Joeventures

@jasongrote et. al. on Mamet

@kbyrne91: David Mamet now calls himself "a newly-minted Conservative." Does that mean he'll also consider his profanity-laced writing "offensive"?
@tmccool: David Mamet: Rich Person Discovers He is a Republican. http://slate.me/kdOUbU @tomscocca
@jasongrote: @scharpling I'm probably alone in thinking Oleanna was garbage, but I think it's consensus among my peers that Mamet's sucked since the 90s.
@dmandl: @jasongrote @scharpling But he was very good before then. And I like some of his essays as much as his films. Now, he can go jump in a lake.
@jasongrote: @dmandl @scharpling Glengarry holds up. American Buffalo & Sexual Perversity are not my thing but I admire them. Hate his ideas on acting.
@scratchbomb: @jasongrote @scharpling what, you don't like "Bearded Guys Curse at Each Other Parts 1-17"?
@jasongrote: @scratchbomb LOL
@jasongrote: @dmandl I agree re. those two films -- everything after that's pretty bad.
@dmandl: @jasongrote @scharpling I like "House of Games" and "Spanish Prisoner." Yes, his views on acting are bizarre.
@scharpling: @dmandl @jasongrote I read his book on acting. It now seems like a variant on this garbage - deliberately provocative and contrarian.
@jasongrote: @scharpling @dmandl Yeah, he's been like that for years. That's my big problem with Oleanna - so every woman claiming harassment is a loon?
@jasongrote: This is the other thing about David Mamet; he'd be nobody w/o public arts funding in the 70s and 80s.
@jasongrote: Like most wealthy conservatives, if he had to get his start in the world he espouses, he'd be a failure.
@jasongrote: In Denver, a critic asked me why there hasn't been a great American play since Angels in America,
@jasongrote: There have in fact been hundreds of great American plays since Angels in America. But in 1995, the GOP congress slashed arts funding.
@jasongrote: So nonprofit theaters are scared to do those great American plays; no $ to publicize them means no one knows or cares.
@jasongrote: American theater mostly occupies itself with domesticity and identity politics (which haven't threatened the status quo since the mid-90s).
@jasongrote: And fewer and fewer people care! Thankfully we still have musicals and TV. And TV about musicals!
@jasongrote: By the way, I like plenty plays about domesticity and identity politics. But can not live by bread alone, etc.
@jasongrote: I am lucky in that I write epic, difficult plays and they get produced. But they will probably never enter the canon.
@jasongrote: And that's OK with me. But I do take issue with the fact that there isn't a canon of American plays at all anymore.
@JamesUrbaniak: @scharpling @dmandl @jasongrote The generous take on his prose is that he forces the reader to ferret out the "truth" within.
@jasongrote: @JamesUrbaniak @scharpling @dmandl I never realized he was a situationist!

12 months ago

May 30, 2011

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“I’m a scientist. Once I do something, I want to do something else.” — Clifford Stoll

Wouldn’t that also describe an artist?

12 months ago

May 30, 2011

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Social change theory has a fancy label for individuals like Nujood Ali: “positive deviants,” the single actors within a community who through some personal combination of circumstance and moxie are able to defy tradition and instead try something new, perhaps radically so. Amid the international campaigns against child marriage, positive deviants now include the occasional mother, father, grandmother, teacher, village health worker, and so on—but some of the toughest are the rebel girls themselves, each of their stories setting off new rebellions in its wake.

— National Geographic Magazine - NGM.com (via eggrollstan)

12 months ago

May 29, 2011

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Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data — and at times vast numbers of people — and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the “Wilderness Downtown” video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human.

1 year ago

May 28, 2011

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atlurbanist:

Atlanta’s history of walkable urbanism

Reading various news articles and blog posts about Atlanta and its urban developments, I sometimes come across a peculiar sentiment. Some residents of Atlanta’s intown, detached-home suburbs, who are understandably proud of the distinct beauty of their neighborhoods, can be a little over-protective of them when discussing developments in the more dense urban areas.

Our neighborhoods of craftsman bungalows and other homes have incredible charm, but I disagree with the sentiment that I’ve read here and there that they define Atlanta’s personality as a city. Some people seem to have the opinion that efforts to create more dense neighborhoods (and expansions of transit to sreve them) are somehow at odds with the city’s true character.

I’ve posted this photo above, taken from the “Views of Atlanta and the Cotton States and International Exposition” (printed for the 1985 Atlanta Exposition), to serve as a reminder that walkable urban density in Atlanta existed before the 20th-century bungalow neighborhoods were constructed. Atlanta has a legacy of walkable density that predates car culture by decades.

It is, in fact, the expansion of detached-home neighborhoods that fueled car dependency in the city — a dependency that created a need for the parking structures that have damaged the walkable, urban character of many downtown streets.

Atlanta has a great combination of detached-home neighborhoods and more dense ones centered around multi-family buildings — all mixed in with commercial spaces — with the beautiful native hardwood trees sprouting up all inside the mix. It’s this mixture that defines the city. As we move forward, I hope to see improvements in pedestrian/bike-friendly connections between neighborhoods that have come to be separated by car infrastructure over the decades.

1 year ago

May 24, 2011

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atlurbanist:

Harris Street is Gone and John Portman Took It

The Atlanta City Council voted today to rename downtown Atlanta’s Harris Street to John Portman Boulevard, killing yet another piece of Atlanta’s history. Harris Street has held its name since at least 1886 when this Sanborn Fire Insurance map was made.

To be fair, Harris Street has actually been dead for a while, thanks to the work of its new namesake. Portman is credited by many as being a major player in the economic vitality of downtown Atlanta (a claim that has never convinced me). I prefer to think of him as the guy whose Peachtree Center complex set an example for blank, bland walls on downtown streets, killing the true vitality of this area.

His monolithic architecture is tailor-made for car culture. Drive into the parking deck, walk through a tube into your office building and never sully yourself with anything happening on the street level. Luckily, the lifeless street-level walls of his buildings and the parking decks that serve them leave nothing to be missed.

Above is a beautiful illustration from a 1960 Saturday Evening Post cover, taken from the wonderful Atlanta Time Machine site. It shows the intersection of Peachtree Street and Harris Street as it looked before Portman’s blank-wall monoliths killed the prospect for a continuation of the kind of street life depicted here.

Portman’s buildings didn’t save downtown Atlanta. They made it palatable for suburban commuters who didn’t want a real urban experience. And as long as their blank walls linger, they will continue stealing the chances for good urbanism in this area.

It’s entirely possible that Mr. Harris is somewhere up there looking down — suddenly grateful that his name is no longer attached to a dead street.

1 year ago

May 17, 2011

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(Source: peachtreekeen)

1 year ago

April 29, 2011

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When arts venues are decentralized across cities and suburbs, it amplifies the panoply of distinct neighborhoods that draw people across traditional boundaries for entertainment and recreation and adds to the amenities of the region as a whole.

— The Artistic Dividend: The Arts’ Hidden Contributions to Regional Development (pdf)

1 year ago

April 24, 2011

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smartercities:

An interesting look at traffic calming measures by removing lanes. This is something that can be easily done even with the current budget cuts that is highly effective.

Article to go with the video can be found here

via urbanplanner:

As part of the Beltline project, Monroe Drive is slated to go on a road diet. Given how often I use Monroe, I would consider the road diet to be a vast improvement. Pedestrians need to cross mid-block all the time, and it feels very unsafe. I’ve also seen more than one wreck along the corridor, thanks to excessive speed. Recently, someone crashed into a pole and knocked out power service to 3,100 people for several hours.