The editors' blog
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LOVE AND THINGS
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A man and a woman fall in love, headily, rosily. Full of its flush, they exchange a flurry of letters and gifts, pet-names and promises. But time and trial erodes much of this; the giddiness evaporates, the arguments sharpen. What was ripe and lovely becomes a détente. -
CINEMATIC ELEGIES TO CITIES LOST
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For viewers unfamiliar with the baroque quality of Terence Davies’ films, a perfectly natural response to the first minutes of his latest is: -
ARCHITECT V ARCHITECT
What do you get when you combine a duel, a board game and architects in vintage prom gear? ARCHDL V--otherwise known as the "Fifth Annual Architecture Duel"--organised by the vowel-averse creative collaborative team LVHRD.LVHRD, short for "live hard", is a social club that partners with corporate sponsors to produce monthly events. Audiences are attracted by promises of an open bar and unconventional entertainment, like dance-offs and elaborate dating games. Attendees tend to be young, hip and--considering the steep admission prices--financially comfortable (their credo could also be "live easy").
ARCHDL is a similarly vowel-averse architectural design competition that requires competitors to face off in real time. Given scant preparation time and limited materials, teams must create a three-dimensional model that fulfils the requirements of a design brief.
This year's match of aesthetic dexterity took place on February 17th, and pitted Front Studio against Weiss/Manfredi at the new Galapagos art space in DUMBO, Brooklyn. The venue was slick (elevated red leather banquettes, reflecting pool floor, clubby mezzanine section), and the LVHRD ticket price included free drinks (scotch, beer) and free parking for Smart Cars (handier than one would think, considering the oddities of the neighbourhood's subway service).
LVHRD had revealed that this year's event would be inspired by the Monopoly board game, though the exact brief for the competition wasn't delivered until the night of the battle. Weiss/Manfredi teammates Alice Chai and Justin Kwok (pictured below) said they had prepped the day before by playing a few rounds of the Parker Brothers game while noshing on guacamole.read more »Their opponents, Yen Ha and Michi Yanagishita of Front Studio (pictured above), keep a regularly updated lunch blog in addition to their tremendous design workload. Yesterday's lunch: brainstorming sandwiches.
Notably, both teams spent considerable time planning their costumes. Though different in conception ("Great Gatsby" nouveaux riches on one side, old-school bankers on the other), their get-ups were similar in realisation, combining Daddy Warbucks-esque vests with striped shirts and caps.
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MY LAST SMOKE
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I smoked my final cigarette on January 20th, moments after watching Barack Obama get sworn in as president. After 13 years as a pack-a-day smoker, I quit cold turkey and haven’t had so much a drag in a month. I didn’t use patches or gums; no hypnotism or mantras. -
CHANGE OUR FINGERNAILS CAN BELIEVE IN
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Someone has left a Star magazine on the bus in an act of charity or neglect--its cover tiled with photos of Jennifer, Brad, Jessica, Rihanna and her boyfriend, Chris Brown. All five are engaged in struggles with their vanity or their partners or both. -
JON FASMAN, OUR VERY OWN YOUNG LION
Jon Fasman--charming colleague, adventuresome critic and novelist extraordinaire--has just been named as one of the finalists for the ninth annual Young Lions Fiction Award for his latest novel, "The Unpossessed City". The New York Public Library doles these out to "authors age 35 and under who are making an indelible impression on the world of literature". Indelible. (Rivka Galchen, another recipient of our adoring gaze, has also been nominated, along with three other undoubtedly talented authors who happen to be dead to us.) The winner won't be announced until March 16th. In the meantime, Fasman has indulged us in providing not a few answers to our questions about his books and about the writing process in general. In "The Unpossessed City", we follow Jim Vilatzer, a hapless man-child with gambling debts, who travels to Moscow to make some money and hide from his East Coast suburban life. There he falls into a dark plot of Russian secrets, weird abductions and nuclear science. But really, it's more of a coming-of-age story.
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VAMPIRE WEEKEND AND THE RIDICULOUS APARTHEID OF INDIE MUSIC
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One of the most enjoyable and user-friendly indie albums last year belonged to Vampire Weekend's eponymous debut. -
HOW TO WEAR A SWEATER
It's February, which means you have probably been negotiating your sweater collection for months now. Mary Fellowes offers some do's and don'ts:
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WHAT DO SOUTH AFRICAN ACTORS BRING TO SHAKESPEARE?
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The writer, actor and painter Sir Anthony Sher was born in South Africa in 1949. Although much of his working life has been spent with the RSC, he has performed his solo show “Primo” in South Africa, made a documentary about murder in its cities, and toured there with a production of “Titus Andronicus” directed by his partner, Gregory Doran. -
SCHOOL FOR SACKING
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The bank bailout announced on Tuesday by Tim Geithner was embarrassingly short on detail.
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