So as a part of that I started this blog. It is totally an experiment, something I just threw together to see if anything bites. Check it out here: Culture Stock.

If you have any stories or pictures, please please please share them. not only will my profs totes love me, but more importantly I think it will be really interesting. If you don’t have any stories to share maybe you have some design advice, or maybe you think I could change some things around so they make more sense, or ideas for what I could add.

Whatever you want it to be, it is.

the post i have been thinking about was writing about watching the new york city marathon, which i guess i ultimately decided was not, in the end, worth it.

maybe this will get the ball rolling.

-Maya Lin, the sculptural prodige behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC (did you know that when people visit memorials like this, and leave say, oh a half pack of marlboro reds, a pair of boots and a picture next to the wall–its someones job to pick those things up and put them in an archive. How would you like to be the cyrptolibrarian of symbolic gestures to the dead archive?) also has an amazing piece at this naturalist sculpture park which is my new favorite nickname for anything i like “Storm King”. it’s called waveforms, and its just a field of grass which is constructed to look like the ocean.

-James Turrell’s Roden Crater. “Also, there’s a space where you can see your shadow from the light of Venus alone – things like this. And also wanted to gather starlight that was from outside, light that’s not only from outside the planetary system which would be from the sun or reflected off of the moon or a planet, but also to emanate light from the galactic planes where you’ve got this older light that’s away from the light even of our galaxy. So that is light that would be at least three and a half billion years old. So you’re gathering light that’s older than our solar system. And it’s possible to gather that light, it takes a good bit of stars to do that, and a good look into older skies, away from the Milky Way. You can gather that light and physically have that in place so that it’s physically present to feel this old light. Now that’s a blended light, of course, but it’s also red-shifted, so it’s a different tone of light than we’re normally used to. But that’s something that you can do here in a place like this, where you have good, dark skies. So to have this sort of old blended light and to have this sort of new, eight and a half minute old light from the sun – it’s like having the Beaujolais and then having a finer, older mature blend [of wine] as well. And I wanted to look at light that way, because to feel it physically, almost as we taste things, was a quality I wanted. And this is where you can work with light like that.”

and, my most favorite of favorite dream destinations, Walter De Maria’s Lightning field in New Mexico. cabins available. that’s all im saying on this.

You be the Judge:

Gaga goes:
Lets play a love game, play a love game
Do you want love or you want fame?
Are you in the game? Doin’ the love game

Lets play a love game, play a love game
Do you want love or you want fame?
Are you in the game? Doin’ the love game

let’s play a love game
play a love game
do you want love
or you want fame
are you in the game

Gregg goes:
Do you love me? Are you playing your love games with me?
I just wanna know what to do ’cause I need your love a lot

Moving too fast, this isn’t a race ooh
Baby back off and lower the pace now
Slow it down, and give me some space, mmmh
Moving too fast, this isn’t a race. ah ah

Do you love me? Are you playing your love games with me?
I just wanna know what to do ’cause I need your love a lot

Charles: yo so i did the LES Murder Mystery show with then Tenement Museum yesterday and some guy runs up to me in the middle of it and starts yelling at me to get out of the neighborhood
so i stay in character and make a joke about him and the people laugh and hes like “I heard that! I heard you all laughing at me!”

me: HAHAHAHAH
what did you say??

Charles: i dont remeber
i have a line about how people go poo in the street
and i think i said he was one of the biggest pooers
and then he called me and asshole and wouldn’t leave till we moved down the street
and was yelling its 2009 until we left

me: was he just crazy person?

Charles: no he was a hipster

me: really???

Charles: yeah, he was mad cuz “they’re always doing something on this street, shooting movies, its not a stage its where people live.”
but of course he would never say anything to the people shooting the movie, hell just interrupt the live theatre show being run by the Tenement Museum, those horrible people who are ruining the neighborhood…sorry for the rant

me: no its hilarious
its just out of hand
i mean great experience for you i guess
lemons–>lemonade

Charles: at the time i thought it was funny, but the more i think about the angrier i get at that guy…
p.s. he lives in my building, i saw him go in after he yelled at us

me: NO FING WAY
and you were like…see you later

Charles: no but i wonder if hell recognize me
I was in a full on 1870′s costume

me: but what are you going to do!

Charles: ill be cool, but if he says anything im going to tell him to man up and yell at the huge movie studios that shut down the streets and stop you from waling home instead of events run by the tenement museum whose sole purpose is to enrich the neighborhood and educate the people about how awesome it is
i regret using the word awesome

me: i think we should just dress up in full 1870 gear
and wait outside the door with lead pipes
and then sing an old irish drinking song to him

Charles: and then?

me: thats all

Charles: no hitting with the pipes?

me: well use the pipes as dancing batons

Charles: hahah!
thats a bit!
write it down

me: thats not a bit
talking about bits is a bit
also its already technically “written down”

Charles: i know, but saying its a bit, is too inside of a bit

me: elaborate?

Charles: its an inside joke with comedians
to be like thats a bit
you wouldn’t understand

Morning edition?! Yawn.

I didn’t even get the real guy?!

Microhistories and Subalternity: Archiving the Subaltern from Testimony to Fiction

The Cinematic Cartesian Column: Luis Buñuel’s “Simon del Desierto”

Revolutionary Death and the Black Female Experience (Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sembene Ousmane’s La Noire de… (Black Girl) )

The Golden Cat: The Lolcat Meme and Internet Iconography

Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon: American Mythology and the Psychogeography of the Mid-West

Mediating Art and Activism: Memories of 1968, Creative Practices in 2008

Representations of Exile: Mediating History and Fiction in the Work of Milan Kundera and W.G. Sebald

i almost feel like, for once, my words can’t really do this justice. but there’s an amazing scene where Anvil is playing a tour, and the lead singer keeps approaching other musician rock stars being like DUDE! Remember that time…?!?! and they’d all be like, na man I gotta go. but he persists.

“Who could possibly like Cactus?”