Art and Architecture

May132011

And Another One…

Again, from the Adventureblog Annex, a nifty pic of Han Solo killing time in Mos Eisley:

I love the feel of this, so much like much the opening credits of the old Wild, Wild West television series. I have no idea what’s happening in the background… looks like Chewie just set off a small tactical nuke. I don’t seem to recall that happening in any of the stories I know, but then I have been out of the Expanded Universe loop for a while.

The artist is a chap named Skottie Young, who apparently shares a blog with another gent named Scott Morse. Some interesting interpretations of many beloved characters over there. Give it a look, if you have time to kill this afternoon…

May132011

Isn’t That Always the Way It Goes?

You’ve just managed to talk a girl out of her clothes when in barges ~~her father~~, er, a giant, four-armed dude with the head of a gorilla, or maybe it’s a lion, or some damn thing, and he’s seriously pissed that his little girl is standing there nekkid in this bachelor pad of yours with the suggestive carvings on the walls, and you’ve got a pitcher of something that probably isn’t Hi-C sitting at your feet, and well, he’s just spoiling for a fight. If you’re like me, that’s going to seriously cramp your style. It’s such a drag, man.

On a more serious note, I apologize for throwing up another lame image post instead of something worthwhile — well, as worthwhile as my drivel ever gets — but I just haven’t felt much inspiration to write this week. I guess I’m still picking through the emotional knots surrounding my uncle’s death, or maybe it’s just one of those periods when I don’t have a lot to say. In any event, I hope all you Loyal Readers out there are at least enjoying the cool pictures. There are so, so many of them to be had out there in the vastness of the InterWeb. This particular one is a book illustration of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immortal hero John Carter of Mars and (I presume) his mate, the lovely Dejah Thoris, being menaced by… well, some freaky thing or other. It’s been a long time since I read the Barsoom stories so I don’t really recognize who or what that’s supposed to be. The artist is a gentleman called Reed Crandall, who was a mainstay of the infamous publisher EC Comics (the one nervous Senators, prudes, and scolds feared was corrupting America’s youth with Tales of the Crypt back in the lily-white 1950s); you can see a gallery of Crandall’s Burroughs-related work here. It’s beautiful stuff, in my humble opinion. I especially like this one. But then, I was corrupted myself as a kid by rock-and-roll album covers and TV shows like Three’s Company.

In any event, credit where it’s due: I spotted this image over at Michael May’s Adventureblog Annex, which is one of those Tumblr thingies Michael set up so he could move this sort of thing off his regular Adventureblog. That’s a pretty good idea, really, a subset of a blog reserved just for trading cool pictures… Hmmmm.

May112011

I’d Buy This Book

Nifty piece of artwork here by a cat named Phil Noto:

There are, of course, quite a few Star Wars tie-in novels that focus on everyone’s favorite Corellian smuggler pilot, but none sport a cover done in the style of classic 1960s pulp paperbacks, and that really is a shame, you know? As a lover of that era’s commercial illustration aesthetic, I almost wish my favorite movie had been made 10 years earlier. Yeah, I would’ve missed seeing it in the theaters and all, but just think of all the cool book covers that would’ve come out!

No? Okay, fine, I’ll just enjoy the post-modern retro-fantasy stuff then…

Incidentally, this came to my attention via Boing Boing. Naturally.

Apr202011

What’s It Like to Jump Off a Building?

I didn’t get around to blogging about it at the time, but we had quite a bit of excitement around here last November when a couple of BASE jumpers dove off the observation deck of the LDS Church Office Building in the middle of a sleepy workday and parachuted into a nearby parking lot. (Ed. note for out-of-town Loyal Readers: in addition to its famous temple, the Church owns a number of other buildings in and around Salt Lake’s downtown core, including a 28-story edifice that houses extensive administrative offices. It’s not the tallest building in SLC — that honor belongs to the Wells Fargo Center, which curiously has fewer floors than the Church Office Building but measures two feet higher — but nevertheless, the COB is a very prominent part of the local skyline.) As with just about anything in this city that involves the Church even tangentially, there was a whiff of controversy about the jump. Scanning through online comments about the incident, you’ll see that some speculated it was intended as a political demonstration, a thumb in the eye of a religious organization that was still doing damage control for its involvement in California’s Proposition 8. Some Mormons took it as a personal insult to their Church, not tied to any particular issue but obviously some kind of desecration because the building the jumpers chose was Church-owned. Still others thought it had nothing to do with the Church per se, but was disrespectful to authority and civility in general. And then there were those with the attitude that it was nothing more than an audacious stunt, utilizing the best property in the city for doing such a thing (the area around the Wells Fargo is much more congested, making it far more likely someone would’ve gotten hurt), which just happened to be a building belonging to the Mormons, and that the whole thing was a refreshing lark for a sedate city that needs an occasional jolt in the arm. (For the record, that was my take on it.)

In any event, the jumpers had a getaway car waiting and sped off within moments of reaching the ground, but they were soon identified and arrested. They’ve both recently pleaded guilty to trespassing and disturbing the peace, and received relatively light handling (as I understand it, the judge will drop the case if the men pay their court fees and keep their noses clean for six months, which is entirely appropriate in my view, considering no actual harm was done).

And now, just as a coda to a minor but memorable incident in Salt Lake history, one of the jumpers has posted a video documenting their stunt:

Church Office Building from Marshall Miller on Vimeo.

Personally, I still think these guys did something pretty cool…

Mar252010

A Brief Update on the Sugar Factory Situation

An article in today’s Tribune notes that the theater group that was displaced from the old West Jordan Sugar Factory last week will be able to produce the final two plays of its current schedule in a nearby middle school.

Meanwhile, just three shows remain for the current production, See How They Run, which you may recall features my friend Geoff Richards in a prominent role. Once again, I urge any of my local readers who may see this to check it out either tonight, or on Saturday when there’s both a matinee and an evening show.

As for the fate of the sugar factory itself, that’s still up in the air, but the linked article states that the West Jordan City Council is at least considering trying to save the structure. I’m not holding my breath — Utah generally has a pretty lousy record when it comes to preserving historic buildings — but I’m glad to hear the bulldozers aren’t yet on their way…

Mar202010

Looking for Something Different to Do Tonight?

A few miles up the road from my house stands the old West Jordan Sugar Factory, a relic of a nearly forgotten Utah industry. Yes, kids, we used to make sugar in this state! Not from sugar cane, as you might expect, but from a type of beet that was grown all over the southern end of the Salt Lake Valley. Those days ended around the time of my birth, though, and for as long as I can remember, that old factory, with its twin silos and long, narrow warehouses, has been nothing more than a shuttered and decaying landmark. But about a decade ago, news that the old freight line running past the place was going to be repurposed for the TRAX light-rail transit system sparked a new interest in that area, and wildly optimistic development plans were soon flying. The old industrial complex, it was said, would soon become the heart of a retail node, filled with shops, restaurants, art galleries, and entertainment venues.

Fast-forward to the present. The Mid-Valley TRAX line is under construction and due to open about a year from now, and the old factory, while still mostly ramshackle and uninhabitable, has had its first tenant for a couple of years, a community theater group called the Sugar Factory Playhouse. (My local readers probably know where I’m going with this story, if they’ve been following the news lately, but I ask your indulgence. Everyone keep reading, please…)

Sep142009

I Like Crap

Reading the Sunday funnies yesterday brought me to an important moment of self-realization.

No, really.

You see, yesterday’s edition of “Get Fuzzy” turned on a disparaging reference to the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men, a series that seems to be deeply loathed by a not-insignificant number of people. I like it, myself; it’s not remotely deep, but I find it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, at least to my sensibilities, and I’m frankly baffled by the level of ire I often see directed at this amiable — if admittedly crass — little show.

So I was thinking all of these things about Two and a Half Men and suddenly it struck me.

OMG… I like crap.

The things the sophisticates, connoisseurs, intellectuals, and hipsters generally decry as lowbrow, superficial, or — how I have come to loathe this word! — cheesy are often the things I most enjoy. And in turn the things that make them gush with enthusiasm and sweet, sticky joy tend to leave me, well, unimpressed. Consider the evidence:

Sep112009

And Now for Something Completely Non-Controversial

Or so I hope. It’s a photo of Sigourney Weaver eating a hot dog:

Why? I dunno. It amuses me, and I thought it might amuse my Loyal Readers. And after the day I had at work, and the heavy associations this day holds, and the earlier unpleasantness over Rep. Wilson, I figure we could all use some amusement.

Incidentally, the hot-dog-shaped hot-dog stand in the background is Tail o’ the Pup, a Los Angeles-area landmark and a well-known example of programmatic architecture, i.e., buildings that were made to look like other objects, usually the products sold inside them, like giant donuts and such. Sadly, the Pup has been MIA since 2005, when it was evicted from its old lot by development plans. It was supposedly placed into storage until it could be relocated, but it’s been four years now and I can’t find any news about it coming back. I hope it does eventually. The world needs a hot-dog stand that looks like a hot dog.

I visited Tail o’ the Pup shortly before it closed down, but I was on my way to the airport and had already lunched, so I only had a cherry Coke. That’s another reason I hope it eventually reopens, so I can actually experience eating a dog there…

Aug202009

A Couple of Brief Follow-Up Items

First, for any who may be wondering, the Odd Fellows Hall building I referenced in the previous entry successfully crossed Market Street yesterday, creating a really odd sight for anyone who happened to walk past the intersection of Market and Main. (Basically, Market dead-ended in a three-story brick wall for a good part of the day). The building still needs to be shoved sideways onto its new foundation — which I guess gives the forces of entropy one last chance to try and implode the old thing into a dusty heap of shattered masonry — but at this point I think the worst threat of it crumbling is past. Now all I have to do is get over the cognitive dissonance caused by having a big old building standing on the wrong side of the street!
Secondly, if you didn’t see it, there was a very nice tribute to John Hughes in the New York Times a few days ago, written by the actress Molly Ringwald. She, of course, starred in three of Hughes’ best-loved movies, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. She reminisces about working with Hughes and the impact he had on her life and career, and also reveals some interesting personal details, such as the fact that Hughes held grudges, and both she and co-star Anthony Michael Hall felt like they ended up on the receiving end of them. It’s a very heartfelt piece of writing from a woman who was in many ways a proxy for we children of the ’80s; here she plays that role one last time to tell us what our friend and big brother John was really like.

Oh, and this is probably really dumb, but it makes me happy to think that she and Hall are still friends enough that they called one another after John died, and also that… well, I’ll let you see for yourself how Molly’s article ends…

Aug182009

Typo of the Day

First, a little background for those who may not follow Salt Lake architectural and development news: A short distance from my office, there’s a 100-year-old building called Odd Fellows Hall, which stands right in the path of a planned extension to the federal court building. Rather than demolish Odd Fellows, somebody made the decision to move it to an empty lot right across the street from its original location. (For the record, another building on the same block, the Shubrick, wasn’t so lucky; it’s coming down now, several months after its primary tenant, a well-established and very popular nightclub called Port o’ Call, was forced out of business. Personally, I’d rather that the Shubrick and the Port had survived, or even better, that the new court complex simply be constructed around both of the older structures… but nobody ever listens to me.)
The engineering necessary to move a three-story brick building has been nothing short of astounding. Basically, the building was cut away from its foundation and jacked up so rollers could be slipped underneath it. Then the building was pushed into a nearby clear space and rotated 180 degrees; its former basement was filled in, and Odd Fellows was brought back to stand temporarily in its original lot. And there it’s been sitting for months, waiting to be moved across the street onto a new foundation.

Today, a brief article in the Salt Lake Tribune notes that it may finally make that last journey as soon as tomorrow. Which is very interesting in and of itself, but what really caught my eye was the article’s description of what’s been holding Odd Fellows Hall up all this time:

The Odd Fellows Hall was to be moved across Market Street in downtown Salt Lake City earlier this summer to make way for a new federal courthouse but a financial dispute between a contractor and subcontractor has stalled the relocation. The building is perched on doilies while the two sides negotiate.

Yes, friends, that massive pile of centenarian brick and mortar is being supported by nothing more than doilies. Because a little bit of lace makes everything nicer, I suppose…