all photos by r pasion. more here.
Baloon Fiesta Schedule for Sunday.
| 5:45am - 7:45am | Dawn Patrol Show Balloon Fiesta Park |
| 7:00am - 8:00am | Mass Ascension at Balloon Fiesta Park |
| 9:00am - 10:00am | Fiesta of Wheels Car Show at Balloon Fiesta Park |
| 12:00pm - 8:00pm | Fiesta del Vino - Wine Festival at Balloon Fiesta Park |
| 5:45pm - 7:30pm | Balloon Glow at Balloon Fiesta Park |
| 8:00pm - 9:00pm | AfterGlow� Fireworks Show |
setting: a saturday dinner party. evening. in a sub-urban dining room. in between the lamb course and dessert...about three glasses of the spanish monastrell into the evening. [it is a scene out of 'ART', the play seen in London many years ago.] the name of the guilty has been change to protect her career...
X: [commands the table, asserting animatedly] the artist actually told me that the painting was derived by superimposing a state of the union speech by george bush with abba's super trooper or a beavis and butthead diatribe from season two. [substitute a work by goethe and a mozart aria for a more affected effect] the execution of the work is done wherein a square is drawn whenever the same letter coincides with the other.
Y: [emphatically, skeptically] yes, but isn't it a bit contrived, a tad over-wrought? why can't it NOT exist for what it is? a painting? it seems to me that the artist is too earnest in applying meaning to what is an otherwise delightful 2-dimensional work; him doing so is an implicit aknowlegement that his 2-d piece is bereft of visual worth? or does he want to just borrow george bush's aura and gravitas because he has NOT? to which i'd question his artistic integrity or motive...
X: [assured] oh he's been exhibited in many places, some solo shows... and you see his work on e-bay... but i find it is so much richer and meaningful to have that extra dimension, don't you?
Z: i don't know, i just like the picture because it's pretty.
Y: right on, Z!...
the party tomorrow was to be a simple, no non-sense barbecue for a couple of friends- a group of six or so. [there is a threshold in which after a certain number, its enjoyment diminishes-- in direct inverse proportion to the number of participants; hence the likes of a massive time's square new years eve fête is anything but to me]. i prefer small groups so that there is time to talk to friends with whom i have not seen for a while. and not be running around too much between kitchen and living room. or have distracting swirling thoughts in my head about timing, pacing, presentations, the whole nine yards. [i keep telling myself that i should NOT care too much but i do; i think the anxiety and need for incessant control that i used to invest doing architecture early in my career transfered over to entertaining. IT has to be equally controlled. paced just so. the whole thing like good architecture, the proper construct and contrivance.
to that end, i head to Costco [that pan-urban phenom that one sees in every biggish town] after work with some idea to buy either strip NY steaks or boneless shortribs of beef.
option one is a no-brainer- season the steaks with coarse ground black pepper using the mortar & pestle and sea salt and voila, dinner! even if served with delectable pomme escallope with chives and cream, or a grilled asparagus with bernaise, it is still pretty boring. standard. effortless. strike.
option two i have served to these set of friends before [i admit, i've fed them too many permutations of korean bbq ribs too many times that, i fear, they may think of me as one-note johnny. i'm not one-note johnny. i am as good as some of the people who had lost on top chef. ok, so i cannot do as well a sous vide as that vietnamese dude that won the contest but i did not do time at the CIA nor a helper to the michelin-starred french maestro guy savoy this link will get you to some impressive creations by this chef, but i can bone and butterfly a chicken as well as a drunk julia child. so i grab a package marbly boneless beef shortribs with the idea that it be cooked slowly- braised- either with a nice cabernet or barolo or some classic combo of onions, galic, carrots, celery so that three hours after cooking it, the thing melts in ones mouth. it would be accompanied by a pilaf and roasted seasonal veggies [eggplant, zucchini, peppers].
i forgot to add, fellow suburban dwellers, that by this time, owing to that Costco creed wherein you are to be distracted to goods that you dont really need, i've collected in my cart 3 versions of sub-ten-buck wines x 2 each. i'd recently tasted a merlot from maipo valley chile [full-body, tobacco, leather, currants- yadda yadda] and i was impressed enough to have committed to purchase a dozen this time. but it was not to be as the santa ema reserve 2004 was gone. very well. there was a lining to this disappointment as i could NOT have discovered or considered the spanish monastrell HECULA which is delicious, spicy, a perfect fall wine. I had tasted monastrell before but as a component in a french blend [mourvèdre]. i thought this had great character by itself.
option 3 i considered when i was leaving the meat section towards the biggest walk-in fridge you ever saw that contained salads + produce. on my way, the imported australian leg of lamb winked at me and i winked back. it was a nice-lookin' piece of meat. and i thought how perfect! the cusps of seasons suggested fall but also nodding a conciliatory goodbye to summer. roasted lamb with mint pesto [garlic, mint, walnuts, pistacchio, olive oil, balsamic]. it will be served with cous-sous/ tabouleh [a bastardization, others might opine] a conflation of two memorable dishes that screams summer, or suggests a warm mediterranean afternoon.
so option 3 is pictured above. ingredients are from the garden [mint, rosemary, other herbs]. dinner planning as you can see is a combo of conscious rational calculus and a good bit of chance and accident.
it's THAT time again, folks. the chilly air means that albuquerque will be blanketed by flying aircrafts powered by heat. it started today with a bunch of them aloft taking off from many school sites. some history here of this year's- its 36th year, and its antecedents.
below is this saturday's schedule:
| Saturday, October 6 | ||
| 5:45am - 6:45am | Dawn Patrol Show presented by Howard Johnson International, Inc. more... | |
| 6:45am - 7:45am | Opening Ceremonies | |
| 7:00am - 8:00am | Mass Ascension more... | |
| 12:00pm - 8:00pm | Fiesta del Vino - Wine Festival separate admission required more... | |
| 2:00pm - 3:00pm | America's Challenge Gas Balloon Race Inflation | |
| 5:45pm - 7:30pm | Twilight Twinkle Glow presented by BP America, Inc. | |
| 6:00pm - 7:00pm | America's Challenge Gas Balloon Race Launch presented by Matheson Tri-Gas more... | |
| 8:00pm - 9:00pm | AfterGlow™ Fireworks Show presented by Albuquerque Journal followed by The Marshall Tucker Band | |
i use to be able to access only parts of the NYTimes before this. and so the only way that i could access mr. david brooks' thoughts and insightful analyses of our political miasmas was to watch PBS' this week [he is also a commentator after presidential speeches dissecting nuances and implicits and implications], shell out a buck and buy the paper, or, thru the columbia alumni library online [see what those exorbitant ivy tuition buy ya?!- a lifetime online access of pro-quest & other databases you won't know what to do with...]
he's a challenging chap. elucidates well. he does not rant. but he takes apart an issue like a surgeon so that he exposes the guts and mess leaving you to make your own conclusions. like here in only a few paragraphs, a conclusion [the replublican collapse] supported by a sweeping historical background [an assertion first that modern republicanism starts with burke] on where it has been taken, traced from its english roots [dispositional] to our time [creedal]. neat!
today's NYTimes features an 'appreciation' of herbert muschamp, considering his passion. this after its obit yesterday.:
"His essays often seemed to be governed by an observant ferocity, a quality that occasionally made them feel a little too expansive, temperamentally, for the column inches they took up in this newspaper. When I think back over the impression those essays — and Herbert himself — have left on me, I would say that he had a passion for passion itself, a disdain for the mere politeness of genius. But I think he also had a passion for equity — moral, social and aesthetic."
photos: k. miyamura from pbase.com
fellow o'ahu-an, columbian, architect, photographer; check out the products of his observant eye-- they are haikus in 2-D and pictographs of arresting, patient silences, here. also visit his work with Polshek- NYC and Suyama Peterson Deguchi- Seattle.
there is an entry worth an essay or two here. but they are still in my head. but how do you quell my impetuosity to post these maps?
by themselves, they are seductive contours of wanderlust. of adventures, possibilities, potentialities. the multi-colored lines [and dots and bars] are graphical reductions -- shorthand of decades and centuries of displacement, excavation, construction, traffic mess all. they are the underground, mostly man-made veins, asserted, outlines imposed upon nature for convenience. for progress, they are subterranean cuts and blemishes, products of visionaries [or so-called], designers, politicians, moses' characters who were met and tempered by citizens and committees less or more brilliant, for better or worse. but here they are for mine and your convenience after these centuries... they are not Pollock paintings, obviously, because they are wrought by minds, and then re-re-wrought, and then measured, and then hollowed with engineering exactitude. but each might as well be, as each serves as a window to the variant possibilities of reading and living and traversing and understanding a city. all these, these asymmetrically spidery webs of airless, dark, burrowed intricacies accessed only by descension...
the NYTimes announced the death of Herbert Muchamp, its architectural critic from 1992-2004, here.
"Mr. Muschamp continually returned to analyzing the psychological forces that shape the visual world. Reviewing the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1993, for example, he described a visit to the concentration camp at Dachau, which had a gas chamber (although it was ultimately not used).
“The small size of the gas chamber comes as a surprise,” he wrote. “There is nothing to see besides four walls, a floor, a ceiling and the door that leads outside.”
“It is when you cross the threshold of that door that you grasp the reason for visiting Dachau. You walk out into daylight, but part of you does not leave. The doorway divides you. The part that is free to walk through the door feels disembodied, a weightless ghost. You feel lightheaded, as though you have broken the law, as indeed you have. Your passage through that door has violated the design. The room was not meant to be exited alive.”
***
"In a 2003 appraisal on Daniel Libeskind’s proposed master plan for ground zero, he mocked the architect’s 1,776-foot Freedom Tower and a proposed promenade of heroes as “a manipulative exercise in visual codes.”
“Even in peacetime that design would appear demagogic,” he wrote. “As this nation prepares to send troops into battle, the design’s message seems even more loaded. Unintentionally, the plan embodies the Orwellian condition America’s detractors accuse us of embracing: perpetual war for perpetual peace.”
found this interactive mapa of buenos aires where i will be home [once again] for a coupla weeks on a pad siete piso high, located about where the orange and the blue subte lines intersect.
photo NYTimes
this NYTimes article makes me wanna visit Portland Oregon, where I have not been.
"At first it was a sort of underground stop for food and wine lovers who had heard word of small, fascinating restaurants run by young, talented chefs serving a bounty of local produce. It’s underground no more. Portland has emerged from its chrysalis as a full-fledged dining destination.
This is a golden age of dining and drinking in a city that 15 years ago was about as cutting edge as a tomato in January. Every little neighborhood in this city of funky neighborhoods now seems to be exploding with restaurants, food shops and markets, all benefiting from a critical mass of passion, skill and experience, and all constructed according to the gospel of locally grown ingredients.
In close proximity is a cadre of farmers committed to growing environmentally responsible produce with maximum flavor, delivered to restaurants and to the gorgeous farmers’ markets that dot the city. There are local fisheries and small beef, lamb and pork producers. Not far away is the Hood River Valley, with its myriad fruit growers who supply glistening, fragile berries and stonefruits of every stripe and color.
World-class wine is produced in the Willamette Valley, the center of the Oregon wine industry, just a half hour’s drive away.
when you set your i-pod on random play [because you are tired of hearing about blackwater and the incompetence in washington] you invariably will come to unusual numbers. like here for example a gershwin tune. the lyrics light and rhyme-y. a good way to start the day...
The odds were a hundred to one against me
The world thought the heights were too high to climb
But people from Missouri never incensed me
Oh, I wasn’t a bit concerned
For from hist’ry I had learned
How many, many times the worm had turned
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
When they said that man could fly
***
They all laughed at Rockefeller center
Now they’re fighting to get in
They all laughed at Whitney and his cotton gin
They all laughed at Fulton and his steamboat
Hershey and his chocolate bar
Ford and his misery
Kept the laughers busy
That’s how people are
my ears always perk up whenever the white-suited-one writes about architecture or makes fun of contemporary art or anything of our modern milieu. recently, tom wolfe and eisnenman had a lively discussion at Yale.:
"On the 25th anniversary of his polemical assault on the architectural establishment, “From Bauhaus to Our House,” the best-selling journalist and novelist joined Yale architecture professor Peter Eisenman to discuss the concept of innovation in architecture’s present and future. The pair spoke before a crowd at the Yale University Art Gallery on Monday, with mostly older adults and graduate students lined up on High Street hoping to catch the event.
Dressed in his signature all-white suit, Wolfe charged that an elite coterie of academics and established architects, which he calls “the compound,” has monopolized the direction of their field, often at the expense of popular aesthetics.
“This charming aristocracy of taste began gradually to infiltrate all of the arts and praise things that the masses don’t comprehend or find ugly,” he said.
