Summer Gerbil Photo Contest: Wisconsin!
February 19, 2012 ~ 4 Comments
James Rice has kindly offered to weigh in on this particular sequence of Sunday photo features. Writes James:
Just to set the record straight about Speedy’s trip to Narbonicon, the only arranging I did was buy Speedy’s ticket into the convention (I wanted the soundtrack album), and I bought Speedy’s first-class transportation to Wisconsin. Oh, and I included a cheap digital camera. Everything else you see and read was the result of Jeffery; I had no part in any of it. All I was expecting back was some cool songs and a few simple pictures. Instead, I get back a box crammed with fliers from everywhere they visited, some kind of popcorn wagon badges, and some weird little stuffed badger, apparently on the run from gamboling debts!??
It wasn’t until a little later I got the full story of what happened. Sheesh, I probably should have taken Speedy to the vet or something to be checked out. If any law enforcement officials are reading this, I’m willing to turn over everything if it will help clear my name.
In other Speedy news, on Wednesday, Speedy heads back to Central America. What new adventures await him there?
James, do gamboling debts dance about you, just out of reach, until you pay them off? Because I’d like to see that.
Jeff, “If Speedy were to wear this pin it would be a LIE,” had me breathless with laughter. I love the crazy way your mind works.
Regarding Frank Lloyd Wright, I stand second to none in my worship of his work, but I have to side with Speedy. There a gorgeous Wright fireplace with a series of glass bricks interspersed with regular ones. The glass bricks have lightbulbs behind them, creating a beautiful glow around the firebox . . . until they burn out. Wright didn’t design a way to change them without breaking the glass bricks. As someone once observed, “It wasn’t Frank Lloyd Wright who said ‘God is in the details.'”
Speedy is right – Wright was an interesting designer, but as an architect, he was a poser. My book club toured “Falling Water” when we read “The Fountainhead”, partly because it was close enough to visit – partly because the hypothesis that Howard Roark was a stand-in for Wright. The museum is relatively honest about the fact that Wright failed to put in enough support for the main flying deck, fired the assistant who conspired with the builder to sneak in more support, and the deck STILL needed to be taken apart and shored up years later; but they try to soften it. Howard Roark would have touched and known and worked with the materials, not run around simpering, dressed like a bad imitation of the Third Doctor. And the deck would have done right the first time. Hypothesis: BUSTED.
An architect who truly understood Zen … because his designs were both wrong and Wright.
@eddurd: Oh, Ed, even when you’re not filking, you’re still giraffe-painting hilarious. Well done, sir.