"not even a little"

Kip is working for the caterer at a fundraiser for St Thomas. He literally runs into Scott with a tray of some canapés. Kip and Scott have undoubtedly (Maria says for sure) been flirting with each other at the smoothie shop where Kip works as he plans his graduate studies in art history. Scott invites Kip out for Mexican after the reception and Kip asks if he minds waiting until he's done with the gig. Scott replies "not even a little."

This happens in episode 3 of Heated Rivalry. Like many, I have been rather obsessed with the series from Crave, a Canadian streaming service. It's carried in the U.S. by HBO Max.

I took a bit of a break from that rom com to read The Guncle by Steven Rowley. Imagine my surprise and delight when Grant asks his Gay Uncle Patrick, or GUP, if they are "famouth" (he lisps). Patrick responds "not even a little bit" which I definitely heard in the voice of François Arnaud who plays Scott in Heated Rivalry.

There are oodles of websters who are making parallels in something like Heated Rivalry so I'm just joining the crowd and going from one media to another.

separated at birth: circles and arcs

wien 2026

sprint95, via architectureofdoom

on tumblr

Robert Smithson - Broken Circle/Spiral Hill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Circle/Spiral_Hill

Oberpostdirektion, Kassel. Architect: Klaus Christiani.

Photos: Matthias Heiderich

on tumblr

tumblin' tumbleweeds

In the Accent Duel promo for Connor Storrie as host for Saturday Night Live this past Saturday night, he has a duel of accents with James Austin Johnson. As Johnson walks into the frame and challenges Storrie to the duel, a tumbleweed blows by. When you get to hell, tell them Rozanov sent you. Pow, bang!

When we lived at the edge of the Sand Hills in central Nebraska in the early 1960s, my dad fetched a tumbleweed for us for our Christmas tree one year. I can't picture it any more but I think we spray-painted it with silver.

"Tumbling Tumbleweeds" with the Sons of the Pioneers (1977)

street names

"Whenever I come to a new town, I like to get my bearings. I want to understand the layout of the streets and the layout of the people. In some cities this can take you days to accomplish. In Boston, it can take you weeks. In New York, years. The great thing about Morgen, Nebraska, is it only took a few minutes.

The town was laid out in a geometric grid with the courthouse right in the middle. According to the mechanic who'd given me a lift in his tow truck, back in the 1880s the town elders spent a whole week deliberating how best to christen the streets before deciding -- with an eye to the future -- that the east-west streets would be named for presidents and the north-south streets for trees. As it turned out, they could have settled on seasons and suits because seventy-five years later the town was still only four blocks square."

This is how Duchess describes how small Morgen is, in The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (page 85). The town we lived in in Nebraska when I was in high school was a bit bigger ... but not much.

I too am intrigued by how cities are laid out and what effect that has on its people. Imagine how different Manhattan would feel if its street layout above 14th Street was more like the Financial District or Boston.

When we were in Morgantina, a Greek archaeological site on Sicily, I was intrigued that the streets were numbered in either direction but they were arabic numerals in one direction and roman numerals in the other.

the books I read in 2025

The books I read in 2025 are listed here, in chronological reading order. The date may not be the original date of publishing and may, rather, represent the copy I happened to read.

• Demon copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
• Architect, verb: the new language of building, by Reinier de Graaf (2023)
• The city we became, by N.K. Jemisin (2020) - thanks to Daniel who recommended this one; quite a fantasy and very New Yorky
• The wisdom of donkeys: finding tranquility in a chaotic world, by Andy Merrifield (2008)
• Family meal, by Bryan Washington (2023)
• Plagued by fire: the dreams and furies of Frank Lloyd Wright, by Paul Hendrickson (2019) - it occasionally made me furious
• Peaces: a novel, by Helen Oyeyemi (2021)
• The marriage portrait, by Maggie O'Farrell (2022) - from Renaissance Florence ...
• The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner (2018) - ... to 21st century California (the Mars Room is a bar)
• Saint Sebastian's abyss, by Mark Haber (2022)
• I left it on the mountain: a memoir, by Kevin Sessums (2015)
• Let the record show: a political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, by Sarah Schulman (2021)
• Tramps like us, by Joe Westmoreland (2001, new edition 2025 with introduction by Eileen Myles)
• The midnight library, by Matt Haig (2020)
• Dead end: suburban sprawl and the rebirth of American urbanism, by Benjamin Ross (2014)
• One last stop, by Casey McQuiston (2021) - another very New Yorky book, plenty of subway
• The world in a selfie: an inquiry into the tourist age, by Marco D'Eramo (2017)
• Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (2023)
• The march, by E.L. Doctorow (2005)
• The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
• The fraud, by Zadie Smith (2023)
• Love junkie, by Robert Plunket (1992, new edition 2024)

Twenty-two books again this year. It's rather weird that it's been 22 books the last couple-three years, usually split about evenly between fiction and nonfiction. This year was a bit lopsided, with fourteen fiction and eight nonfiction.

For a visual compilation of my year's reading, Goodreads provides some statistics with pictures of the covers linked to the description and whatnot. Let the record show was the longest book I read and also the highest rated. It is important and interesting and well-written.

Goodreads is part of the Amazon empire but I recommend buying your books from an independent bookstore or at Bookshop or, gosh, maybe reading a library copy.

more Gehry memories

Another (re)post on Frank Gehry after his recent death -- 2016 road trip report by Aaron Betsky -- reminded me about the Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratories in Iowa City from 1992.

Three cheers for road trips and for reports of road trips as well as for interesting buildings.

Frank Gehry, rest in peace

Frank Gehry died yesterday, just a week or so after Robert A.M. Stern. You would not generally mistake the work of one architect for the other but they both designed some really fine buildings. I may get to Bilbao and Arles someday to see probably the most famous of Gehry's museums but I have seen the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi ...

as well as the University of Toledo Center for Visual Arts which is attached to the Toledo Museum of Art.

I also remember seeing a couple of Gehry's projects in Los Angeles: the Loyola University School of Law which I walked over to see maybe forty years ago, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall where I was lucky enough to hear an organ concert with Steve Ong probably a dozen years ago.

I was particularly reminded of these buildings as I indexed a house in Ocean Springs, just up the coast from Biloxi. But that was more Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown than Gehry or Stern.

yellow stairs and brutalist buildings

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London

Monte Amiata housing, Gallaratese, Milan

(Carlo Aymonino, archt.)

separated at birth: rows of circles, in a grid

quilt on view at

Chapman Museum,

Glens Falls, N.Y.

October 2024

Nadia Gould

Because I am Young, Beautiful & Talented 2

1964

in exhibition at dieFirma (gallery)

October 2025-January 2026

Endeavor and Voyager

NVIDIA's new campus, designed by Gensler, consists of a triangular and a hexagonal building. It is featured in an article in Metropolis that I'm indexing for Avery. The names of the buildings are Endeavor and Voyager. Call out to the library vendor Endeavor and its Voyager system?