I am tired.

The last couple of days have been really busy. I started my job at the firm, I said yes to two other project oriented jobs and I am waiting on a callback about a job that would be incredible. I dropped my summer classes. I sat down to do physics homework a couple of nights ago and realized that I wasn’t in any mood to do homework, and I need my summer to be something close to relaxing.

I’m too tired to type.

Here’s a link for that other thing I did. Come to this one if you missed it before.

Working on my portfolio I came across this project that is one of my favorites. I may build a second version of this chair to work out all of the problems that I ran into in version 01. Plus also, I need a name for it. That page of my portfolio is untitled for now. What should I call it?

In an effort to do something topical (and to get away from my computer for two hours) I agreed to watch Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room with Searcy. I have already seen it, but I figured it was a good way to celebrate the verdict, and Searcy’s girlfriend is out of town and I sense that he is lonely. About half (1/2) way through the documentary all of the power on Searcy’s block went out and we sat there in the dark until I (totally wittily) said “Fitting”. And then we laughed for what seemed like a few seconds. Then Searcy said. “Yeah, that is pretty ironic”. I still think it’s more fitting than it is ironic. After a few minutes of sitting in Searcy’s apartment by candlelight, I decided that even though Lay and Skilling will be behind bars, Enron still got the best of us tonight and we would not be watching the incriminating documentary, so I left.

There is nothing as creepy as walking down long hallways and three flights of stairs in a totally dark 1920’s Hollywood apartment building.

The Salk Institute

I finished reading Consider The Lobster by David Foster Wallace. It was the first book that I have read cover to cover that had nothing to do with architecture¹ in quite some time. CTL is a collection of essays dating back to the mid-1990’s up until present day(ish) 2005. I have always preferred Wallace’s nonfiction to his fiction.² He seems to have a gift for presenting subjects as wide-ranging as Adult Video Awards and a review of a five volume Dostosevsky biography in an interesting manner. He can sound both SNOOTily³ academic and pornographically dirty 20 pp. earlier w/r/t the Adult Video Essay. Highlights include “Big Red Son”⁴; “Up, Simba”⁵; and the title essay “Consider the Lobster”⁶. I would recommend that you read all of the essays because it is great to see a writer such as DFW handle subjects from the aforementioned to 9/11⁷, tearing apart sports biographies as cliche after cliche and the trouble of showing people the humor in Kafka. As usual the insane amount of footnotes⁸ and “w/r/t”’s⁹ get a little tiresome and frustrating, but when you have finished it seems like they were kinda fun. If you liked A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and have tried more than once to read the eighteen pound Infinite Jest you will enjoy this.¹¹

¹Not including physics textbooks and financial mgt. books.
²Though to be fair, I have never made it more than 1/3 through Infinite Jest
³Read the essay about the seedy underbelly of American Lexicography.^1
4The porn one in which DFW writes the words “anal” and “DP” multiple times.
⁵About Sen. John McCain.
⁶An essay for Gourmet Magazine* asking if Lobsters feel pain and painting a pretty convincing picture of lobsters grabbing (clawing?) for the edge of the pot and knocking on the lid trying to escape the boiling water.
⁷September 11, 2001.
⁸See? Kinda tiresome.
⁹With regard to.
¹⁰His previous essay collection.
¹¹I suppose.

*I think.

My summer “break” officially ends today. Tomorrow I go back to school and begin a job at a rather large firm.

The old home of 360, a pretty fun club from several years ago. This building has been abandoned/condemned for quite some time now. I thought the white vinyl looked great, kind of a Jean-Claude and Cristo if they were any good.

Speaking of renovations, Schindlers Mackey apartments just got a makeover. Sorry for the awful photos, I was in a really comfortable chair holding a glass of champagne and a cigarette.

Beardo.

Grant McLennan of the amazing Australian band The Go-Betweens.

[link]

So the first phase of this job is finished. Sam now has the file and is applying materials and adding greenery. We have to deliver it tomorrow and get some $$$$$.

Speaking of $$$$$, on Saturday Sam will find out if we get to do the SD and DD (that’s Schematic Design and Design Development to all of you laypersons) on a pretty major apartment building in Hollywood. It’s a large site with an existing victorian/prairie style house on it that the city has deemed historic. So we have proposed to move the house to the corner of the site and make it a cafe and incorporate it into the design of the building. We are also hoping to offer them (the developers) something different than their usual boxes for around the same cost. They seem to be interested thus far…

I’ll let you know if that job pans out.

I have a couple of other jobs I am working on and I will update you on those as soon as they become interesting. I am also taking two classes and I probably won’t talk about those anymore, because they are boring numbery classes.

Just the usual lazy summer.