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LiveJournal for Hipstomp.
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| Monday, April 14th, 2008 |
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 We've got luxury cars and luxury airplanes, but trains are the transport form that best lend themselves to traveling in style. With no pain-in-the-neck aerodynamics-based curves to contend with, the boxy shape of a train car is just begging to be filled with building-based luxe touches, and several travel operators have taken full advantage. Let's take a look at some of the more notable ones from around the world. South Africa's Blue Train has been voted the "world's leading luxury train." The five-star-hotel-on-wheels cruises through the vineyards and colonial towns of the dark continent and is one of the few trains in the world to feature en-suite bathrooms with actual bathtubs. And if you drop the silverware on the Persian rug, a 24-hour butler scuttles out to take care of it, so you needn't sully your hands.    India's Palace on Wheels promises "heaven on Earth for seven days" with ultraluxe air-conditioned rooms, two different restaurants for the picky, an opulent bar, a library, exotic fabrics, and stiff-upper-lipped service people who will probably not complain if you slap them. Tour touches include being greeted at some of the destinations by "caparisoned elephants." Alas, guests will have to bath standing up in a shower. Savagery!    Southeast Asia's Eastern & Oriental Express has pretty much the same luxuries as the aformentioned trains--gourmet food, a boutique, servants with funny last names, and a disturbing racial divide between who gets to sit down and snap pictures and who gets to stand up and fetch drinks. Globalization, you cheeky monkey!     The crown jewel of the Venice-Simplon Orient Express is a baby grand piano in the bar car (how the heck did they get that thing in there, did they assemble it on-board?). On the Orient Express, you "can never be overdressed" as you move about in cars filled with lacquered wood, polished brass, crystal and French silverware. Bonus: murder someone on board, then frame a French guy by stuffing a kimono in his luggage--it's all part of the fun!      Additional sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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| Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 |
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| Monday, March 31st, 2008 |
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 One of the best scenes in Michael Bay's 1998 actioner Armageddon is New York City's Grand Central Terminal hosting the arrival of a flaming meteor, rather than the 3:12 from Brewster. In the brief pre-disaster establishing shot of the station's interior, done in CG, shafts of sunlight stream through the clerestory windows as they hadn't for decades. In reality the original clerestory design feature had long been upstaged by the many light-blocking skyscrapers erected around Grand Central over the years. Someone who remembers the original sight is 77-year-old interior designer Boris Klapwald. Half a century ago Klapwald was a Pratt Institute student with a camera, and he took a crapload of photos of Grand Central's interior: "It was a place of contemplation, really--the exact opposite of what it is today," he recalled. "...I liked the quiet of it. It was like a cathedral. You didn't have to pray; you could reflect on yourself." The Times has an article on Klapwald and a slideshow of 14 of his photographs. The rest of his shots can be seen on display at the actual Terminal, in the lower level. |
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| Sunday, March 30th, 2008 |
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Is there anything advertisers won't do to get your attention? Apparently these guys peaked in '05, but I must have been living under a rock as I've never heard of them: The Circlemakers are a team of guys who make corporate advertisements in the form of crop circles. With mandates from the Nike Free, Microsoft X-Box, Sanrio's Hello Kitty and Shredded Wheat cereal, their "billboards" were presumably not cheap, but as their website's not been updated in nearly a year, perhaps the tap has stopped running. Fine with me; I prefer the ones done by actual space aliens. Sure, aliens might suck a few of us up with that light beam and probe us or whatever, but they never ask you to buy anything.  "I just want to make art." |
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 This kick-ass bi-level London apartment by Hogarth Architects makes heavy use of timber, and was "designed as a large piece of furniture to provide all the functions required by a man about town." Kitchen, living room and original fireplace downstairs; bedroom and swanky shower up on the mezzanine. If I lived here, I'd blog more, because I'd never go out.  Click here for the rest of the pics, taken by shooter James Brittain. via dezeen |
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Why is most technology such a bitch to use? A Family Guy video shows us why if R2D2 was running Windows, Princess Leia would've been screwed: |
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 How good is your design eye? We're loving ApartmentTherapy's "Guess the Decade," (latest installment here) where you peep the photo and try to figure out if the room was designed before or after America went to hell in a handbasket. |
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 For once, we here in the 'States are technologically ahead of the guys in Korea: South Korean police are only now proposing to have the tech wired up so people can be tracked by cell phone and satellite. What's totally suspect is the reasoning: The new proposal is submitted in a bid to combat the increasing incidence of kidnapping and other crimes against women and children, the police said. Why suspect? Because: ...the system does not work well indoors, where satellite signals are blocked. I don't think this is going to be a tough technology to beat. Tip to kidnappers: When you nab someone a) take their phone away or b) avoid leaving them outside in the yard. via textually |
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Although it's no longer in debate whether meditation changes our brain chemistry--Buddhist monks "in the zone" have been proven to emit different brainwaves than the rest of us ADD-addled folk--researchers are wondering if using tools changes up the wiring in our grey matter. To put this to the test, scientists at Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research have taught rodents to use rakes. After 60 days of training, the rodents (not really rats, something called a degu) were able to use a miniature rake to reach bits of food that were placed out of their ordinary reach. As the Times reports, ...it has long been thought that tool use is a hallmark of higher intelligence.... Training [animals] to use tools in captivity provides insights into the plasticity of their brains. Our guess as to where the study's going next:  via the new york times |
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| Friday, March 28th, 2008 |
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 Yes folks, British regulator Ofcom has paved the way for cell phone use to be permitted on airplanes. That is perfect, and exactly the way to make flying a more peaceful, enjoyable experience. The next step is to make sure that crying babies are equipped with cell phones so they can do double duty. And the step after that is to allow me to open the cabin doors whenever I need some fresh friggin' air. via bbc |
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 This worn-out keyboard shows you why certain letters are worth more in Scrabble; they just don't get that much play. Of course, I'm guessing that when he/she gets home, the medical transcriptionist who wore this keyboard out is thinking less about Scrabble and more about cures for carpal tunnel. Also, that exclamation mark over the one's looking kind of faded--I'd hate to think what kind of medical report requires a "!" via scissorfighter on Picasa and boing boing |
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| Monday, March 17th, 2008 |
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If you have a subscription to Theme Magazine but have not been receiving your issues (what's up Alex), please send an e-mail to rain (at) thememagazine [dot] com subject: subscription and I'll get it sorted out. Thanks for your patience. |
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| Sunday, January 27th, 2008 |
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| Sunday, January 6th, 2008 |
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Apparently Ong Bak director Prachya Pinkaew and Tony Jaa have had a falling out, but Pinkaew seems to be doing fine, as he's found himself a new star in Nicharee “Jeeja” Vismistananda, a girl who will kick your ass for not being able to pronounce her name. In Chocolate (trailer above) she plays an autistic girl who apparently studied kickboxing and watched a shitload of Bruce Lee. |
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| Thursday, December 20th, 2007 |
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A friend just sent me this, this is the weirdest thing I've seen on the internet all day...so of course I took the time to fill it out. The survey's short, but the questions are funny if you're the type of person that has to stifle a laugh when someone else trips or succumbs to gravity in some histrionic way. Click here to see how you'd do. Apparently I max out at 23. Rules: - You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court - There are no weapons or foreign objects - Everyone is wearing a cup (so no kicks to the groin) - The children are merciless and will show no fear - If a child is knocked unconscious, he is "out." The same goes for you. Here's a link to the forum that inspired it. |
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| Thursday, December 6th, 2007 |
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Sometimes at the bar my friends and I will have the conversation "If you had to be a criminal, what kind would you be?" Some people answer quickly, which is kind of scary; I've had a friend and an acquaintance blurt out "arms dealer" and "sex offender" before I'd even finished asking the question. At first I thought I'd be a cat burglar, if they even have those anymore, because it sounds glamorous. But it wouldn't take, on account of I'm afraid of heights and have shitty night vision. I'd have instructions to go for the diamond and I'd come back with a sparkly perfume bottle that looked like a diamond and a little vomit on my shoe because the vertigo made me puke. Then I thought I'd like to be a bank robber because I like the hours. You spend a couple of weeks or months planning the heist, pull it off, then lay low for months and enjoy expensive things in the privacy of your own home. That kind of schedule appeals to me. But the bank robber thing wouldn't work, I don't work well in teams. Organized crime in general would be a no-go for me, I'd totally piss the wrong person off and my execution would be summarily requested and green-lit in some underboss' office, with more deliberation spent on what to order for lunch. Plus I'm a man of routine--there isn't a morning I'm not getting my coffee down at the same diner--and so easy to track my hit would be a cakewalk. So finally I settled upon Wheel Man. Getaway Driver, now that's a job. While the crew is in the bank sweating through their ski masks, loading sacks and encouraging everyone to stay horizontal, you're laying in the cut reading a magazine and having a cigarette. You don't have to interface with the consumer, you just make sure the engine's running and the tank is full. Then you hear the alarm, the crew bursts onto the sidewalk and it's steady action. Bodies and sacks pile into the car, doors slam shut and you kick the gas like you’re trying to break the pedal off. The smoking tires scream like a teenager in a horror movie, you feel that lurch in the small of your back and everything gets fast in the windshield. Spin the wheel left and right, slap the stick north and south while the cops sway wildly in your wake. You rocket through the intersection like there’s an afterburner in the trunk. Your car starts making that smell cars make when you abuse them, that burning stench of metal friction and rubber igniting in layers. Make the right moves and the flashing lights get smaller and smaller in your rearview mirror while your passengers curse and cheer. You dump the car in Brooklyn, count the bread up in some warehouse.... But that's all talk, Walter Mitty and gin. You're a grown man in a bar in Manhattan having drinks with your friends. Tomorrow all of you are going to go back to work. You'll stop at the bank, sure, but it'll be on your break and you'll withdraw cash from no one's account but your own. And you take the cash out so later that night you can go back to the bar and talk about something else. |
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| Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 |
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The name of that rattletrap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter |
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| Friday, November 30th, 2007 |
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Irene is one of my more laid-back friends, and I love borrowing her car. I love borrowing cars in general--probably because it feels like a very grown-up thing to engage in--but I especially like borrowing Irene's car because, tidy as she keeps it, a close inspection of the console reveals a fine scattering of ash. In other words I don't have to feel guilty about smoking in her car. Not that you being a non-smoker and being nice enough to lend me your car would stop me from smoking in it--as Logan will tell you, I borrowed his car (it might have been his dad's car, can't remember) and smoked that piece up. Boy did I get an earful. But as with many things in life, I can't help myself; I know it's wrong and I do it anyway. Plus Logan and I have a Spy-vs-Spy-like prerogative to attempt to screw the other person over at every turn, and so far it's working like gangbusters. Speaking of wrong, so here I am zipping down Route 280 in New Jersey with the printed directions to my destination in the passenger seat, and I start doing what I usually do when I'm in a car by myself outside the city: I start figuring. Figuring how when I reach the exit, I'm going to drive right past it and keep going, like in some Springsteen song. I'll drive south and west and far. I start calculating how much money I have in my pocket, how much money I could get my hands on at a gas station ATM with the credit cards I've got on me. I'll drive for hours or days, tuning the radio to local stations and I won't stop until I see cornfields or plains and hear Patsy Cline or the Allman Brothers being selected by the local DJs. Then I'll know I've gone far enough and I'll stop in whatever town has buildings not taller than three storeys. My cell phone lays shattered in pieces by the side of the highway three states back, my driver's license transformed into ash in the metal can of a truck stop men's room. I tell myself Irene would forgive me when she reads my postcard, and I calculate what kinds of jobs I could pick up in my new small-town home to survive. I'd work in a restaurant, maybe a bar. At first they wouldn't want to hire me but I'd show up every day until they did, sleeping in the car until I had the scratch to rent some shithole on the edge of town. I would work hard and in complete silence. And every day-- ZZZOOOOMMMM. A State Trooper whips past me in the left lane, sirens going, and I drop what I'm thinking about to check my speedometer. I'm only going 68 but I slow down a little more. Can't afford to get a ticket. I've got bills to pay back in New York, I can't have to pay a two hundred dollar fine or deal with a court date, because I've got the Con Ed coming up, and some credit card debt, not to mention the rent in three days, the holidays are near and just yesterday I blew ninety dollars on two fifths of Scotch of the finer sort I oughtn't be drinking. No, no, that wouldn't do. I slow down and re-check my directions. It's just a few exits to go, and I'll be there. The fucked-up thing is, these thoughts occur to me every goddamn time I get into a car and leave the city, and the kicker is I don't even have a wife and kids to run away from. Maybe it's some age-specific timer that's automatically been activated, unaware that even though I'm six years on the wrong side of thirty I've yet to get married. Like when your neighbor goes away and forgets to turn his alarm clock off, so every day at 7:15 you hear the blaring chirp, even though the body it's intended to rouse simply isn't there, it's just doing what it was programmed to do at that time. An hour later I've tried to take care of what I needed to in Jersey, and even though I've failed at it I won't find this out for another three days. Either way, I feel, it was worth trying. I pull Irene's car back on the highway and my mind starts to wander, even though it ought to be easier to resist temptation when your car's pointed in the wrong direction, back towards the city. On the stereo I'm blaring Agent Orange. After not hearing their music since I was a teenager, two days ago I was shocked to discover they're actually selling Living in Darkness on the fucking iTunes Music Store, of all places. I couldn't click the "buy" button fast enough. The music is total trash, puerile lyrics with the unconvincing level of anger you'd expect from a California punk band because the weather's too nice there to get truly pissed off, but that's besides the point. I often listen to music not because it's good, but because it reminds me of something, a time, a place, some girl I couldn't get over, you name it. And here I am doing the same shit I was doing when I was sixteen, smoking cigarettes in someone else's car, not wanting to go home, in between girlfriends, blaring the same music, only difference is now my clothes fit a little better. Holy shit, I still remember the lyrics. Don't lend me your car. I'm going to ask you, but don't. 'Cause I'll smoke it up thoroughly before I sell it in New Mexico, and I have no illusions you'll forgive me because the postcard I picked was pretty. |
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| Saturday, November 17th, 2007 |
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| Thursday, November 8th, 2007 |
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Tomorrow I'm getting on a train bound for Boston, I'm going up to Harvard to be on the panel of a design symposium. They wanted Theme Magazine (the mag I edit for) but they couldn't get the founders, so I'm being sent in their stead. At this point I've done dozens of college gigs, but this is the first where I'm representing someone else. I'm a little nervous because lots of college gigs are hastily-thrown-together due to busy student schedules--for my first Cornell gig, they were putting up flyers publicizing the event as I arrived, I think my eventual audience was five people--and this one seems a bit disorganized. They somehow got their hands on a six-year-old bio of me and posted it on their site, so it heralds the column I'm "developing for GenerationRice.com," a website that died like five years ago. Also I'm not even sure I'm qualified to speak on the symposium's subject, which is something about architecture and "new ways of conceptualizing spatial experience and representation." Meanwhile I'm not even sure what the old ways are. Well, I'll do my best; right now I'm working on the 15-20 minute slideshow I have to give on Saturday to introduce Theme Mag. (It's a good thing I'm not representing myself, or I'd be putting up 15 minutes worth of pictures of blog entries, just black text on a white background, remaining completely silent while I click through each slide.) Then there's two roundtable discussions, where you sit around a table and discuss why it's round ("It's easier to clean!" "There are no corners to bump into!") and perhaps afterwards I'll do the usual, which is to trash my hotel room in a drunken fit of self-loathing. Or maybe I'll just watch cable and wear terry-cloth, and peruse the yellow pages for transvestite hookers (I "just want to talk"). Okay, now that I've gotten all that out of my system I can focus on the task at hand, the slideshow. There will be no transvestite hookers, no scheduling mishaps, no blank moments of confusion on my part, just a rousing, spirited and well-informed panel discussion and a seamless, witty slideshow filled with inspiration and insight. I'm going to Harvard for chrissakes, and even if I will be surrounded by teenagers way smarter than me, I am going to give them a lecture/panel to remember! I'm going to go recite that last paragraph in the mirror. Hopefully after six or seven times, I'll be able to make eye contact with myself. "Space Rocks" event free/open to all Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA (map) Kick-off lecture by MK12: Friday, November 9th 6pm Main Event: Saturday, November 10th 11am to 5pm |
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LiveJournal for Hipstomp.
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