with gleeful abandon. An angry man, he was allergic to dogma and profoundly disgusted by any effort to silence unpopular views.
The rhetorical tropes fashioned in the 1920s, and restated repeatedly over the decades since, were reflections, DeVoto made clear, not so much of America as of a funhouse-mirror version of it, a distorted refraction based on aesthetic conceits and social pretensions. DeVoto died in 1955, so he never saw his fears realized by the rebirth of the anti-American intellectual in the 1960s. Today that spirit can be found in precincts both high and low?from the hallways of academe to late-night infotainment comics such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who traffic in a knowing snarkiness that confers an unearned sense of superiority on their viewers. Now, as then, angered by the impertinence of the masses in their increasing rejection of the hope and change promised them in 2008, liberals, as in the title of a recent article in the online magazine Slate, raise themselves up by shouting, ?Down with the People!?

About the Author

Fred Siegel is a visiting professor at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute?s City Journal.

[GW2500]

I've been told that Guadalajara es muy bonita.

[BarbaricManchurian]

Just got back from SoCal and Baja California, the cityscapes in baja aren't very pretty but the natural beauty is jaw-dropping

[Lrfox]

Blame it on the hipsters:


Gentrification Ruined SimCity

http://img37.imagefra.me/img/img37/6/4/19/jfoahs04/f_xqvmsvlm_c9bea76.jpg (http://imagefra.me/)

I moved to SimCity back in 1993. Back then it was a raw place. There were barely any police departments and you never wanted to get home after midnight. But even though the neighborhood was dangerous and the property values were perpetually low due to the proximity to a nuclear power plant, it was bursting with culture. SimCity was for the working people and the artists.

But then the yuppies came. All of a sudden, SimCity was a ?cool? place to live. People thought the lack of police departments and the inadequate funding for roads were novel. So in the yuppies came, and they started building zoos, parks, and stadiums. They even built a statue of the mayor. What mindless slaves! So of course property values began to rise so that only the rich could live there. The city rezoned the surrounding dense industrial areas to dense residential and up went the condo highrises. Once they built a fusion power plant on the outskirts of town, the nuclear plant came down and the property values went even higher.

And so SimCity is over. The artists are out and the yuppies are in. I look around this place and I don?t even recognize it. Sure, there used to be fires, riots, and occasional UFO attacks here, but that was all part of the life. Now it?s bland and pathetic. I know I?ve gotta get out of here, move to another place that feels real. But I know anywhere I go, the yuppies will be right behind with their Urban Renewal Kits and their SimCopters, ready to ruin the next town and smother it in SimTowers.

http://wondertonic.tumblr.com/post/359035921/gentrification-ruined-simcity

[TikiNYC]

Haha.

10 years and you no clean sofa? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/gloucestershire/8633012.stm)

Haha. Buy a sofa cleaner!

[statler]

There are about a million or so threads here that I could post this in so rather than spamming the forum with it I'll just post it here:

http://wondermark.com/c/2010-04-20-615sad.gif

And yes, I'm just as guilty of this as anyone. Beton Brut, Itchy and Briv are excused.

[Beton Brut]

Beton Brut, Itchy and Briv are excused.

Thanks Statler...

My lovely assistant gave me a ration of shit about my "cowl of disenfranchisement" last Friday night. It was mostly a career-related conversation, but it speaks volumes about my worldview.

Maybe I should drink more...

[statler]

^^There are probably others on the board that deserve exemption, but you three are the only ones I know of (or remember) having done stuff IRL.

Well... Ned I guess...

[JohnAKeith]

A friend snapped this while in SF. Apparently it's a bus for taking illegal immigrants back to Mexico.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/666.png

[JohnAKeith]

So I was reading an old Life magazine from 1939 and came across this story. Here are two photos of a painting done in the 1700's by a Flemish artist. First image is how it appeared until 1939. Second is how it appeared after they realized the painting had been partially retouched - the original artist's painting. I find this hilarious.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/old_king_drinks.png

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/king_drinks.jpg

[kennedy]

Wait, the color is the original painting, or the black and white is the original? If it's the color, that's hilarious!

[Patrick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk

[JohnAKeith]

Sorry, I wrote too quickly. No, the original was in color, too, it's just that Life magazine had it in black and white.

The funny part is in the lower right-hand corner.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdAFL9mKYB8

[kennedy]

The funny part is in the lower right-hand corner.

Yeah, caught that.

[tobyjug]

Assabet
Assonet
Assinippi
Assawompsit

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwMzQiXlK0&feature=player_embedded

Russian arms firms have no problem designing and directly marketing weapon systems, to rogue states and terrorists, which blatantly violate the widely accepted requirement for uniformed combatants.

http://gizmodo.com/5525402/delightful-new-russian-missiles-can-be-hidden-in-shipping-containers


Oh...great. A Russian company is now marketing a new cruise missile system that can be hidden in a shipping container, turning any merchant ship into a warship able to take out an aircraft carrier. Cool? So who exactly would be in the market for the Club-K system? No bigs, just countries like Iran and Venezuela. And those countries could go ahead and pass the weapons along to even less savory characters.
The system still appears to be in the concept phase, with Kontsern-Morinformsistema-Agat gauging interest in the $20 million system before manufacturing the weapons.
But then again, there's always the chance that the above video is really a viral ad for the next Command & Conquer: Red Alert game. Because that's sure what it looks like. [Reuters (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/26/world/international-us-russia-weapon.html?_r=2)]"

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/26/world/international-us-russia-weapon.html?_r=3

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian company is marketing a devastating new cruise missile system which can be hidden inside a shipping container, giving any merchant vessel the capability to wipe out an aircraft carrier.
Potential customers for the formidable Club-K system include Kremlin allies Iran and Venezuela, say defense experts. They worry that countries could pass on the satellite-guided missiles, which are very hard to detect, to terrorist groups.
"At a stroke, the Club-K gives a long-range precision strike capability to ordinary vehicles that can be moved to almost any place on earth without attracting attention," said Robert Hewson of Jane's Defense Weekly, who first disclosed its existence.
A promotional video for the Club-K on the website of Moscow-based makers Kontsern-Morinformsistema-Agat shows an imaginary tropical country facing a land, sea and air attack from a hostile neighbor.
It fights back by loading three shipping containers concealing Club-Ks onto a truck, a train and a ship, disperses them, and then launches a devastating strike on its enemy, destroying its warships, tanks and airfields.
"The idea that you can hide a missile system in a box and drive it around without anyone knowing is pretty new," said Hewson, who is editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.
"Nobody's ever done that before."
Hewson estimated the cost of the Club-K system, which packs four ground or sea-launched cruise missiles into a standard 40-foot shipping container, at $10-20 million.
"Unless sales are very tightly controlled, there is a danger that it could end up in the wrong hands," he said.
The promotional video showed how an ordinary shipping container with the Club-K inside could be hidden among other containers on a train or a ship. When required, the roof lifts off and the four missiles stand upright ready to fire.
An official reached by telephone at makers Kontsern Morinformsistema-Agat declined to answer questions about the Club-K.
He said the firm had no spokesman and he needed time to study written questions before passing a request to the firm's management.
Russia is one of the world's top arms exporters, selling a record $8.5 billion of weapons last year to countries ranging from Syria and Venezuela to Algeria and China. Its order book is estimated to top $40 billion.
Mikhail Barabanov, a defense expert at Russia's Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), said that as far as he understood, the Club-K was still at the concept stage.
"Potential clients include anyone who likes the idea," he said. "It is known that the United Arab Emirates has shown interest in buying the Club."
Barabanov said the Club-K used proven missiles from Novator, an established Russian maker of weaponry including anti-submarine, surface-to-air and submarine-launched missiles.
One of the missiles on offer is a special anti-ship variant with a second stage which splits off after launch and accelerates to supersonic speeds of up to Mach 3.
"It's a carrier-killer," said Hewson of Jane's. "If you are hit by one or two of them, the kinetic impact is vast...it's (http://vast...it%27s/) horrendous."

[crash575]

Best infomercial ever...

[statler]

I think I used to have a M.A.S.K. toy that did the same thing.

[tobyjug]

Not a surprise, this. But not new either. A Chicom Silkworm is pretty cheap.

Still, a problem. Our warships might as well have sprung from the mind of Jackie Fisher. They are largely unarmoured and count on "forward defense" (CAP, sam, gatling) rather than good old fashioned steel. The Nimitz couldn't take 1/10th what an old fashioned Essex Class carrier could handle. Think HMS Hood, or perhaps more appropos, HMS Sheffield vs. Argentinian Exocet.

[BostonUrbEx]

I liked the rip of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack at 5:15ish.

Best infomercial ever...

^

[jass]

I hope Boston/Mass follows San Francisco and boycotts Arizona. Who should I send angry letters to?

[BostonUrbEx]

<-- Doesn't understand why people are upset that a state made it illegal to be illegal.

I'd just like to know what exactly about this people are mad about. Media is so vague about it that I'm not even sure I understand what it is.

[kennedy]

That missile looks awfully sketchy...I bet the guidance systems are particularly sophisticated. An AEGIS is certainly no match for the Club-K!

[JohnAKeith]

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/state_house.jpg

[tobyjug]

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/tobyjug_2008/Picture019-1.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/tobyjug_2008/Picture028.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/tobyjug_2008/Picture067.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/tobyjug_2008/Picture026.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/tobyjug_2008/Picture060.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/tobyjug_2008/Picture057.jpg

[kz1000ps]

Doesn't understand why people are upset that a state made it illegal to be illegal.

I'd just like to know what exactly about this people are mad about. Media is so vague about it that I'm not even sure I understand what it is.

The only drawback is that it gives something of a free pass to racial profiling. Still, I definitely agree with both your points. Seems like such a Captain Obvious thing to do... making something that's illegal illegal.

[blade_bltz]

The only drawback is that it gives something of a free pass to racial profiling. Still, I definitely agree with both your points. Seems like such a Captain Obvious thing to do... making something that's illegal illegal.

Racial profiling is ENTIRELY the reason why people are so incensed.

And this (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/26/MN5G1D4NQE.DTL#ixzz0mSSXkJOA) article from the Chronicle suggests the Arizona bill is unconstitutional, since the power to regulate immigration lies exclusively in the hands of the federal government.

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyPuXPaOJkc&feature=player_embedded

To some this was like watching Hell freeze over. I'm slightly bemused....

[Shepard]

illegal to be illegal

Actions are illegal; branding a person as "an illegal" makes no sense. Did they break a law coming to work here without authorization? Yes. Should they be sent home because their entire existence here is illegitimate?

So the next time you run a red light trying to get first dibs on the wings at Stevie's superbowl party, the cops are not only going to write you a ticket but also demand you promptly return to where your trip originated without enjoying any of Stevie's wings. Because that makes a lot of sense.

Now the same scenario, except all the lights between your house and Stevie's are permanently red, and driving is the only way to get there. Get it? There is no legal means for unskilled labor to enter this country "legally."

Now to add another wrinkle. You're going to Stevie's to cook his wings, not consume them. You're pulled over and sent home. Now poor Stevie must rely on his inbred hick friends to cook. Stevie's screwed, and his party is going to suck.

Stevie is America, and all of you who want to see Stevie's party fail must hate the superbowl and everything America stands for.

Quod erat demonstratum

[Lurker]

Actions are illegal; branding a person as "an illegal" makes no sense. Did they break a law coming to work here without authorization? Yes. Should they be sent home because their entire existence here is illegitimate?

The proper term is "illegal alien", which makes perfect sense. Something foreign which is present in violation of the law. How is that difficult to understand?

Illegal aliens should be heavily fined and deported out of respect to all the LEGAL immigrants whom waited in line, filed their paperwork, passed their exams, and followed the legal process to immigrate here. It's incredibly insulting to me that these criminals are being coddled by corrupt politicians and bleeding hearts after everything I went through getting out of the Soviet Union.

[Ron Newman]

Illegal aliens should be legalized. The waiting line should be abolished. Let them all in.

[Lurker]

Ron do you really want citizenship to be worthless?

[Ron Newman]

I didn't say grant them citizenship, just the right to work.

[Lurker]

Do you really think that's a great idea with double digit unemployment? Part of the reason why unskilled labor wages are so low and many of the least educated citizens here can't get jobs is because illegal aliens are willing to work for the minimum wage or less than the legal minimum wage.

Businesses get cheap labor and consumers maybe get lower prices, but then the cost of social services to taxpayers for those same illegal or the affected unemployed citizens goes up dramatically. Tolerance of illegal aliens doing unskilled labor has essentially been one giant subsidy to many industries at the cost of many citizens opportunities for a job, or higher pay or higher taxes to pay for more social services which offset the illegal employment/under-compensation of citizens/unemployment of citizens.

[Ron Newman]

If the immigrants are no longer illegal, then their employers will have to comply with labor laws and no longer pay sub-minimum wages.

[Shepard]

Tolerance of illegal aliens doing unskilled labor has essentially been one giant subsidy to many industries at the cost of many citizens opportunities for a job

If all of your so-called "illegals" left this country, I doubt that many of our allegedly afflicted working class citizens would take their jobs, being too addicted to fast food and welfare to even notice that employment picking tomatoes is available.

[Beton Brut]

^^ Sounds like a Sunday dinner conversation with my dad.

[Lurker]

If the immigrants are no longer illegal, then their employers will have to comply with labor laws and no longer pay sub-minimum wages.

Why give those jobs and wages to foreigners first when there are plenty of citizens out of work? During economic periods where the labor is needed and despite raised wages no one is available or willing to do those jobs, then by all means grant work visas as a last resort, but not in economic conditions like these.

If all of your so-called "illegals" left this country, I doubt that many of our allegedly afflicted working class citizens would take their jobs, being too addicted to fast food and welfare to even notice that employment picking tomatoes is available.

They aren't 'so called', it's a fact they are ILLEGAL.

Those who are working will appreciate their wages going up a few dollars an hour. If the pay for menial or generally boring labor became more profitable than being a welfare layabout, at least some people would start working rather than remaining on the dole.

[Shepard]

Lurker, many of the jobs that have evaporated in this economic climate have been more of the "associate-systems-analyst" type than the "tomato-pickin" type. A late-20's laid off systems analyst is not competing with your so-called "illegals" for employment, and deporting your so-called "illegals" will not raise her wages or find her a job. And despite what you say, no American citizen would give up welfare to pick tomatoes. Not even the yokels who gleefully chomp down KFC double-downs are that dumb.

[ablarc]

^ So ... your point is ... ?

[Shepard]

Once again for those who need it spelled out: Immigrants who enter this country without proper work visas - people who are branded "illegals" by the prevailing crypto-racist conservative discourse - do not actually harm American employment because 1) the recently unemployed are typically employable in a different category of jobs than that of the "illegals", and 2) the welfare-dependent unemployed don't want or need the type of jobs typically held by "illegals".

Only politicking, xenophobia and old-fashioned scapegoating lies behind draconian immigration measures. There's no economic rationale.

[Lurker]

Once again for those who need it spelled out: Immigrants who enter this country without proper work visas - people who are branded "illegals" by the prevailing crypto-racist conservative discourse - do not actually harm American employment because 1) the recently unemployed are typically employable in a different category of jobs than that of the "illegals", and 2) the welfare-dependent unemployed don't want or need the type of jobs typically held by "illegals".

Only politicking, xenophobia and old-fashioned scapegoating lies behind draconian immigration measures. There's no economic rationale.

Let me spell it out for you:

IT IS ILLEGAL TO BE IN A COUNTRY WITHOUT A PROPER TRAVEL OR WORK VISA, HENCE THOSE DOING SO ARE CALLED 'ILLEGAL'. Heaven help you if stupid enough to believe not having proper papers is perfectly fine in a foreign country.

Are you really going to call anyone who wants border enforcement racist?
I really can't stand when people and dogs trespass in my front garden to shit, I must be racist against humans and canines.

What do you think is going to happen when welfare benefits are curtailed and everyone's unemployment runs out? It's going to happen sooner than you think the way the government is bleeding cash and tax revenue is cratering. The economy is bad, it's going to get much worse, and stay that way for long time, that those without work will do anything to pay the bills.

[kennedy]

Um, could someone please explain to me why people without papers are able to receive government services? Apart from taking away jobs, how are illegal immigrants actually costing the government anything? Seriously, fuck racial profiling. All Arizona needs to do is force people to show proof of citizenship to receive any kind of government service (right down to their utilities).

[ablarc]

Has anyone thought of opening the borders and allowing unlimited immigration? Wouldn't that be the Libertarian/Free Market solution?

When the dust settled, wouldn't we have the United States of North America --a bigger economy than EU?

[Lurker]

Has anyone thought of opening the borders and allowing unlimited immigration? Wouldn't that be the Libertarian/Free Market solution?

There are two problems with totally uncontrolled immigration:

The first is that a host country can only assimilate so many people in one area at a time. Otherwise the incoming people overwhelming the natives and balkanize the host country. It's really important that incoming immigrants learn the language, laws, and culture of the host country, for the sake of unity (tribalism doesn't mix with modern nation states without leading to disaster). When immigrants aren't required to do so, and are in fact quite hostile to adjusting to their host country. A melting pot becomes a fractured mosaic and one winds up with the kinds of instability that ripped apart Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and on a smaller scale suburbs surrounding major cities around Europe.

The second is the cost to social services. When many people are immigrating and often doing so for benefits of better social services than their originating countries, that's a huge draw on the host country. Even more so when the immigrants are either working cash jobs which aren't taxed or taxed very little in comparison to what they receive in benefits or worse are actively gaming the system.

This is setting aside the issues of worker abuse and wage depression which arise from having an unlimited source of cheap labor to undercut existing citizens.

[statler]

Anyone else see/hear anything about this?

From a friend's Facebook page:
so I am walking around in Boston, thinking "yay, what a nice day," when right in front of me I stumble across a dead guy who just jumped off the Nine Zero hotel and landed smack in the middle of Tremont Street.
I didn't see him jump but I was there before the police came so when they roped off the crime area they roped me INTO the crime area...with the dead body! Eeeek! The concierge guy from the hotel had already thrown a sheet (mostly) over him. All I could see was a leg and the top of his head.
The craziest part was that as a crowd started to gather, there were a few families with little kids and the parents just stood there and let them watch. Most people wouldn't let a kid that age watch a gory movie, and these people were letting them look at the real thing as if it were television. One family had a 2 year old in a baby carriage and the oldest was maybe like 6-8. I guess they were too cheap to pay for a ticket to the Big Apple Circus which was literally right down the street? WTF? And yes [Name], I am really glad he didn't land on me!

[kmp1284]

Boston death likely suicide
By Herald wire services
Monday, May 17, 2010 - Added 12h ago

Boston police are investigating the apparent suicide of a man who plunged to his death yesterday at 3 p.m. from the roof of Tremont Temple Baptist Church at 88 Tremont St., opposite the historic Granary Burying Ground near Government Center.

No other details about the man were immediately available.

Police spokesman Officer Eddy Chrispin said the body was turned over to the medical examiner?s office.


http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100517boston_death_likely_suicide/

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzzjgBAaWZw&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEmEN8PFsgI&feature=channel

[TikiNYC]

The Ghostbusters return to Manhattan. (http://sleepny.lefora.com/2010/05/19/the-ny-public-library-gets-a-visit-from-the-ghostb/)

[Lrfox]

I don't want to start a separate thread on this, but can we talk about Montreal for a second?

I went last weekend just to get away for a bit and left utterly unimpressed. I've been about 4 times now and it seems to be worse and worse each time.

Granted, there are upsides and exceptions. The metro system is pretty good (albeit, a bit expensive at $3.75/trip). There are excellent, distinct and divided, bike lanes and a popular, affordable and accessible bike sharing system. Pockets of it are as vibrant and urban as any place I've ever been (love the area along St. Denis between St. Catherine and Sherbrooke). Finally, I'd have to concede, that St. Catherine doesn't even exist downtown for a few blocks as it's been torn up for major reconstruction and adjacent development. Obviously, when that work is complete, the area should improved. The food in Montreal is excellent if you know where to look. There's a French influence for sure, but it's generally a blend of North American and French. Not a "fusion" style cuisine, but more of a natural blend. I've never had a bad meal in Montreal. I'm not even getting to the poutine yet either. Awesome.

Still, I always visit Montreal with high hopes that I've missed the "good stuff" each previous visit. The Old Port/Old City area is physically attractive, but a bit of a dud in that it's far too kitsch. It seems like locals avoid this area like the plague. The underground city is impressive, but gets old quickly if your idea of fun isn't maze-like underground shopping centers.

There are pockets of wonderful architecture and row houses, but the city looks as if it's been scarred REAL bad by 1960s style planning with tower in the park apartment complexes everywhere. Again, this is where those "pockets" of great urbanity come into play. There are a few, but they're scattered a widely around the ugliness of 1960s style (almost commie block looking) apartment housing.

I'm not one of those people who has an issue with the Quebecois, either. I love them. I enjoy talking with them and I enjoy their culture and general attitude. Americans (and many Canadians) take real exception with them, but I enjoy them. The people are a large part of the reason I enjoy trips up that province. Furthermore, I'm fully aware that Montreal is chalk-full of 18 year old high school seniors from the U.S. I can deal with that and I've spent enough time in the city to know how to escape it.

Still, I can't help but feel that Montreal is one of the more overrated cities I've been to. I get the feeling that its best days are behind it. I could be wrong, it could turn around, but Montreal hasn't been wonderful in my past few visits. I much prefer the smaller, more provincial, Quebec City. There's a gem of a town. Montreal is just a little too, "meh" for my tastes.

[Shepard]

Montreal is rated highly because it's culturally and linguistically different. Maybe not unique, but different - and that's highly prized when almost every other city of its size in the US and Canada are looking more and more the same (monoculture, same chain stores, etc...)

Does Montreal have gaps in its urbanism? Yes - I didn't notice it the first time I was there, but now I've been there four times and can say with certainty that it does. But so does Boston. So does SF. So does Chicago.

Is Montreal overrated? I'd argue that it isn't any more overrated than large second-tier European cities like Barcelona or Prague, both of which have gaps in urbanism and are to various extents commieblocked outside the tourist center. A repeated tourist, who has been down La Rambla enough and seen all the Gaudi, might venture outwards and be disappointed. But, like Montreal, as distinctive cultural destinations they serve their visitors - especially first-time visitors - extremely well.

So, I think your perspective is based on having been to Montreal as a tourist too many times and too often.

I've been to Rome five times for touristing and for work. I'm going back in a couple months and am not completely looking forward to it. Does that mean Rome is overrated? Again, perhaps the same way as Montreal. Places can only hold sway over tourists so many times. At some point you might need to unpack and move in for a while to really bring your understanding of a place to the next level.

What would you do as a fifth-time tourist to Boston?

[Lrfox]

^Fair enough. I still find cities like Boston or San Francisco to be far more interesting than Montreal. A major city shouldn't become more boring after repeated visits. It should be almost more engaging. After visiting a few times, you generally get a feel for the places you like, the places you don't like and the places you want see for the first time. My girlfriend now lives in San Francisco. I've been a number of times in the past year. My first visit was fun; we saw Pier 39 (awful), the Ferry Building, rode the F-Line and the cable cars, visited City Lights, etc. Still, the more I visit and the more I familiarize myself with that city, the more I enjoy it. I don't live there, my girlfriend is new there (hardly a seasoned expert on S.F.), but it's more enjoyable each time I go.

Montreal is a different story. The culture is very interesting and so unique in this part of the world. That being said, Quebec City offers a similar culture in a city that seems (to me) more exciting even though it's smaller. A first time visitor to Quebec City will visit the Old City and possibly venture up the Grand Allee which are wonderful attractions. Still, the city's rejuvenated industrial districts and outer neighborhoods provide wonderful new (and different) frontiers for repeat visitors. That's why I love that city so much.

Like I said previously, Montreal has pockets of brilliant urbanity, but they seem to pale in comparison to the urban holes that lie in between. Of Course Boston and San Francisco have holes as well. No city doesn't. Still, Montreal's seem to be more visible and really serve as barriers between the nice urban spaces. Boston's holes (and San Francisco's) don't have the same impact. A tourist can quite easily venture from the North End to the Fenway area and then down into the South End without ever coming into contact with such gaps in the urban fabric. While you can say what you like about the Mid-Market area or the Tenderloin at night, the same can be said for a tourist heading from the City Hall area of San Francisco up to the Ferry Building and over to North Beach or Ghirardelli Square. I feel like the pockets of great urban neighborhood in Montreal are too small and too abruptly ended by mediocre neighborhoods.

I'm not saying Montreal is a BAD city by any stretch of the imagination. I just don't know if it's a place that's worthy of all of the hype it gets. Many people put it on the same level as Boston or San Francisco, but I'd say it's a notch below. Call me a "homer," but I just don't think it's as wonderful as it's often touted to be. I'd still prefer it to countless other cities, but I don't think it's as good as advertised.

[lucky13]

Anyone else see/hear anything about this?

From a friend's Facebook page:

Help Fill In The Blanks
The man was a friend of mine. He was 24. There are many unanswered questions. Anyone who was there I'd like to know if there was anyone around appear that they knew him? Did anyone actually see where he fell from? Out a window? Off a rooftop? Any factual information would be appreciated.

[czsz]

Lrfox - can you be more specific with regard to Montreal? Where are the awful urban gaps? My impression was that Montreal isn't a particularly attractive city everywhere but that it does spread quite far - one can walk for miles into neighborhoods along the boulevard St-Laurent for instance and experience urbanism with the same densities but much more vibrancy than, say, the South End. Many of the suburbs that were only relatively recently amalgamated into the city were/are just as densely built as the city itself.

True, in many of these places there aren't continuously bustling retail strips, but, coming from Boston, that's a lot to expect. At worst a lot of these areas are like drabber versions of San Francisco's Sunset, or more built up versions of Cambridge/Somerville away from Mass. Ave.

[TikiNYC]

Can you teach English in Montreal and make a living?

It looks like the English teaching business in Asia is dying, with major schools closing down and stranding hopeful teachers who end up working private lessons just for food, before they go bankrupt and head home.

eg this laugh riot:

How to Teach English in Japan (http://sleepny.lefora.com/2010/05/26/how-to-be-a-successful-english-teacher-in-japan/)

[czsz]

I mean, there are English teachers there, but mostly accredited through the government school system. It would be way harder to get a gig teaching English there as an American than Asia, still.

ESL isn't the expat goldmine it used to be but it's still a viable life in more outside-the-box places than Japan. Korea has always been a much stronger market, for example. I was able to find a job in Turkey a couple years back, but ultimately decided not to take it.

[bdurden]

I equate the frequent criticism of Montreal to something I experienced in 90s Berlin. It really has nothing to do with urbanity. Sure, Berlin was (and still is) gritty, dirty, unforgiving. People found it a bit unsafe, therefore anti-pedestrian. In reality, it is one of the greatest urban environments on the planet--it just skirts slightly outside our comfort zone in suburban American, not unlike Montreal.

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXNbXR8qAc
How to deal with pirates.

[tobyjug]

The shame of Tsushima erased.
(There are kids on Morton Street with better hardware than Long John Sihlvaah and his ill shaven pals.)

[JohnAKeith]

Hi. Does anyone happen to have a list of proposed and under-construction projects for all institutions, colleges / universities and hospitals? I am dreading having to put one together for a blog entry but I want to show them all with my theory being that this type of growth over the past several years has softened the slowdown in construction in Boston and in other cities and that it will save us going forward during the next several years when we won't have new office buildings or residential towers going up.

[TikiNYC]

How to be part of one big happy family. (http://www.breitbart.tv/local-tv-moment-hospital-pr-person-wont-stop-touching-reporter/)

[TikiNYC]

Where the f*** is this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv5ouzUz5k0) when you need him.

[statler]

http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3259344.html

While we can surmise the gist of what we are looking at, anyone (Lurker) wishing to translate any interesting bits of text would be most appreciated. :)

[crash575]

^It's a shame the Buran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29) (Soviet equivalent to the space shuttle) only flew once. I think the first photo is of the collapsed hanger that destroyed the only shuttle to have flown.

[kennedy]

Statler, Google Translate does a pretty good job with the page. Unfortunately, I don't know how to share it. Like I said in the "aB Apocalypse" thread, everyone should use Google Chrome.

[Lurker]

Google Fu is good for you (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3259344.html&ei=tCn_S_GaD4OClAeIt4zoCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://drugoi.livejournal.com/3259344.html%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG)

The translation should be sufficient for most of you without me spending a bit of time manually typing everything out.

[statler]

everyone should use Google Chrome.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/opera-parodies-googles-chrome-speed-tests-mercilessly-video/

[kennedy]

Hillarious.

Alright, fine. Everyone should use Chrome, or Opera.

Does anyone feel like making a browser called "Potato?"

[vanshnookenraggen]

That's good.

[Lurker]

IVAN DRAGO JUSTICE ENFORCER (http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/ivan-drago/)

[statler]

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/americas/06/01/central.america.storm.deaths/c1main.guate.sinkhole.02.afp.jpg

Question for any civil engineers in the audience: How do you even begin to fix something like this? Do you just rope it off and make it a tourist attraction? Can it be filled somehow? Safely covered?

[BostonUrbEx]

That is THE downtown right there where that hole is. So they're pretty screwed over by that thing, especially if it's just left there and grows. Imagine if that thing was at Downtown Crossing? Oh wait- Filenes... never mind.

They should probably throw some huge boulders in there. Then maybe pour in some concrete at the base. Then fill it up with gravel/dirt.

[Ron Newman]

What are you referring to? I am out of context here entirely.

[statler]

^^ see my post on the bottom of the last page.

[Ron Newman]

I thought that was a Photoshop mash-up of some kind. If not, where was it taken?

[statler]

^^ Guatemala City (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070226-sinkhole-photo.html)

[czsz]

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/americas/06/01/central.america.storm.deaths/c1main.guate.sinkhole.02.afp.jpg

Question for any civil engineers in the audience: How do you even begin to fix something like this? Do you just rope it off and make it a tourist attraction? Can it be filled somehow? Safely covered?

"The Guatemala City municipal authorities today announced the surprise opening of a new swimming facility downtown. 'We're proud to open this recreation center on time and under budget,' the city's mayor said. The main expense was reportedly several 'Deep, DEEP End' signs."

[statler]

Toby,

When's your birthday? I'm doing some shopping (http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1055677).

[Beton Brut]

Statler, I think this (http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/P-2947.aspx) might be a better value, even if you need to fly to Japan to get it.

[tobyjug]

October. Yikes! Pricey stuff!

The pity of it all is that fine tasting things are often better appreciated by those who are too young to afford them. As you get older, your taste buds die out. So you need more to stimulate what you have left. (There is a joke in there somewhere.) That's why this old dog loves Indian food, retsina, grappa, etc.

[tobyjug]

"The Guatemala City municipal authorities today announced the surprise opening of a new swimming facility downtown. 'We're proud to open this recreation center on time and under budget,' the city's mayor said. The main expense was reportedly several 'Deep, DEEP End' signs."

What's the big deal. I can look out my 101 Arch St. window and see the same thing.

[statler]

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x176/bstnstatler/oilwellsHowdo.jpg

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzllR24e-FY&feature=player_embedded

[statler]

^^ I guess Obama didn't read the sign:

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/12/2010/06/500x_bp_no_spill_sign.jpg

[Lurker]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-04/obama-briefed-in-april-by-carol-browner-on-how-bad-bp-spill-was-/

Obama Knew the Spill Was Hopeless



As the president visits the Gulf anew, Richard Wolffe reports that he was first briefed in April on how bad the spill would be. Plus: the real reason the White House is so mad at Carville?and why Obama would rather talk about the economy.

Critics have bashed President Obama for being slow to seize the political initiative in combating the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast, now widely believed to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The White House has battled back, releasing a timeline of events showing that Obama was briefed?and deploying the Coast Guard?within 24 hours of the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
What has not been previously disclosed: The president was not only briefed on the real-time events of the spill, but also on just how bad it would be?and how hard it would be to plug the hole.


Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, told Obama at one of the earliest briefings in late April that the blowout would likely lead to an unprecedented environmental disaster, senior White House aides told The Daily Beast. Browner warned that capping a well at such depths had never been done before, and that they ought to expect an oil spill that would continue until a relief well was drilled in August, the aide said.
That early briefing on the scope of the spill?and enormous technical challenges involved in fixing it?might help explain the sense of fatalism that has infused Obama's team from the start.
Little that has happened since has changed their mind-set. Now six weeks later, the president?s top advisers expect the oil spill?and the negative stories?to continue through August.
The fact that Team Obama was warned of the extent of the disaster so early on suggests that White House officials were aware of the environmental challenge long before they decided to demonstrate concern via presidential visits to the Gulf.
When asked about the prospects for the new cap fitted over the leaking well earlier this week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs voiced little optimism. ?I?m long out of the prediction business on this,? he told reporters on Air Force One on Friday. ?Everyone is hopeful that this works.? His comments were echoed by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the BP spill?who warned reporters against ?over-optimism.?
Given the lack of technical capabilities on the sea floor, there?s not much the White House can do to plug the hole. And there are limited options for effectively preventing the oil from reaching large stretches of coastline. Instead, Obama?s team is focusing on the options at their immediate disposal?methods of news management and presidential communication.


Obama?s aides have grown increasingly frustrated with the public criticism that the president has failed to express sufficient anger. As Gibbs put it at a recent briefing, ?If jumping up and down and screaming were to fix a hole in the ocean, we?d have done that five or six weeks ago. We?d have done that the first night.?
That frustration has boiled over in dealing with some of their most high-profile critics?especially the ones on the Democratic side.
Case in point: James Carville, the Democratic strategist, whose TV eruptions have helped focus attention on the president?s response.
Carville recently chanced upon Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen eating dinner with BP CEO Tony Hayward at a New Orleans restaurant, the senior White House aide says. Allen had called Carville after his first TV outburst to talk about the administration?s response, but Carville failed to return the call. When Allen asked why, Carville said he had been busy, the aide says (Carville did not reply to requests for comment). That does not sit well with administration officials who suggest that Carville?s readiness to go public with his criticism is not matched by his private willingness to offer concrete suggestions about what they could do differently.
Amid the frustration, the White House has taken steps to make their response more visible in recent weeks. In addition to daily briefings by Allen, the White House has staged two presidential visits to the Gulf over the last week.


As they plot course, Obama?s team is determined to avoid two scenarios. They?re mindful of BP?s habit of scheduling rounds of TV interviews to tout a new development?only to discover that the news was more disappointing than expected. And they want to avoid the perception that the president is focused exclusively on the oil spill, at a time when both public and private polling shows Americans have greater concerns?and care far more about the economy at this stage than they do about the oil spill.
That, of course, could change as shocking pictures of oil-covered animals begin to surface on TV. But for now, the latest CBS News poll?released Friday?shows that approval and disapproval ratings of Obama?s performance on the oil spill are more evenly split than expected, given the news coverage and the scale of the disaster. The poll showed 44 percent disapproval and 38 percent approval, a marginal improvement from a week earlier, when the numbers were 45 percent disapproval and 35 percent approval.
When asked about priorities in a recent Economist/YouGov poll, respondents ranked the environment in eighth position of ?very important? issues, after the economy, health care, social security, the budget deficit, taxes, terrorism and education. The environment ranked ?very important? with 50 percent of respondents, compared to 82 percent saying the economy.

[BostonUrbEx]

Go to GOOGLE Translate.

Translate "AIDS" from English to Yiddish.

Then copy the translation and re-translate it from Yiddish to English. NOTE: Auto-Detect Language to English does not work.

[kennedy]

Jews

[BarbaricManchurian]

type in recursion into google. see what happens :)

[statler]

I know I'll get lots of scoffs from the connoisseurs here, but I don't care.

This is one hell of a sexy machine:

http://www.dodge.com/shared/2010/challenger/gallery/images/ext/10_d_cgr_photo_ext_16.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

Where's the "Like" button on this thing?

[Lurker]

This is one of those things where:
When you're young it's your panty peeler.
When you get older it becomes a symbol of your insecurity.
When you get much older it becomes your legitimate hobby.
When you get much much older it becomes your casket.