Uncouth Reflections

Architecture Du Jour

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Submitted for your consideration, 20th century architectural history in miniature, as illustrated by three buildings. Located in Inwood neighborhood of upper Manhattan, each is located right next to the other. Here’s a map in the order we’ll be looking at them:

Many of the residential buildings in Inwood date from the 20s and 30s and are built in the Art Deco and Tudor Revival styles.

Charming and beautiful, no? Across the street is…this. It’s Lawrence A. Wien Stadium, where the Columbia football team ~~loses~~ plays. The field is named after Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and Columbia alum. Built in 1982 in the Brutalist style, it resembles a prison guard tower.

Finally, just east of the stadium is the Campbell Sports Complex, designed by Columbia professor Steve Holl who took his inspiration from football diagrams. It looks like a neurotic robot insect to me.

The New York Times loved it (“a tough, sophisticated and imaginative work of architecture”) but the local residents weren’t as enthusiastic:

Inwood neighbors say they understand the problem but contend the design, by the acclaimed architect Steven Holl, a Columbia professor, is out of character with the sedate Art Deco and Tudor-style apartment buildings to the south. The angular Holl building would be set partly on stilts and accented by terraces and stepped ramps that echo urban fire escapes.

“It does not relate well to the community,” said Gail Addiss, 61, an architect who lives opposite Baker Field. “It’s similar to Frank Gehry architecture — large metal things whose glare is going to cause more brightness to reflect into people’s windows.”

Which style do you prefer?

Related

A short history of Columbia University’s involvement in Inwood.

Posted in Architecture | Tagged architectural contrast, Inwood, modernism, New York, postmodernism, traditionalism | 8 Comments

Four Movie Posters for “Danger: Diabolik”

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Mario Bava’s “Danger: Diabolik” is one of those movies that lovers of ’60s-era design can’t help but love. Bava is known for horror movies, but “Diabolik,” with its vivid, comic-book palette and loopy, Bond-inspired sets taps a more playful vein of the maestro’s personality. In many ways it’s the sexy-silly spoof that “Barbarella” tried to be but wasn’t. Bava being one of the great color cinematographers in history, few were better suited than he to bringing the day-glo world of comics to life. It’s a shame he never did another movie of this type.

Artist Renato Casaro’s two pieces, used to advertise the movie in Italy, are among the great movie-poster designs of the ’60s. It’s hard to beat the graphical punch packed by this primarily green, orange, and pink beauty.

Casaro’s larger poster — it’s over six feet in height — moves the spotlit vignette of John Phillip Law and Marisa Mell to Diabolik’s hand and renders it in a more cartoonish style. This poster’s emphasis is on the Diabolik character — a favorite from Italian comics — rather than the sexy lead actors. Speaking of the hand, it seems physically impossible that it’s connected to Diabolik’s arm. But, then, of what matter is physiology to a superhero?

This French design, by Jacques Vassier, wants to make it crystal clear that the movie has some kind of connection to psychedelia. Being French, Michel Piccoli makes an appearance. That’s okay with me. Who doesn’t love Michel Piccoli?

I don’t know who is responsible for the painting on this American poster, but there’s no doubt the Bond franchise served as the primary reference point. The costumed Diabolik doesn’t even make an appearance; rather, the character is presented as a ruggedly handsome man of action. As in the art used to advertise the Bond films, the emphasis is on adventure, manly stuff, and sex. I love the tagline: “Out for all he can take, caress or get away with . . .”

Related

Fab shoe designer Ruthie Davis is a big fan of “Danger: Diabolik,” and she calls Casaro’s smaller poster her “Bible.”

Posted in Commercial art, Movies | Tagged Danger: Diabolik, Diabolik, Jacques Vassier, John Phillip Law, Mario Bava, Marisa Mell, Renato Casaro | Leave a comment

Recipe Du Jour: Puerto Rican Pernil

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

In response to a reddit post asking for recipes for cheap meals, user electric_sandwich produced one of the best reddit comments I’ve ever read:

Take a lesson from the Puerto Ricans. Millions of us have managed to survive in one of the most expensive cities on earth with recipes like this:

Find a supermarket that has black beans on sale. Buy as much as you can. Then buy 5 or so pounds of Carolina rice, a bag of onions, a few bulbs of garlic, and a box of Goya Sazon.

Set 2 cups of water to boil

Dick around on reddit until the water is boiling

Throw in one cup of rice, turn the heat down to simmer and lid that shit

Slice up a small onion

Smash up a clove of garlic

Throw some olive oil or butter into a HOT pan.

Throw the onions and garlic into the pan and fry them till the onion gets glassy. Throw some salt in there.

Grind some pepper in there for good luck.

Toss in half a packet of Sazon and stir till you get a paste. Now you have a ghetto sofrito.

Dump in your can of beans bean juice and all.

Stir that shit up.

Add a pinch of Cayenne pepper so you remember that you have a set of cojones

Set that shit on simmer

Your rice is done.

Throw the beans on top.

Win

You should get at least 2 meals out of one can of beans, and if your lucky you can get black beans 2 for $1. Adding the cost of the Garlic, Sazon and a small onion and you still eat a tasty, hearty, relatively healthy meal for less than $1.

Now. You are a growing lad. You need MEAT

OK, first of all, fuck eating lips and assholes. There is a much, much tastier option that has kept millions of starving boriquas alive for generations: PORK SHOULDER.

In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, Pork shoulder is 79 cents a pound. That’s right. 79 cents. A package of hot dogs at $2.50 is more than double the price and has offal and all sorts of vile shit inside.

Buy yourself a nice meaty pork shoulder. 5 lbs should do nicely.

Bring that fucker home and get out a long, thin knife.

In a pilon (that’s a mortar and pestle gringo) smash up a few cloves of Garlic, some sazon, some, salt, some pepper, and some oil. Grind it up GOOD. Now you have another ghetto sofrito.

Take your knife and stab some holes in the pig. Twist the knife around so the holes get nice and wide.

Now, take some of your sofrito and stuff it into the holes. Don’t be shy blanco, ram it in there. Use the remainder to roughly coat the outside of the pig. RUB IT. CARESS IT. This pig died so that you may eat. Salt that shit all over the outside and crack some fucking pepper on there.

Set your oven for ~300 degrees

Throw the pork in skin side up and WAIT.

It’s going to take like 45 minutes a pound…

A warning: The smell is going to drive you fucking INSANE. You have to wait this part out. Farm work is the best cure.

After an an hour and a half, jab it with a meat thermometer, but remember to not rest it on the bone, or you will get a bad reading.

You should be at around 150-160 degrees. Now comes the fun part. CRANK the stove up to 400 degrees. This will give you an orgasmic, crispy skin that will make your pork rinds taste like year old carboard comparison.

At 170 ish? Pull that fucker out, but DON’T carve it up. You need to wait at least ten minutes otherwise all those sweet, sweet pig juices will dribble the fuck out. WAIT.

Congratulations. You just made Pernil. A five pound Pernil should give you meat for at least a week. SAVOR IT BROTHER. SAVOR IT

Edit: Forgot the best and cheapest fucking recipe!!!

TOSTONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fuck me. Green plaintains are usually like 5 for a fucking dollar!

Here’s my mom’s recipe:

Fry up some bacon. Set the bacon aside and save that lovely, glistening fat.

Take a plantain and run a knife down the side and split the skin off without breaking the plantain. This takes a bit of practice.

Slice up the plantain into ~1/3 inch thick slices. Throw them into a bowl of ice water.

You have a fry daddy? You’re golden papi. No? Pour around half an inch of oil into a frying pan. Corn oil works best, olive oil smokes too easily. Get that shit hot! Throw in your bacon grease.

Take your sliced up plantains out of the ice water and drain them or even pat them with a paper towel till they’re dry.

Fry em up until they just turn golden.

Throw them in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Now, here is where you become a MAN: Get yourself a flat bottom glass and a cutting board or a plate. Throw some flour on there. Smash the plantains with the cup. You may need a spatula to get them off the board…

Fry em AGAIN until they are golden and crispy

Make all three of these things together and you have an incredibly delicious and cheap meal!

*TLDR; Learn the lessons of my people: The Nuyoricans. (New York Puerto Ricans) We have survived for DECADES on no money in one of the most expensive cities on the planet.*

Yesterday I made a pernil based on this recipe and Mark Bittman’s slightly more upscale but still very simple one. The last picture is after about four hours in the oven. The results were good but the rub didn’t get into the meat sufficiently for my liking. No worries, it’s one of those recipes that I’m happy to experiment with until I get it right.

Related

BuzzFeed shares its favorite pork shoulder recipes.

Posted in Food and health | Tagged black beans, New York, pernil, pork, pork shoulder, Puerto Ricans, recipes, tostones | 5 Comments

Fighting Words Links

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

The Garland Texas shoot out has spurred another round of speechifying on free speech, much of it of the yes but variety. I don’t like a lot of it since while I am not a free speech absolutist I come darn close and I figure it is wise to be vigilant, and suspicious, when people step up their yes butting rhetoric.

I can’t object overly to people grousing about the motivations of the group that held the event. It’s free speech to not like what they are up to. It’s free speech, too, to advocate legal (most likely constitutional) changes to make us more like the rest of the world, which some commentators would like to do.

But there is the underlying problem of the “reasonable man” concept that in the end almost all law is premised on. Culture trumps law as it does politics and most other things, and if the culture shifts massively away from traditional notions of free speech, one way or another the law will move with that change. So it is wise to keep a close eye on the debate for signs that values are shifting in ways that will prove capable of undermining what we consider to be settled law.

And we do seem to have a rough legal consensus on concepts like “fighting words”. Since the Texas shooting we have seen another round of arguments that the event itself was a provocation–was designed as a provocation–and as such may cross the “fighting words” boundary. That sounds good if you are inclined to believe it–but is it a legally sound argument?

I am not a lawyer but I don’t think it is a legally sound argument. Here is one credible legal analysis, from FIRE. Here is David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy. And here is Eugene Volokh.

The concept of “fighting words”, introduced in a Supreme Court case in the 1940s has been progressively (!) whittled down over the years, to the point where Nadine Strossen says it is essentially meaningless. As the FIRE article points out, in a more recent Supreme Court case that whittled at the idea “(t)he majority held that fighting words were only ‘those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction.'”

A cartoon show, even one designed to inflame, does not make the cut IMHO. More the better, too.

Still and all, you’ll note even in the whittling language above that inevitable reliance on the reasonable man–the “ordinary citizen” who would conclude an action is likely to provoke a violent reaction “as a matter of common knowledge.” Beware those tendencies.

We tend to think of the left as giving in nowadays to the siren’s song of throttling speech, and it has tended to be the right that has seemed to take up the cause. Interesting since as Razib has pointed out, the general impulse in favor of unfettered speech is positively correlated with education and political liberalism of the contemporary variety.

Posted in Uncategorized | 27 Comments

Architecture Du Jour

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

A pic I snapped on Broadway in Inwood, Upper Manhattan. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood are in the style of the one on the right, but someone decided to do something different, I guess.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Posted in Architecture | Tagged architectural contrast, modernism, traditionalism | 4 Comments

Monday Klassic Musik: Joni Mitchell / Black Crow

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

In the way of musical influences on le Barken, Joni Mitchell certainly looms large. At first, this seems a surprise. Why would a space and drug music addict like me have a good word for this weepy, introspective and very female chick singer-songwriter? Well, not all is as it appears.

Sure, she’s often lumped in with the likes of Carly Simon and Carole King, but that’s just pop music’s squinty-eyed vision. She’s nothing of the sort, and bears little resemblance to those lightweight talents, when properly understood. What we have here is a talent on the order of Miles or Picasso in their realms. I chose those two references carefully: for both exhibited the ability to reinvent themselves and stay relevant long past their sell-by dates, and yet retain their essence.

And so with Mitchell: from her debut as hippy flower child she never held back from her vision, whatever the commercial and artistic risks. At the height of her success and popularity she chucked it all by pursuing her own vision of a jazz-pop music revival. This earned the censure of Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone, who today needs an attribution, while Mitchell doesn’t.

The word that most comes to mind with Mitchell is “inventive,” followed by “restless”. Surely her future as a songwriter was assured after the success of “Clouds” as performed by Judy Collins, but that wasn’t it for her. Mitchell had questions in her mind, questions about what music could be, about, in the end, what she herself could become. And to make this vision real, she’s learned to make her art fire on all cylinders.

There are many excellent songwriters, excellent guitarists, excellent singers, excellent arrangers…Mitchell is all of them at once. She can breathe seductive lines of melody like incense smoke, spice her rhythms with unexpected and challenging syncopations, spin dark landscapes of unexpected new chords, and weave it all around her own unique poetic voice, one that rarely has recourse to stock phrases and cliches.

Mitchell is now in the hospital, with conflicting news of her condition. I hope she is well but in a sense she really can’t die. Far too many souls are walking around with her within for that.

Posted in Music | Tagged Joni Mitchell | 7 Comments

Linkage

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Free speech as a cultural ideal continues to erode. Fuck the PEN dissenters and college students who want “safe spaces.”
Alan Dershowitz thinks charging the Baltimore cops with the murder of Freddie Gray is nothing but a show trial for crowd control.
When I suggested to my law school friends who were staunchly in support of gay marriage that of course polygamy was next, I remember marveling when they expressed disgust at the idea.
Just think how much more advanced Western Civilization would be if all those Greek female statutes had more explicit genitalia. We’d probably be living in a utopia right now.
Over at Slate, Virginia Postrel wonders what the Venus de Milo’s arms were doing.
Even birdhouses must be modernist.
The great Manolo Shoeblogger reveals his identity as a professor of medieval history in Nashville. Here he is on disgusting Spanish hamburgers.
The great novelist Ruth Rendell has died. RIP. Paleo Retiree/Michael Blowhard talked a little bit about Rendell here.
Jesus, Sartre was full of merde, wasn’t he?
Friend o’ the blog Todd Fletcher has a new album out. If you like good music you’ll want nothing to do with it, but you should buy it anyway. The man is in desperate need of pocket money for weed.

Posted in Linkathons | 8 Comments

Mad Men Notes: S7, Ep11 — “Time & Life”

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

1. Nice to see that this episode was directed by Jared Harris. And speaking of dudes coming off the bench, I’ve noticed that Robert Towne has been named a consulting producer in the closing credits. I wonder if Towne will get co-writing credit on any of the scripts. Is Weiner saving him for the finale?

2. “Greenwich, Connecticut is built on divorced money!”

3. The major plot development this episode is Sterling Cooper physically moving to the McCann offices — from the Time & Life building to 622 Third Avenue. (Above is what the New York McCann office looks like today.) McCann of course frames it as a promotion but Roger, Don, and the rest of the gang view it as a defeat. At first it looked like they would flee to California (maybe Joan still will to be with Captain Pike?) but they seem to have grudgingly accepted it for now.

4. Lou was given his send-off this episode — to make a cartoon of “Scout’s Honor” with the studio that produced “Speed Racer.” Has anyone seen the Wachowskis’ movie version of SR? Might be time for me to check it out.

5. Loved the comic bit where Pete squared off against the school headmaster — the Campbells v. the McDonalds, a WASP version of the Hatfields v. McCoys, I guess.

Posted in Television | Tagged Mad Men, Matthew Weiner | Leave a comment

Four Movie Posters for “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Though it’s rarely talked about, I’ve long considered this adaptation of the Defoe novel to be major Bunuel.

This American poster features the key artwork of the campaign: an image of Dan O’Herlihy as Crusoe holding aloft a rifle. Whoever came up with this image didn’t want to leave anything out: You know a man means business when he comes at you with his firearm, his cutlass, and his parrot.

The Danish poster replaces the cutlass with a parasol. Still got the parrot, though. The Danish movie poster tradition favors strong outlines and simplified, almost cartoon-like, coloration.

This French take adds some line-art adventure vignettes; they seem drawn from the more fully realized ones on the American poster.

Did a parrot even feature in the Defoe novel? I’ve read it, but I don’t recall a parrot.

In England, The Academy Cinema used this poster to advertise a double-bill featuring the Bunuel film. Designed by famed woodcut artist Peter Strausfeld, it features a less warlike Crusoe and a parrot that prefers fingers to shoulders.

This is the way I tend to think of Crusoe: as a resigned and rustic hermit.

I’ve never heard of the other movie on this double-bill, even though someone at the time considered it a “major masterpiece.” The tagline — “[A] moving and delightful story of two boys and an otter” — sounds vaguely salacious.