Human Beings Not Welcome Here

Have you seen the MIT Stata Center? It isn’t yet finished but is really the most preposterous-looking thing i’ve ever seen, at once fascinating and ridiculous. It’s something out of a Fritz Lang movie. It’s almost frightening-looking, really. But then so are all the buildings on the MIT campus. It’s a very dehumanizing place–enormous buildings that are each some huge paean to architectural greatness–each a Platonic vision of a building–but rarely have much utility for humans. There is one building that scares the shit out of me–I’m not sure which number it is (another dehumanizing MIT trait, the buildings are numbers and not names) but it’s the only tall building on campus, just across from Bldg. 14. There’s no first floor, it sits on concrete stilts, basically, and you enter through an anonymous-looking concrete stairwell, as if you’re entering an alien spacecraft or a time capsule. I have to walk under it occasionally to cross campus and always get an eerie feeling. Later I found out that that building is the site of most suicides at MIT. (shudder.) Whether it’s the particularly dehumanizing aura of that building or merely its height that draws students to fling themselves, I don’t know. But in every building on campus there is the distinct feeling that humans are not welcome there.

FilmNotes

I’m writing the brattle filmnotes for AMERICAN SPLENDOR, be on the lookout…I like doing the filmnotes because I get to pick what movies I want to write about rather than being assigned, and I can write whatever I want, which makes it much less of a chore. The only problem is that most of the films they screen are ones I’ve seen countless times in film school and would like to never see or mention again, so there are usually few films in their lineup that I actually want to write about. But there are the occasional gems, like SPLENDOR and CRUMB.

small frown

It’s kinda sad when you see the blog of someone you thought was intriguing and discover that they’re actually kinda boring.

Backyard Saint

 

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Just try to get a goal past me. I dare ya. Eternal damnation awaits.

Goldin v. Silber

The battle over the BU presidency is a battle of megalomaniacs that has taken on Highlanderesque proportions…in the New York Times Goldin even said “There can be only one…” 

As an alum (grad school) I think I want Goldin to win–at least, I definitely want Silber to lose–but is one megalomaniac really better than another? It probably takes no less than that to eliminate one, though. No less than Christopher Lambert can eliminate The Kurgan.

Green Monster

Does anyone know when they’re gonna get that awful green monster out of the Science Center yard? It’s been blocking my path for more than a year and I am beginning to wonder if it has become a permanent fixture.

Story

click to read my new story MASON-DIXON … more to come…

beautiful boys

I figured it out!

finally, i figured out how to change the appearance of this blog…now i can start mad updating. i can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out. i like the new look but still may not feel comfortable posting here. for now still check out http://defamation.blogspot.com