If you’ve an eye for pleasant vistas and fine architecture, it’s time you checked out BLDGBLOG. It’s full of interesting tidbits about urban planning and building design, and the occasional poignant observation:
Malfunctioning fire alarms going off inside foreclosed homes have become a major distraction for fire departments in suburban Arizona, according to ABC15 News. Fire fighters, however, cannot legally enter a property unless they see smoke or have obtained the owner’s permission. But in an era of bank ownership and rampant foreclosure, even finding the owners can take weeks.
The result is that “neighbors have to listen to the alarm until the battery dies, which can take days.”
First we were surrounded by ruins, and then those ruins began to sing.
Now that digital photography is all the rage[1], I think it’s time to stage an intervention: folks, any printer you can afford is not going to make a nice photo.
I know HP and Epson and Canon have promised you that your printers will make quality prints, but they won’t. They will make “half-decent” prints for a short while, and then things will get clogged and the pictures will be streaky. Even when they’re new, the shots come out grainy, with colors out of a cross-processing nightmare. IT’s fine if you just want a picture of your kids to go in your wallet, but here’s the thing: too many people, myself included, are hanging framed artistic shots that look like seven asses in a speedo.
There’s no reason to put up with this. Sure, you have to wait a while, but places like Shutterfly can produce fantastic, inexpensive prints and mail them straight to your door, and they charge you nothing to store your pictures (unlike Kodak, which is now asking you to cough up for that service). There are even options wherein a local pharmacy or megamart can produce them for you to be picked up later in the day! Walgreens will do it, and also Walmart, although if you’re like me going to Walmart causes me to donate vast sums to whichever political party supports eugenics.
If you’re looking at a photo printer, ignore internet advice or anything you might read in Consumer Reports. The only thing you need to know about photo printers is this: can you afford the one you’re looking at? If so, it’s a piece of crap. The only photo printers worth their salt are the ones purchased by professional printing services, which are thousands of dollars. You do not have thousands of dollars to spare, or you wouldn’t be reading this: you’d be sitting on a beach in Cabo drinking heavily. At least, I sure would.
1: Apparently it’s 2004 in my brain.
I can’t stop playing with this. (I painted over top of a photo I took, which is why it’s only half-sucky.)
After yesterday’s post about the Brushes iPhone app, I discovered that there is a Flickr group devoted to the art produced by this wondrous application. Holy cow:
flower
So after reading about how the June 1st New Yorker cover was drawn entirely on the iPhone, I knew I had to get in on that. The app for it is called Brushes, costs $4.99 (same cost as the magazine itself), and is superior to the other drawing programs I’ve tried for the simple reasons that the brushes have texture (hence the name), and you can adjust the opacity as you paint. Keeping in mind that I am a HORRIBLE artist and still-lifes of boxes are about all I can manage, check it out:
My homegirl Raw Rach hath alerted me to a really nice Garrison Keillor column from the weekend. I find him a little insufferable at times, but this is nice:
And an intensely quiet blond girl, a math whiz, who, with no reluctance, sat down at the piano when I asked her if she played piano, squared her shoulders and played the exquisite Chopin Prelude No. 2 in A minor, the notes of the slow movement like raindrops on birch leaves, smoke drifting by, an anguished old man pacing in the grass, and played it so beautifully it transformed the entire evening.
A little overwrought, to be sure, but a pretty sentiment.
Do you like poetry? I like poetry. Here’s a neat new one by Jill McDonough. Warning: it has some bad words. Many, in fact. Turn down your outrage meter so it doesn’t get blown out.
I’m not really a poetry guy; I’d much prefer listening to one set to music. (And if it hasn’t been set to music by anyone, it’s probably not very good.) Still, this poem, by Robert Frost, I find very appealing, particularly as Spring turns to May:
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long. You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long. You come too.
(It has, of course, been set to music, most famously by Randall Thompson.)
Here is why I don’t normally watch American Idol: because of hacks like Allison Whatsherbutt, who deafened me for a while last night. She sang “Someone To Watch Over Me,” one of the best songs ever put to lined paper, like a pig in an abattoir. Good job, Allison: you can song really frickin’ loud. Is that all you have to offer? Really?
Here’s the thing that, if you’re lucky, you’ll learn somewhere down the line: singing is often about subtlety. Loud is merely the first step in learning how to sing. I know literally dozens of people who can sing loud. I know a very limited number who can sing softly, and more importantly, know which to do at any given time.
“Someone To Watch Over Me” is wistful, almost a bedtime prayer. Belting it out at the top of your lungs is like playing a lullabye on a piccolo trumpet directly into your baby’s ear. It’s like a Frost poem through a megaphone. It’s like waking up your sleeping spouse by kneeing him in the testes.
Sadly, <SPOILER ALERT>you’ll be there after tonight</SPOILER ALERT>, so next week perhaps you can commit voice rape on a Norah Jones song, or something. Color me “not watching.”
