autumn's leaky roof & a brave new funk.

so it rained for a bunch during the last week, and when the rains went away our indian summer ended (fingers crossed) and beautiful cold crisp fall weather settled in. thank goodness for that, but on the downside, the leak in my roof from last year that my landlord supposedly fixed has returned. seems like they simply but up a new layer of plaster - hopefully they actually fix the leak this year because my wall looks like its melting, moldy and probably detrimental to my health.

strictly funk's fall show a brave new funk was this past weekend. i had helped my boy jason finish the video on time and was also asked to take photographs during their saturday matinee show (photos here). tannis came back all the way from paris!! she, cricket and i grabbed a quick dinner and cocktails at pod between the two shows. quite a few alumni showed up (greg, haley, hilary, tami, anna, shosh, anthony, eric, ryan) and a good chunk of mask&wig boys were there too. the thought of re-auditioning for funk has crossed my mind, but a lot more consideration will be going into that before anything happens.

after the saturday night show, i headed down to old city for ben & tiffany's halloween party. i didn't dress up of course (i don't do halloween), but most everyone else was and it was a good time. nice and low-key which was fantastic and exactly what i hoped it would be. i headed back to west philly around 1.30a and made an appearance at the funk party for a few min before heading home and crashing. somehow though, i had managed to contract food poisoning (it wasn't alcohol because i really didn't drink anything after my cocktails at pod much earlier in the night) and got really sick later that night so sunday was spent in bed recuperating.

today i got to meet jerry tessendorf who is the principal graphics scientist at rhythm&hues. we chatted about the studio for a bit and then i attended his talk on the bamf effect (used in xmen2) and how that evolved into some of the particle, voxel grid and fluid effects (used in superman returns, happy feet, etc). good times.

AutoCAD monkey.

A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, "I'll have an AutoCAD monkey please." The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop and took out a monkey. He fitted a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying, "That'll be $5000." The customer paid and walked out with his monkey.

Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, "That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost so much?"

The Shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can draw in AutoCAD - very fast, clear layouts, no mistakes, well worth the money."

The tourist looked at a monkey in another cage. "That one's even more expensive! $10,000! What does it do?"

"Oh, that one's a Design monkey; it can design systems, layout projects, mark-up drawings, write specifications, some even calculate. All the really useful stuff," said the shopkeeper.

The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in its own cage. The price tag around its neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"

The shopkeeper replied, "Well, I haven't actually seen it do anything, but it says it's an Engineer."

from: les très riches heures de martha stewart.

by Margaret Talbot.
...

Martha Stewart is the apotheosis of this particular cult of expertise, and its most resourceful entrepreneur. She imagines projects of which we would never have thought - gathering dewy grass for our Easter ham, say - and makes us feel the pressing need for training in them. And she exploits, brilliantly, a certain estrangement from home that many working women feel these days. For women who are working longer and longer hours at more and more demanding jobs, it's easy to think of home as the place where chaos reigns and their own competence is called into doubt: easy to regard the office, by comparison, as the bulwark of order. It is a reversal, of course, of the hoary concept of home as a refuge from the tempests of the marketplace. But these days, as the female executives in a recent study attested, the priority they most often let slide is housekeeping: they'll abide disorder at home that they wouldn't or couldn't abide at the office. No working couple's home is the oasis of tranquility and Italian marble countertops that Marthaism seems to promise. But could it be? Should it be? Stewart plucks expertly at that chord of doubt.
...

For women such as these, the didactic faux-maternalism of Martha Stewart seems the perfect answer. She may dispense the kind of homekeeping advice that a mother would, but she does so in toes too chill and exacting to sound "maternal," singling out, for example, those "who will always be lazy" to do her projects. She makes housekeeping safe for the professional woman by professionalizing housekeeping. And you never forget that Stewart is herself a mogul, even when she's baking rhubarb crisp and telling you, in her Shakeresque mantra, that "It's a Good Thing."
...

But if we had the hours, if we had the circumstances, wouldn't we want to fill them with something of our own, with a domestic grace of our own devising? Well, maybe not anymore. For taste is no longer an expression of individuality. It is, more often, an instrument of conformism, a way to assure ourselves that we're living by the right codes, dictated or sanctioned by experts. Martha Stewart's "expertise" is really nothing but another name for the perplexity of her cowed consumers. A lifestyle cult as all-encompassing as hers could thrive only at a time when large numbers of Americans have lost confidence in their own judgment about the most ordinary things. For this reason, Martha Stewart Living isn't really living at all.

making sausage, time, history & darjeeling.

friday was as good a day as any. the penndesign happy hour was the annual much-anticipated archtoberfest - a happy hour with more than twice the booze (mostly german, of course) and lots and lots of hot-off-the-grill sausages. pork or turkey, spicy or mild, cheese or not, marinated in beer. even little veggie dogs for the faint of heart (read: vegetarian). three hours, two slices of pizza, two sausages and four beers later, i was at aj's apartment, drinking sangria that was really more triple sec than wine, hanging out with architects and "the gays" and getting ready for the big night out. every month or so, making time happens at pure night club. yes, pure is a gay club, but making time is a "straight night" with live band and internationally reknowned DJ, and most importantly, always a good time. needless to say, i was pretty waste-y but had a blast dancing the night away and killing my eardrums standing next to some intense subwoofs. twenty four hours later, they have finally stopped ringing.

and, this weekend is homecoming weekend here at the university of pennsylvania. they went all out this year - college green was roped off like a club and the admission lines extended almost the entire length of locust walk. there were beautiful translucent tents galore with architectural lights and canopies scattered about, a ridiculous stage built around the ben franklin statue (not the one everyone pees on), free food and beer, performances by student groups (dhamaka, african rhythms, some a capella groups, and of course, strictly funk), and a world-famous DJ who was sick. the big deal? penn's new campaign: making history. three point five billion dollars to increase financial aid for both undergraduate and graduate students as well as endowment for faculty, new facilities, expansion and construction of the postal lands extending to the schuylkill river.

ended the night with a trip to the ritz theatre in old city with nico, bryan and alexLee to watch wes anderson's new movie the darjeeling limited. classic wes awkward humor. though this one had a flow and feel-good-ness about it that his others did not. still great. still hilarious. loved it.

from: the seam of the snail.

by Cynthia Ozick.

...

I am a kind of human snail, locked in and condemned by my own nature. The ancients believed that the moist track left by the snail as it crept was the snail's own essence, depleting its body little by little; the farther the snail toiled, the smaller it became, until it finally rubbed itself out. That is how perfectionists are. Say to us Excellence, and we will show you how we use up our substance and wear ourselves away, while making scarcely any progress at all.

paramore : crushcrushcrush

I got a lot to say to you
Yeah, I got a lot to say
I noticed your eyes are always glued to me
Keeping them here
And it makes no sense at all

They taped over your mouth
Scribbled out the truth with their lies
You little spies
They taped over your mouth
Scribbled out the truth with their lies
You little spies

Crush
Crush
Crush
Crush, crush
(Two, three, four!)

Nothing compares to a quiet evening alone
Just the one two of us who's counting on
That never happens
I guess I'm dreaming again
Let's be more than this

If you want to play it like a game
Well, come on, come on, let's play
Cause I'd rather waste my life pretending
Than have to forget you for one whole minute

Rock and roll, baby
Don't you know that we're all alone now?
I need something to sing about
Rock and roll, hey
Don't you know, baby, we're all alone now?
I need something to sing about
Rock and roll, hey
Don't you know, baby, we're all alone now?
Give me something to sing about

phallus in wonderland.

oh, mask&wig. i went to their fall show phallus in wonderland tonight. as usual they put on a fantastic show. great skits, side-splitting satires, excellent tap-dancing, hilarious song and dance, sexual innuendo, drag and some damn good music. i can't believe they put together their fall show so quickly.

this is your brain not on drugs.

you know you've impressed your professor when as he is handing you your midterm exam he puts his hand out to shake yours, and with your hand still in his he whispers, and i quote, "good job. that was fuckin' awesome." not frickin', not effin', but straight up dropped the f-bomb. loves it. told you i kicked ass on my persuasion+communication midterm.

also, i got back my first homework assignment for computer animation - best grade i've ever gotten on a homework in a CS course. wooo!

so this is what it's like to not be in funk and have the time to study and put legitimate time and effort into schoolwork. hmm.

oh, windy city.

first of all, i am pretty sure i kicked ass on my persuasion+communication midterm last thursday, so wooooo!

anyway, since it's fall break and we have monday and tuesday off, i flew to chicago thursday night (my flight was delayed by two hours because PHL absolutely sucks and if one thing goes wrong, the whole place goes to shit and every flight gets delayed) and stayed until tuesday morning. it was a good time - relaxing and low key but still fun. spent most saturday in schaumburg to watch daniel's homecoming, celebrate theodore's mum's birthday and then do a little shopping at the aquarium, mall and ikea (random, i know). rest of my time there was good - had some good meals, walked around the city, hung out with his friends and roommates, etc etc. i really do love that city - it puts philadelphia and nyc to shame.

i am a plecostomus!

solitude+SYTYCD.

what a bummer. i really wanted the cubs and phillies to win so they would play each other, and yet both just lost and lost and lost (literally). now i am officially bored and have no further interest in post-season baseball, except that i hate the diamondbacks and hope they get killed.

this past week was one spent relishing in algorithms, essays and solitude. after theodore left last weekend, i realized that i was lonely for the for first time in a long time - but i'm taking it for what it is and really enjoying the hours i spend by myself. i went to the UCAL milonga for the first time this past friday. not too bad, though i think i prefer my wednesday night practicas in center city more. it's nice though since it is only 3 blocks from my apartment.

tonight i had dinner at anjou in old city with tiffany then we headed to the so you think you can dance tour show at the wachovia center. it was awesome!! i won't go into details, but they performed many of the best pieces from the season (though there were some they didn't that i really wish they had). it was a lot of fun and i bought a sweet zip-up hoodie too.