Reclamation #6: Pick yourself up.

Our man said so, so, you know, follow through: pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again. --RWK

What Community? #69: Thousands of feet.

Finally caught up with this BLDGBLOG post, and, well, it's everything to me right now. (Or, almost. That shower felt pretty good, too.) The gist: there's this dude, right, I mean there's always a dude, and he's living at the top of this big motherfucker cuz it takes too long to go home on the ground every day. Since I'm dumb, I bought that story right away. But Geoff Manaugh is smart. So I'm'a quote him here:

Whether or not this is even true – after all, I never think truth is the point in stories like this – 1) the idea of appropriating a construction crane as a new form of domestic space – a kind of parasitic sub-structure attached to the very thing it's helped to construct (perhaps raising the question: what is the ontology of construction cranes?) – is totally awesome; 2) further, the idea that crane operators are subject to these sorts of urban rumors and speculations brings me back to the idea that there might be a burgeoning comparative literature of mega-construction sites taking shape today, with this particular case representing a strong subgenre: mythic construction worker stories, John Henry-esque figures who single-handedly assemble whole floors of Dubai skyscrapers at midnight, with a cigarette in one hand and a hammer in the other (or so the myths go), as a kind of oral history of the global construction trade; and, finally, 3) there should be some kind of TV show – or a book, or a magazine interview series – similar to Dirty Jobs in which you go around visiting people who live in absurd places – like construction cranes atop the Burj Dubai, or extremely distant lighthouses, or remote drawbridge operation rooms on the south Chinese coast, or the janitorial supply chambers of inner London high-rises – in order to capture what could be called the new infrastructural domesticity: people who go to sleep at night, and brush their teeth, and shave, and change clothes, and shower, inside jungle radar towers for the French foreign legion, or up above the train tracks of Grand Central Station because their shift starts at 3am and they have to stay close to the job.
How do they decorate these spaces, or personalize them, or make them into recognizable homes? It's like a willful misreading of Heidegger as applied to the question of building, dwelling inside, and thinking about modern infrastructure.
I'm reminded of a line from Paul Beaty's new novel, Slumberland. Early in the book he writes, and my jaw dropped: "Sometimes just making yourself at home is revolutionary."

--RWK

What Community? #68: Broken cradle.

Look at this flickr set for more of the aftermath of the recent riots in Athens following the 12-6-08 shooting of a 15-year old boy. A lot of the graffiti is unknowable for people like who don't read Greek but this dude has translated a lot of the stuff he's taken pictures of around that burnt and beautiful town. Real Greek thugs: stay strong. Remember Jules: "Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal." --RWK

Songs #31: Anywhere, dogg.

I can't quite get over how terrible that one BZ's cover is and thus this. I know it's old news, like me, and that it's real big and maybe too big for its own good, but, hot damn, who wouldn't want a Duc D'Orleans to sing this at their wake? Wake? Yea, a wake for somebody as they leave town or as they get in bed or as they start a new job. It's a romantic idea, sure, but I think that's just the way I is... --RWK

Tom Waits - Anywhere I Lay My Head (zshare)

[Pic is from the best thing in theatres right now. Go see it yesterday and the day before, peoples.]

Songs #28: These girls are rmx'd to chime/kill. What Community? #62: We saw some Halloween crazy.

In these daze of waning interest in most things bloghouse, when I mostly want to listen to house -- or DEEP house -- the Valerie crew still kills me. I'm just a sucker for synths, I guess. Also, epic things. My Halloween was epic. But it was more epic in a let's fight this ass clown for his cab kind of way. Less of a dressed to kill kind of way. Still, we got our life on. We saw some sites. We saw some numbers, some neons and blacks and blondes and pavement up close. We saw a young man fight a mattress with his head hanging low and his shirt tattered by life; and we saw a mob of bums laughing, seeing us fall on the ground. We saw my hand a bloody mess. We saw no cabs for 30 minutes. We almost saw the sunrise. If we found some facts along the way I'd want their crazy to be scored by this song. Luckily, we did not find any facts. We only found fairly crazy crazy. And I lost some valuable thing. Some thing. Something like money, something like a name, something like knuckle skins. --RWK

The Outrunners - These girls are dressed to kill (Russ Chimes rmx) (direct discodust link)

[Pix: I found some facts in Carlton's room, with Pager Code goin nutty in between changes. We'll see if these gain public motion, but, for now, I gotta be real: doesn't look good, iNet mini-monde.]

Encounter #116: Bite me. New York City keeps calling.

Abel Ferrara proves "cool" still happens. It's about strength. Vitality is rare these daze. I know I'm fighting to find it in me every ordinary day down the line. I guess anybody reading this in NYC already knows: go see Mary, like, yesterday over here. --RWK [via Ray Pride, x-posted on ViH]

Husky Boys: So Disco Minimix

Husky Boys playin all the ballads!! Stay large, I mean really remain fucking obese. Wear a tank-top, its Spring. Minimix here
--cb