RANDOM THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING

This post was inspired by the pictures in a miscellaneous file that I keep adding to. Just for the heck of it, I think I'll free associate on some of them and see if anything useful comes of it. Don't expect anything practical. Free associating means you jot down the first thing that comes to your mind, practical or no.

Okay, the two pictures above for example.....I like low, slanted, beam roofs. I'll bet everybody does. So why don't we see more of them?

This (above) would be an almost ideal work place for somebody like me. I'm impulsive so I could use lots of table space with different projects going on at different locations around the room.  It would be nice to have my books handy, too. I'd probably arrange for awnings to regulate the sunlight.

I like to see touches of bas relief sculpture (above) on homes and offices.  Modern materials and casting techniques make this cheaper and easier to do than it's ever been.

Here (above) stairs are shunned in favor of a steep, carpeted, curving ramp. That's kinda neat. Maybe ramps and stairs should be side by side.

What the heck is going on in the background of this picture (above)? It looks like a conference table is sitting on a pile of dirt. Whatever it is, it makes me wonder if it a large living room might contain a section of small, carpeted hills and valleys.

I continue to believe in using the Disneyland Express (above) as a model for real urban transportation.

Maybe moderately tall buildings (above) should be designed to be scalable by the public on one side. 

I've always liked the idea of letting kids (above) drive kid-size cars. I can think of a bunch of reasons why that wouldn't work, but we're free associating, remember? What if there were special roads just for kid cars? What if the only kids who could drive on them were mechanically-inclined kids who built or maintained their own funky cars? That's one way to nudge kids into engineering careers.

We need to figure out how to reward kids for being smart or handy with their hands. We need to make the idea of being skilled look like fun.

 Should we train animals to drive cars? No, that's silly.

We should ask the skilled engineers what they think should be done to encourage kids to go into technical careers. We should take what they say seriously.

I wish private philanthropy would pay more attention to rewarding talented kids. Why not make a sail boat and crew available for the members of kid science, engineering and agricultural clubs? It doesn't have to be as big and impressive as the ship in the photo above. Bill Gates, are you reading this?

Believe it or not, an awful lot of homes sit on ground that used to be a pond or a small lake. A 24-hour a day pump under each building keeps the land so dry that lots of people who live in the area don't realize how potentially wet the place is. Maybe we should allow some of those ponds to reassert themselves. If the soil has a lot of clay to retain the water, and the water could be kept moving (to keep mosquitoes out) we might get a first class pond. Maybe we could stock it with fish.

Aaaargh! Everything here is probably impractical. Well, like I said, we're free associating.

"DOUBLE INDEMNITY": THE OLD AND NEW VERSION COMPARED

  

That's (above) part of the opening title of the original 1944 version. Behind the letters the shadow of a mysterious crippled man walks slowly, inexorably toward the camera. We never see his face. Who is he? Why is he crippled?  The music whips us into a frenzy of excitement. Just who is this man?

After the titles we fade to the city at night and a car careens recklessly through the streets. Other cars screech to a halt to avoid hitting it.

The car pulls up to the entrance of an office building. A mysterious figure with his back to camera...a new figure, not the man with crutches...gets out and lumbers up to the locked door. It's noir...everything is in shadow.

The stranger's knocking summons the night watchman, who recognizes him and takes him up to his floor in an elevator. The watchman tries to make idle small talk but the stranger, still with his back to camera, deflects it.

Okay, let's see how the 1973 remake (above) handles the same opening. This time there's no careening car, no shots of the city at night. An unidentified man makes his way to the door of an office building at night. I hesitate to call him a mystery man because we see his face the whole time.

So, where are the shadows? Granted, it's a TV movie and they probably had to shoot the cheapest way, but noir IS cheap to shoot. Some scenes in the original noirs were shot with a single light source. I guess the producer just didn't care enough.

Generic titles appear over the man as he walks into the lobby. Without shadows the lobby's architecture is revealed. It's that bright, optimistic style that was so popular in that period...something totally at odds with the dramatic nature of the story.

The watchman (above) doesn't walk over to the door. He just sits there and watches the stranger sign in. People in this film do a lot of sitting.

Back to the old black and white film: the stranger gets off the elevator and looks down into a sort of courtyard that contains empty desks where clerks work during the day. Your first impression is that he's looking down into hell.

 Now we see the stranger's face for the first time. It's on a long upshot. He hobbles along the upper floor like a rat skulking in the rafters.

We watch as he painstakingly lets himself into his barely-lit office, and with great effort  sits down. From the way he moves it's evident that he's been shot. The downshot tells us that this is a man who has the attention of the gods. They're watching him, waiting to see what happens.

 He turns on his dictaphone and begins to dictate his confession. We learn that he's an insurance salesman who helped a woman kill her husband for the insurance money. Now he's been shot and has only a short time to live.

Notice the dim light. With only minutes to live, he himself is an insubtantial shadow at the threshold of the nether world. We're watching a soul painfully pass out of this life into the great unknown.

Back to the seventies version: we fade out from the stranger standing in front of an elevator in the lobby, to him walking around his desk and painfully sitting down. The lighting is typical TV lighting. No nether world, just brown light, if there is such a thing.

Aaaaargh! That's all I have time for. Which version do you prefer?

ORNATE VALENTINE CARDS

When I buy valentines I usually go for the funny, well-drawn ones, and if they disappoint then I change course and choose the most elaborate, sentimental, over-the-top card that I can find. That's because Valentines Day is devoted to love which, let's face it, is an extreme emotion. If it were Friendship Day I'd skip the card and buy my friend a beer, but it's not...it's freaking drastic Valentines Day.

The problem with elaborate cards is that they're pricey. Up til recently the Germans made the best ones. They were die-cut and embossed, and must have been a pain in the neck to make.

Some of them (above) were even hand-painted.

Valentine cards got ridiculously ornate. A lot of them looked like lace. They were die-cut on a type of high-quality cardboard that only greeting card people know about. I can only imagine what the factory that made them looked like. They must have had a huge reject pile of cards that got torn in the machine, and a workforce with many fingers missing.

For buyers who couldn't afford the lacey die cuts, there were nice, straight forward cards like the one above.

Those are fine, but I prefer...what should I call them... fantasy cards. Those are cards that attempt to abstract the notion of love, and portray it with symbols. Like the card on the left, above. A cupid stands on a balcony made of astroturf wedged into circular vines of pure love energy. Under the cupid a turkey-sized dove lands on a home-made twig fence nested in clover and grass and a peasant girl holds up a potted plant, which I'm guessing is a fertility symbol.     

The more fanciful, the better, I reason. Here's (above) a big fold-out card showing a little boy cavorting around what appears to be a temple or a gazebo containing a giant heart. The flowers around him are immense and he requires an umbrella because...because what? Maybe to fend off giant bees or raindrops, it's hard to tell. A big, blood red rock blocks his way, but why put a rock there? Is he crossing a stream?

If a little girl were chasing the boy, maybe to kiss him, then the picture would tell a story and make more sense, but I think I like the card better the way it is. It's a dream-like impression of love. It shouldn't have to make sense.

Here (above) a little boy pulls up to his girlfriend's house in a flower filled wagon pulled by giant doves. She's invited to join him on a trip that would lose its appeal if it were spelled out. The best romantic artwork and poetry is always a bit vague.

Here (above) a cupid pulls up in a 1920s motor car filled with flowers. The house he stops at is also packed with flowers and garlands and the inhabitants run out to see the beautiful car.  

This carriage (above) doesn't carry you to a gazebo, it contains a gazebo of its own.

Maybe these (above) are unrelated valentines that were brought together for the sake of the photograph, but I like to think they were all meant to be part of the same diorama. Another guy has given your girl a valentine showing a nice car festooned with flowers and cupids. How do you beat that? Why, with a locomotive of course! In fact, how about two locomotives?  The cupid chauffeur drives the dual Super Chiefs up to her door to pick her up. If that doesn't impress her, nothing will!

Here (above), I believe, the car and the house are part of the same card. It doesn't have the impact of dual locomotives, but the house makes up for it. This is a fitting destination for a lovemobile ride: a mansion full of servants and friends who are delighted to see you, and  who will whisk you and your lover away to flower-filled rooms. 

Ornate mass-market valentines effectively came to an end in the 1960s. I guess they just weren't perceived as cool. Too bad, because a new and interesting style of card was just beginning to surface: the architectural card where each card is a separate love building in a whole love town.  

PULP OPENINGS

I'm a huge fan of 30s pulps (random covers above and below), and my favorite part of those stories is usually the beginning. I just can't believe how quickly pulp writers could establish a mood and get the reader involved. Fans wanted their thrills as quickly as possible, and publishers were eager to comply. I thought you might like to see a few examples, sooo.........

What do you think of this opening from "Return of the Death Master" by Curtis Steele?

"The subway moved through the ground like a snake in a tunnel. It slid smoothly across the tracks, its single nose light stabbing outwards like a glowing Cyclops eye. It was the only light anywhere in the train. Inside, everything was dark."


Wow...a Cyclops of a train speeding through the night time subway tunnels...and the inside is dark. Why? Is it a runaway train? Is it controlled by a madman? Four short sentences and you're sucked in.

Here's (below) the opening of another train story, 'Corpse Cargo' by Grant Stockbridge. This one starts a little slower:

"Within the train all was peace and quiet. The overhead lights were dim and the green curtains hung heavy and dark, swaying now and then to the rhythm of the speeding Island Limited. The gray-haired conductor walked slowly through the dimness, stopped a moment in the doorway of the men's smoker and glanced in at the white-coated porter busily shining shoes. 

The conductor pushed on along into the car proper and looked weary-eyed along the swaying aisle. Somewhere a baby, awake in the night, gurgled. A mother murmered soft, lulling words---as on the hill the woman gripped Bolo's arm and hissed, 'Now! Now!'


The conductor was smiling, his ears filled with the mother's soft humming when, like the fury of hell, the green fire struck! It struck like lightning, like a bolt from blue, cloudless skies. The dim, sleeping aisle of the pullman glittered suddenly with liquid light. Green-white chains of flame that struck like vicious snakes stabbed out from every metal thing upon the train, from the steel sides of the coaches.

 The old conductor's face twitched convulsively and the chained lightning of the killers danced in fiendish glee. In the smoker the negro porter writhed upon the floor. In their berths, men and women and children tossed and jerked in the torturing grip of incredibly powerful voltage. And everywhere through the train the green, horrible light wavered and danced."


Nice, very nice.

What do you think of this one (below)?

"Night, black and rain-swept, shrouded the Kirty Institute for the insane. Gusts of howling wind attacked the ugly gray buildings like seas pounding some bleak, rocky coast. There was the same impression of desolation, of a savagely forbidding place that humans shunned.


A small car lurched to a stop in front of the guardhouse at the gate. Two men got out, collars upturned, hats pulled low."


Geez, this (above) set the mood in the very first sentense!

I'll end with a story that starts in the middle, so as not to waste a single moment of the reader's time.


"A faint, almost imperceptible, click sounded in the room. The floor beneath Conners' feet dropped like a gallows trap. What had been solid, shining mahogoney was suddenly a gaping black void. The white man stumbled forward. His gun fell from his grasp as his arms shot upward, then he shot through space. Down, down, into the darkness below. 


The native servants stood blandly silent. The vagaries of their master were not new to them. From the opening in the floor there came a horrible scream of terror, that echoed ominously through the room like a banshee's wail.


'For God's sake take me out of here! What is this thing? God, it's coming close to me!"  It's----' "

Nifty, eh?

A VALENTINE CARD

Oooooohhh! I can't believe I forgot that Valentines Day was coming. If I'd remembered I'd have done something special for the occasion because I believe in it. It's important. It's a holiday that actually carries philosophical weight.

Romantic love, as the troubadours sang about it in the Middle Ages, helped to establish the modern notion of liberty. If your feelings for another person are recognized to be equal to, or sometimes even transcend your obligation to the state, then your happiness acquires political importance. Whether the troubadours knew it or not, they were planting the idea in peoples' minds that individuals were important, that they had a right to pursue their own happiness. Romantic love is a powerful assertion that you have a right to live for your own sake, and that states have to recognize that.

I also believe in romantic love because I think it's the best way for most people to find happiness. I'm well aware that there are people who do just fine without it, and other people who've actually come to grief because of it. Nevertheless, for the average man its the golden path to companionship, family and peace of mind. I'm tempted to add intellectual vitality to that list, but that would be a controversial assertion that I might not be able to defend in a short post.




Here's (above) a clip from the 1968 film, "Romeo and Juliet." I love how it shows the lovers tuning everyone else in the room out. I love the way two people who were strangers only fifteen minutes before, would now risk their lives to be with each other. I'm a big believer in love at first sight. When you meet the person who's right for you, it hits you like ton of bricks, and the film managed to capture that. The clip starts a bit awkwardly, so give it a minute to find its pace.

I'll end with a quote from "Moonstruck," a terrific film by Norman Jewisson. Nicholas Cage delivers this line to Cher:

“…I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either — but love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves, and to break our hearts, and love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit! Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!”


Wow! There's lots to discuss there, maybe sometime in the future. 

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON FASHION

Boy, women (above) sure like fashion! 

What's in now are thick eyebrows and unibrows. You see them everywhere. Some people attribute that to the influence of Joan Crawford in the forties. Maybe, but my guess is that it started big time with the rediscovery of the feminist communist painter, Frida Kahlo (above). Kahlo did a zillion portraits of herself which not only emphasized bushy eyebrows but also her girl mustache and jaw line hair.

That's Kahlo in real life (above), proudly displaying her mustache.

The Kahlo mustache failed to catch on but, as I said, thick eyebrows are everywhere.

Imagine how that makes girls like this one (above) feel. Lots of girls permanently removed their entire eyebrows thinking that thin, painted on brows were the height of chic, and would be with us til the end of time. Aaaargh! Fashion can be cruel. 

On another subject, I observe that a lot of women still like to knit (above).

And they still knit for their boyfriends (above), too.

On yet another subject, here's an outfit (above) that was around when I was a kid: bottle cap hat, loose top, ultra-tight calf-length skirt, and long, long cigarette holder. It was the "Pepsi Generation" look.

This (above) was around at the same time: Scoop-back dresses with face fish net festooned with little black balls or cloth bugs. John K is obsessed with these bug nets.

The latest fashion is sneakers with toes. They make everybody's feet look like Goofy's. This (above) is the most popular brand: "Vibram Five Fingers." It started as something for barefoot runners but now they're regarded as chic, and even couch potatoes have them. They require socks with toes.

Interesting, eh?

KIDS WHO STARE AT YOU

While I'm on the subject of little girls (see the previous post), don't you hate kids who stare at you in restaurants and trains? The last time that happened to me I got the idea of taking out a piece of paper and quick sketching a little wordless story for the kid, where I show him every drawing as I draw it. The story would be me beating the kid up for staring.

I didn't do it, but I made a note to try it one of these days. Yeeesh! Suppose the kid grabs the drawing and shows it to his dad?

A VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT SUGGESTION

What do you give a wife or girlfriend for Valentine's Day? Flowers? A restaurant meal? Sure, why not...but something else is needed, don't you think? Something cool like....a tea party! Yes, a tea party, a real little girl's tea party with a real little girl (or girls) hosting the Valentine couple. Imagine the charm of sitting at the little table with your significant other, surrounded by dolls, and chatting with a little girl...maybe the child of a relative or friend...while she pours tea and serves bisquits. Your present to your girl would the gift of witnessing childhood charm.

I was surprised to find that the thought of a tea party held no appeal for the adults I talked to. Maybe that's because the Disney Princess people took over the idea. These days a lot of formal kid birthday parties are built around this Disney theme. I guess it's a chance for girls to wear the princess costumes they bought at Halloween. There's nothing wrong with that, but I prefer something on a smaller scale....



...something like this (above). These kids know how to celebrate.



How old should the kid host be?  Maybe as young as this girl (above). Boy, she really has the tea party spirit. I like the small scale of the furniture and the tiny plastic tea sets. The chair should be so low that an adult sitting in it has his knees almost up around his chin.

Of course a tea party requires ritual. Maybe a little kid has to have witnessed an adult tea party in order understand the ceremony.

Kids have a limited attention span, and the tea party probably won't last long. Maybe you can stretch it out by baking scones with the kid, following her directions.  Scones are fast and easy to make.




Maybe the thing to do is to build up expectation for the eventual arrival of...The Queen. Maybe the Queen is an adult who comes in amid much fanfare and agrees to take tea with everyone for a while. Here's (above) the way the Rennaisance Faire handles the Queen's entrance.