arbofo

There’s a massive battle of wills going on in my head right now. My desire to watch movies, paint, or dive into the pile of books on my nightstand is at serious odds with the fact that I have a Art History midterm next Monday. It’s sorta important that I pass this thing, cause my employer isn’t going to offer tuition reimbursement for anything less than a ‘B’.

Yeah… Debt? Not fun.

So… before I ground myself from blogging and all things Internet, I wanted to share some stuff, like:

… Miranda July’s hypnotic book promo (via BoingBoing) … a gorgeous slide show contemplating the future of libraries … real-life hobbit houses … one more reason to love Takashi Murakami … and, um, this is just too hilarious to skip.

Sorry the links are so old! I seem to be developing pack rat tendencies in my Google Reader.

My roommate and I got started talking some nonsense about this guy, Harry Whittier Frees, who dressed cats up in bizarre get-ups in, uh… the name of art:

C: http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/brassgoggles/?p=473
me: vat is dis?
C: See those kittens? In the airship?
me: cute?
C: My grandma sent me three of this guy’s books. One with puppies, one with kitties and one with bunnies.
me: holy crap
http://members.shaw.ca/pelorian/index2.html#anchor121222
C: Yeah. the first three that person talks about
me: Emma does not know how good she has it
C: Perhaps we can show her the pictures and use those as an incentive not to scratch the couch
me: snort
hahahahaha

While I wait for a roommate to exit the bathroom, here’s quote from Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon. It’s totally unrelated to my last post, but I wanted to share it, nonetheless.

Do any of you know that famous photograph by Robert Doisneau? It has two lovers kissing in the middle of a busy Parisian street? Well, whatever, here’s the quote:

Mostly, we shop at BHV, the department store on the rue de Rivoli, which has become our home, our Luxembourg Gardens. BHV—the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville, the City Hall Bazaar—is always called by its initials (bay-aish-vay), and it is an old store, one of the great nineteenth-century department stores on the Right Bankthat are the children of the Galeries Lafayette. As I say, it is on the rue de Rivoli; in fact that famous Robert Doisneau photograph of the two lovers kissing is set on the rue de Rivoli, just outside BHV. This is doubly ironic: first, because the narrow strip of the rue de Rivoli in front of BHV is about the last place in the world that you would want to share a passionate kiss—it would be a bit like kissing at the entrance to the BMT near Macy’s—and of course, it explains why they did it anyway. They are not sundered lovers but a young couple who have managed to buy an electric oven and emerged alive. Anyone who has spent time at BHV knows that they are kissing not from an onset of passion but from gratitude at having gotten out again (Gopnik, 50).

Hm… roommate’s still in there. Oh why didn’t I remember to grab my toothbrush on my way out of the bathroom this morning? WHY? Anyway, it’s a nice interpretation of the photograph, isn’t it?

In ASL class last night, time was set aside for conversation practice. I found myself telling a classmate about D-PAN’s interpretation of John Mayer’s Waiting on the World to Change.

My classmate signed back: “So, it’s an ASL-interpreted video?”

I groaned as I realized the double-meaning of “interpret.”  How do you say… the video is not strictly an English-to-ASL language conversion.  Instead, ASL is performed, much in the way dance is, to visually supplement the song in the background.

The effect is pretty fabulous — I’m dying to see what they come out with next.

Art is like medicine - it can heal. Yet I’ve always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don’t believe in art, without questioning either. - Damien Hirst

I saw this quote (and registered how awesome it was) as I logged into WordPress.com homepage, where this “Hawt Post” was showcased. It turns out that the Damien Hirst entry belongs to a promising looking blog (mostly) about Abstract Expressionism. I definitely need to go back and check it out some more!