Beautée / Tristesse

The birth of an opus

2009-03-21T03:14:00.001-07:00

January 3, 2007

i reallllllly think i am going out of my head sometimes.

im watching re-run marathons of sexual victims shows and shows about sex in the city, in a little barn house that my father built. He started in ‘79 and we just put in a toilet and a shower a couple of months ago. Im atleast 60 miles away from anyone I love, sometimes more like 1500. I am about 18 feet away from everything i love, however. Just up the poppel plank stairs, there is a pile of old guitars, a mound of microphones, wires, chords, electric boxes.

today, though I am taking a break from the previous 3 days of tirelessly working on an opus: seven songs that have succeeded to pull me through a hardened shell of myself, suprise me, entertain, impress and even heal me. They are me, and I am them, but, they sound nothing like I have ever really written before. No need to explain, I kind of understand.

So today, instead of sitting in the recording chair and working from basically when I wake up till 2 or 3 in the morning (just because nothing fills time better than that for me, except maybe for sitting with people) I woke up, ate a piece of toast with mom’s strawberry jelly, took a jog down the road and back, walked out to the woods to check on a deer carcass, ate a cheddarwurst cut up into pieces, watched a couple of these shows, teared up.

in the afternoon, i took some shit over to the town dump. I call it “town” but this is not a town. Its a township, and there are no garbage trucks or garbage men. I took two truck loads, and after driving back the second time I parked by the pull barn and hitched up the log splitter. I drove it down the road to an older couple that lives down the road.

Dick just quintuple bypass surgery but he helped me and Sharon split a large, huge pile of wood for about an hour. Sharon went lighting fast, carrying, stacking, picking up, putting down. It was cold, but I didn’t need gloves. At one point he left to sit down and the newly met strangers, Sharon and I, were a well oiled machine. It was loud, with the woodsplitter, so these new folks I offered to help with wood with, couldn’t really have a conversation to break the ice. Instead we just split and stack. Split and stack. There was this time when the hot exaust from briggs and statton was blowing on Sharons purple sweat pants and I could see the exact shape or her calf. It was just a metaphor for closley we were working together, with really having no idea about anything about eachother. touching hands as we hand off logs, unloading logs, logs that will heat thier home the rest of the winter. One of us farted. I don’t know who, she was moving to fast to notice.

i twitched a smile, but it didn’t even break our stride.

I was leaving in the truck, when I suddendly heard my self say “I feel good.” followed with the retort: “I feel great.” I punched on the cd player and, i know it seems unpoetic. Micheal Jackson’s solo version of “We are the World”.

It was strange being that close to the house of I was concieved in and not really thinking about it all that much. I don’t really know if it was Dick and Sharon that was living in the house at the time, about 25 yeras ago on a rainy summer night. And I don’t know if that gives more or less of an “in” asking Dick and Sharon if I could go in and see the room. ‘Cause, c’mon, who gets a chance to do that.

My friends are a thousand miles away. I miss them. But here I am with re-run marathons and an opus. Im okay. Im doing okay.

Flume

2008-12-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

I am my mother's only one

It's enough

I wear my garment so it shows

Now you know

Only love is all maroon

Gluey feathers on a flume

Sky is womb and she's the moon

I am my mother on the wall, with us all

I move in water, shore to shore;

Nothing's more

Only love is all maroon

Lapping lakes like leary loons

Leaving rope burns --

Reddish ruse

Only love is all maroon

Gluey feathers on a flume

Sky is womb and she's the moon

Bon Iver

Wandering in Street View

2008-10-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

Since the introduction of Streetview in Google Maps, I've been fascinated by the concept. The one thing that a (drawn) map, or even an aerial picture, can not generate, is something more commonly described as a human scale. A feeling of truly wandering in streets, driving around the place.
These drives, virtual or real, really show the essence of place. The way people live, the way they build their houses, their gardens. Where they eat, the sort of cars they drive.

Streetviews were firstly available in the U.S. A visit to Manhattan, or a more rural visit in Nebraska. Since this week, Google maps has brought us the streets of Lille, and more interestingly: Paris!

Hours and hours of Streetviewing are here to be discovered! I love it!!

Here are some buildings in Paris:

The grocery-store of Amelie:

Grotere kaart weergeven

Herzog and DeMeuron's Paris appartment building:

Grotere kaart weergeven

Le Corbusier in Paris:

Grotere kaart weergeven

National Library:

Grotere kaart weergeven

music

2008-10-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

Some nice tunes I've been listening to lately...

Bon Iver - Skinny Love

Red House Painters - Have you forgotton?

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Horses

The Mojave desert phone-booth

2007-04-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this article on wikipedia about an isolated desert phone booth.

It was placed in the middle of the Californian desert somewhere around 1960, for local miners to make 'private' phonecalls.

15 miles from the nearest highway and miles from a building, it must have been one of the most remote phonebooths. It was fully functional too: people could make phonecalls to and from the desert. And so they did... Check out this site which has truly amazing stories about the booth!

The official Mojave Phone booth site

There's even a movie about the place!

When media found out about it, the phone booth turned into a hype.

The park rangers finally got rid of the phone because of the attention it was getting, and the lack of attention the park's nature was getting...
A map of the parc is here, which shows locations of more lonely phonebooths...

I really hope they still function, so people can go there to have a private, quiet phonecall...

Blogotheque

2007-04-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

For a few months now, I have a new addiction called 'les concerts a emporter'.

A music blog called La Blogotheque - which is superb in itself - has a special little corner with beautiful take-away musicvideos.

The Paris based blog invites the freshest, hottest, newest, best indie artists to come and play.

The Arcade Fire, Cold War Kids, I'm from Barcelona, Jens Lekman, Alamo Race Track and many more have already played, and there'll be more to follow for sure...

Locations are always exciting: a busy street, hotelroom or elevator.
The songs are performed live, pure and in one take.
The atmosphere is magical!

This has to be one of the best blogs around...

10

2006-10-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

10 reminders for better architecture:

1 invent nothing
2 mix everything
3 consult artists
4 refine simply
5 take it further
6 remain enigmatic
7 embrace the old
8 separate shell from contents
9 be bold
10 learning by numbers

Ortner & Ortner.

I was surprised to find humor on the website, their architecture being very serious in my humble opinion. Not that seriousness is a problem!

Maybe it has to do with the kind of projects and their clients,
maybe with them being Austrian. Kidding!!!

silent library

2006-06-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

This is Japanese humour:
A 'gameshow' in a library, and while doing terrible tasks, remain silent.
This is an episode that stars K1 kickbox champion Ernesto Hoost.

Funny stuff...

Silent library

NYC films

2006-06-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Little movies that show little pieces of a big city.
NYC films is a great website with independent filmmakers.
Movies on all subjects.
Nothing fake here, this is New York.

From Coney Island and Brighton Beach to Soho personal-shopping and Japanese NY...

I love it.
Take a look...

Google mask

2006-04-12T02:08:00.000-07:00

Last few years have been strange.
We're modernizing quicker than before, we've become dependant on mobile phones, the internet, cheap flights and ipods. All to be free and do what we want to do, to know what we want to know and go where we want to go.

9/11 has had its impact on global "freedom": people have re-discovered fear.
Free people suddenly see their safe surroundings transformed into bunkers, media being censored and pro-aggressive propaganda soaring sky high.

Is that progress? I can tell you, fear has reached me too.
And not because of 9/11, because of post 9/11.

This is where freedom and fear collide: google maps vs. government maps, more, more

urville

2006-04-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Urbanism has always had its share of utopia. Ideal cities, extreme ideas and megastructures have been known since the tower of Babel.

However, urban planners and architects have had some ideas that were realized. Hausmann's grid in Paris has had it's followers and Le Corbusiers ville radieuse that has been a source for many cities.

More utopian is the work of Gilles Trehin. A 28 year old frenchman who designed Urville.
Gilles' project has become a part of his life, since starting in 1984 he has designed and thought of every aspect on urbanism and megacities.

Please visit his website, it's fascinating!

hidden camera videos

2006-03-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

This is real good stuff...

My personal favourites:
- the job interview
- the honey shop
- the bus stop

Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers

2006-03-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

Next time you go and walk the dog, carefully lock windows and doors. Maybe buy an extra set of locks. Who knows what might happen while you're away...

italian police

2006-03-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Italian police are always helpful. Ask them for the nearest gas station and they show directions, gumball style...

DUI

2006-03-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

Two abnormal but very funny drunk driving videos!
Both sides of the ocean have special methods of testing....

America

Scotland

flashmobs

2006-03-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

They exist in various shapes and sizes, but I love every single one... Flash-mobs.
It's probably to do with the fact that it's an "in-crowd" thing: I was there, I was part of it...

wikipedia
http://www.flashmob.com/
http://www.flashmobs.info/

Here's some nice examples:
pillow fight, here's the same fight, but from another angle
red light, green light, yellow card, dusting architecture,

jonathan ross' asian invasion

2006-03-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

Fantastic 3 part series on asian movies.
3 one hour long documentaries with lots of clips, interviews and beautiful shots of asia.
wow...

part 1 japan

part 2 hong kong

part 3 korea

official bbc website on the series here.

gmail

2006-03-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

Free accounts, just leave your email-adress in the comments section.

one red paperclip

2006-02-28T04:19:00.000-08:00

Recent internet-money-making is done with crazy methods:
selling pixels, home-made crap or just plain begging.

latest method: trading.

One red paperclip is a blog by Kyle MacDonald who tries to up-trade his red paperclip; trying to end up with a house. That's trading 1 (one) red paperclip for a real house.

Don't believe he'll succeed? Well, he just traded his one cube van for a record deal!!!

brokeback parody

2006-02-27T05:08:00.000-08:00

some great parodies on the brokeback mountain movie:

spongeback mountain

bareback mountain (NSFW)

broke mac mountain

top gun 2 brokeback squadron

brokeback to the future

brokeback fiction

star wars - the empire brokeback

videos

2006-02-27T03:10:00.000-08:00

Some more amazing videos

Roundabout scratching

Ukelele player

German coastguard

German de-pimpin' part 1, 2 and 3

the wonder of accommodations....

2006-02-27T01:07:00.000-08:00

There's a bunch of tourism & accommodations videos on google video. They're 2 minute long advertisements for little towns and cities made by (or published on google video by) elocallink.tv. They're meant to be promotional, but the lack of quality and the blandness of the subjects gives them a bittersweet look perfectly suited for beautee-tristesse...

While watching a few I noticed some strange phenomena:

1: the editing of the video is the same for most of the clips.
2: the voice-over is the same for most of the clips.
3: the length of the video is mostly the same.
4: the subjects they promote in each video are the same.
and now for the big one:
5: the imagery they show in videos is the same for most clips!!!

There's probably one firm that makes all these videos. It uses stock footage of children fishing, elderly having a good time in a pub, hotel rooms, bed and breakfasts etc....

Check out these two videos: one for augusta, virginia and harrisonburg, virginia. Notice their bed and breakfasts. That's an incredible coincidence! The same name, the same sign, the same room, the same visitors!!!! Incredible!!!!!!
But there's more: clarksville, tennessee has the same b&b, and so does lynchburg, virginia.

I wonder what local governments have paid pay for these videos.

Cheney's got a gun

2006-02-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

So Dick shot the poor guy in the face.

Cue all comedy and parody:

the Aerosmith song, and another one.

Great comedy here from the today show via onegoodmove.
That site is great btw...

improv everywhere

2006-02-22T08:59:00.000-08:00

They did it again!

After numerous pranks involving no pants, suicide jumpers, mcdonalds bathroom attendants and very good subway scenes;

* breath pause *

The cellphone prank!!! with video.

Improv everywhere, check them out!

change your surroundings

2006-02-19T12:12:00.000-08:00

You all know the television commercial with thousands of colorful balls bouncing through san francisco streets.

Different setting, same music here:

Graffiti research lab did this experiment with "magnetic leds".
Great effect!

some more videos

2006-02-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

It seems people like the videos i've put up here, so here's some more stuff!
If you want more, add a comment and i'll try to find it.

low passing jets: this f14 flying ultra low, ultra fast.

mid air collision between two f15's. spectacular cockpit view.

don't fly in a jet's wake if you're filming a bombing run...

loftcube

2006-02-15T04:17:00.000-08:00

Nice website, great concept.

Loftcube by Werner Aisslinger.

Don and Murph vs. Zanger Bob

2006-02-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

There's more than one connection...

Look at the D&M's valentine special, then check Zanger Bob's page and listen to "als de zon weer gaat schijnen"...

We're talking internet heroes here!!!

rocketboom

2006-02-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

NYC daily vblog (videoblog):

rocketboom

new matrix movie

2006-02-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

Check out the trailer for the next matrix sequel:

matrix goes balkan!

And if you don't know Kusturica, go and watch black cat, white cat.

dutch design

2006-02-10T10:15:00.000-08:00

Dutch (product) design studios seem to like adding humor to their products.

We all know droog design for their minimalist yet funny approach to lighting.

Designer / architect / inventor Joep van Lieshout develops ideas and products that shock people. First looked upon as a joke or insult, they turn out to be hyper-intelligent approaches to (design)problems.

OOOMS is a company that designs furniture, objects, jewelry and art. They know how to mix humor with practicality.

Architecture of the Chinese dream

2006-02-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Visited a lecture on China's growth (esp. in cities).

What struck me was the positiveness and absence of fear about the future.
The young professionals (about 3,000,000 university graduates each year) are eager to "build" their country.

It could be seen as a post-communism wake of socialism and altruism, but the country's fairly rapid change to capitalism (and it's introduction to individual wealth) also shows it's effect on modern living.

Cities, mostly new, are booming.
Shenzen, next to Hong Kong, has grown from a little farming village to a megacity with 10,000,000 inhabitants. In 25 years. That's what I call growth.
City or town planning is something else too: mega cities are built from scratch.

During communism, cities were seen as a concentration of factories with their dormatories and services. These days cities are seen as centres of modernity: hi-tech, clean, fun, flourishing.

At least, that's what planners want them to be.
In reality, cities are modern from level 2 upwards. Street/surface level shows China's struggle to keep up with the fast modernization. Glass and steel skyscrapers have a ground floor occupied by dirty, small, self-made shops / workshops. The stairs leading from ground level to higher levels, lead from 3rd world to 1st world.

An interesting lecture by journalist / scientist Drs. M. de Waal.

Flickr has greatest potential in my view to show the latest on changing China.

coffeemania

2006-02-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

I found the website of coffeemania (a coffeebar in moscow) ploughing through the vast internet...

Love it!

google maps secrets

2006-02-08T04:34:00.000-08:00

We've all seen the famous spots on google maps.
The statue of liberty, the white house, the golden gate bridge...

But what about strange/unique/secret images, glitches or just plain funny stuff?

Here's some interesting things:

god

planes

strange perspectives (don't even start about the strange frog)

the moon (and try zooming in on that one)

The site that has all: google sightseeing.

And if it's just a bit too 2d for your likings: Bill's come up with windows live local

NYC real estate / architecture blog of note

2006-02-05T03:38:00.000-08:00

NYC blog curbed has all the latest on the real estate market as well as the latest gotham architectural gossip.

videos

2006-01-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

Some amazing videos i've come across lately:

Low flying, lower flying, even lower flying, ok you've got it even lower lower lower flying, lowest flying.

A near miss and a hit.

New music

2006-01-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

The music industry is shifting towards internet. That's nothing new.

My guess is that, in some 10 or 20 years, internet radio and digital music services will have replaced most of the radio stations.

Discovering new artists / music already is much easier via internet.
No need to go to a music store to listen to cd's or get recommendations from a salesperson that only knows about the music he/she likes... Go to a site like 3voor12 and listen to new albums.

Online sales, online listening, online artist information and only recommendations.
The internet provides all. And more.
One of my favourite sites of the moment is last.fm.
This site keeps track of what you listen to via your computers' music player. It makes personal charts of most played artist / tracks. It gives recommendations, shows people that have a similar taste in music and gives information about the artists.

Fred told me about this site called songtapper.
Tap along with a song and it shows you artist and song name. It's not working with me, but that's largely due to my lack of rhythm....

I've had better results with Music DNA. Hear a song that you don't know? Call musicDNA via your mobile and it sends back artist and song information in a text message...

Terry Tate the office linebacker

2006-01-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

Glad I'm not working in that office...

The big apple

2006-01-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

My latest procastrinations on the internet seem to have some similarity:
They're mostly visiting (photo)blogs on everyday life in the U.S.
Two big fascinations on that subject:

- The melancholy of B-roads, remote states and ghost towns.
I love scrolling through Nebraska (whilst listening to Bruce Springsteen's '82 album) and google-ing remote towns like Hyannis... (I love the photo of mainstreet on their homepage)

- New York City.
What I love about NYC is it's roughness. I guess life there is tough; expensive, lonely, violent...
Lots and lots to find and look at on the internet...

Special mention here are the photoblogs of Will and foodblog of Adam (the amateur gourmet)

Pattern

2006-01-08T03:52:00.000-08:00

What you see here is yet another example of the 'new world's' land-scaping.
Zoom in on the satellite image.
Scary, isn't it, to have your surroundings rasterized?
No room for error, no diversity. Just simple squares.
Oh there are exceptions: When two grids with different orientation touch each other.
You can even see bends in roads!!

I discovered this weird (at least I think it's weird) piece of earth near London, Paris, Southampton, Cambridge, Zurich, Brussels and Heidelberg. Canada.

cars

2006-01-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

Nice commercial for the new Audi RS4.

It costs 86.000 euros full option in Germany.
In the Netherlands however, a staggering 106.000 euros. The starting price that is, without added options like the 570 euro costing RS4 carpet-set...

Ok, if you want a cheaper (I didn't say cheap) way of driving a true supercar, try mr. damon hill's private club. For a mere 11.750 pounds sterling / year (excluding entrance fees and the like) you will be able to drive these.

NICE.

If you want something cheaper, buy one of these.

9/11

2006-01-03T11:07:00.000-08:00

So what did happen on 9/11???

A lot of people think there's more involved than just airplanes.

If the pentagon was hit by an aircraft? How come we don't see any wreckage???
Flight 77 and the untold story, as told by the facts

The twin towers we're shot at with a missile fired from the woolworth building...
The untold story of the woolworth building incidents

Me, I think some things are untold. But these two stories, nahhhhhh... Don't think so.

Ok, so there is this documentary of mostly the pentagon attack that makes me wonder what really happened.

And now for something different:
Nice little movie with three ultra-low-flying mirages of the french airforce.

Simcity

2006-01-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

One of my first "modern" pc games (we're not talking frogger or commodore 16 here) was simcity.

The thing that bugged me was that the game was based on an orthogonal grid. Everything was rectangular or square.
Living in the Netherlands, that was the strangest thing. In the Roman town of Maastricht nothing is square... City blocks are based on the road/infra structure of historic routes from one city to another, or the landscape.

So scrolling the U.S. on google maps I go from simcity01.savegame to simcity02.sav to ....
The grid makes cities look exactly like the game (or is it the other way around), which gives these stunning pictures of e.g. Minneapolis (as shown above).

European people tend to criticize America for being artificial.
In some ways it is.

I wonder if that's a bad thing though...

paris hilton

2006-01-02T04:05:00.000-08:00

Great interview by SNL just after the hilton tapes scandal.

Reminds me of the Ali G interview with the Beckhams...

Fred, this one's for you...

urban formations

2006-01-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

This google maps image of, what I believe to be, a future neighbourhood/city is fascinating.

Why?

Roads have already been made. Like a rough sketch you can already see the end-result.

It's esthetic quality can only be seen from the sky, never from the ground.

It's a prelude to a bittersweet era that's about to begin: thousands and thousands of homes being built in record time.
Most of them will look identical.
Imagine what this deserted place will look like in 5 to 10 years?! A beautiful green neighbourhood with parks, ponds and golf courses. That's the complete opposite of what's there now.

It's also fascinating to think of how many people want to live in this place in its present state. Nothing to see or do within miles. Planners will have thought of that though: plenty of malls and leisure-activity in the near future...

Chronic WHAT les of narnia!

2006-01-01T08:44:00.000-08:00

This little rapvideo of Saturday Night Live-actors Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell is the newest internet hype...

Intended as a comic rap-video, people love it.
everyone's posting about it, everyone is talking about it, and there are even people trying to make money out of it...

all in all: it's a great clip...

earlier stuff Andy did: www.thelonelyisland.com
other movie Chris did: Turlington's Lower Back Tattoo Remover

Sigur Rós

2005-12-31T03:21:00.000-08:00

Beautiful music, beautiful video...

check out their site with a lot of free music and videos...

one of my favourites is glósóli, just missed an award for best video of 2005 at antville?!

oh and this here... this is probably an aphex twin / chris cunningham coproduction.... it's, how should I put it, scary/creepy/beautiful

so is this this year's last post?

last post this year?

2005-12-31T00:27:00.000-08:00

Your Pimp Name Is...

Prince Dynamite

What's" Your Pimp Name?

99 rooms

2005-12-27T12:12:00.000-08:00

This was the second time I visited this website and I found it even more beautiful...

99 rooms is an artproject by a Berlin based team of
Kim Köster (The Artist) Richard Schumann (Art Direction) Johannes Bünemann (Sounddesign) Stephan Schulz (Flash / Programming)

Walk through the site, enjoy the scenery and artwork...

Alterations

2005-12-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

I've added some new stuff to the blog:

My music statistics on play.fm
(Great website, stores and ranks the music you listen to)

Google Adsense bar
(I'm already thinking of quitting my job and living of the money I make with this blog...)

Koolhaas

2005-12-11T06:20:00.000-08:00

Even though I'm not a great fan of Koolhaas' architecture, which tends to be too theoretical thus unrealistic for me, I do like his Porto music hall. Especially its use of materials.

Lovely 360 degree views from this site.

This doesn't mean I don't like Koolhaas.
His theories about emergence and essays on cities and urbanism are fascinating...

Googlewhack

2005-10-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure...
A must for the internet-geek.

A googlewhack is a single searchresult for a two word google search.
For example, google the following two words:
cyaankali crosshair.
That will give only one result.
A new addiction I shouldn't get into!

Madam Marie

2005-09-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

Following Craig's post of Bruce Springsteen sites, here's my discovery of Madam Marie's little shack on the boardwalk of Asbury Park.

The song, 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), is one of my favourite Springsteen songs, as it is storytelling Bruce at it's best.

Sandy the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight
Forcin' a light into all those stoned-out faces left
stranded on this forth of July
Down in town the circuit's full with switchblade lovers
so fast so shiny so sharp
As the wizards play down on Pinball Way
on the boardwalk way past dark
And the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open
like Latin lovers along the shore
Chasin' all them silly girls

Sandy the aurora is risin' behind us
The pier lights our carnival life forever
Love me tonight for I may never see you again
Hey Sandy girl

Now the greasers they tramp the streets or get busted for
trying to sleep on the beach all night
Them boys in their spiked high heels ah Sandy
their skins are so white
And me I just got tired of hangin' in them dusty arcades
bangin' them pleasure machines
Chasin' the factory girls underneath the boardwalk
where they promise to unsnap their jeans
And you know that tilt-a-whirl down on the south beach drag
I got on it last night and my shirt got caught
And that Joey kept me spinnin'
I didn't think I'd ever get off

Oh Sandy the aurora is risin' behind us
The pier lights our carnival life on the water
Runnin' down the beach at night with my boss's daughter
Well he ain't my boss no more Sandy

Sandy the angels have lost their desire for us
I spoke to 'em just last night and they said
they won't set themselves on fire for us anymore
Every summer when the weather gets hot they ride that road
down from heaven on their Harleys they come and they go
And you can see 'em dressed like stars
in all the cheap little seashore bars
making love with their babies out on the Kokomo
Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie
for tellin' fortunes better than they do
This boardwalk life for me is through
You kmow you ought to quit this scene too

Sandy the aurora's rising behind us
The pier lights out carnival life forever
Oh love me tonight and I promise I'll love you forever

And finally some pictures of the place can be found here.

Also try the Ben E. King version of the song, found on the superb Springsteen covers album One step up, two steps back.

2005-08-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

What is this plane doing on the far-end of runway 4R? It can't reverse and taxi to the gate... And what are all these cars doing there??? Hmmm.. Strange

2005-08-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

moscow (kansas) land-scaping

Funny video

2005-08-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

Just this one video... Enjoy

Listen and learn

2005-08-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

One of the latest additions to "my internet favourites" is Overheard in New York. Continuously updated site that quotes funny things overheard in New York.
Although I've never been there, and can't possibly sense the atmosphere there, I'm sure it tells a great deal about everyday life in the big apple and the lives of the people mentioned and mentionees (is that a word?)...

I noticed one quote which involved a classic decision making game called rock, paper, scissors. Now I've seen this in movies, group of children deciding who has to get the lost football from the angry neighbours lawn, but never quite understood how they made the decision. So behold: the official rock, paper, scissors society homepage!!!

Google Maps

2005-08-26T03:24:00.000-07:00

One of my latest hobbies: scanning earth with Google Maps.
See the famous, familiar, strange and beautiful places.

Some three years ago I visited, and participated in, a lecture/workshop by Israeli architect/critics duo Eyal Weizman and Rafi Segal. Their fascinating studies of Jewish settler-villages showed a surreal beauty of the rather agressive planning and urbanism methods.

In my travels across the globe with GM, I stumbled onto the slums of Port-au-Prince (Haiti). The structures (formed by the hill slopes) resemble scaling of fish or armadillo... Love it..

1st post

2005-08-26T03:17:00.000-07:00

Hi!

I've just started this blog as a way of storing my thoughts and scribbles.
Posts with internet links, photos and other stuff related to my passions.

The name Beautée / Tristesse has to do with the esthetics of sadness/depression/implosion/architecture/social fragmentation, but doesn't limit the content of this blog....