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10/31/03: Another Modernism

Antoni Gaud?'s uncompleted American Hotel, sited in the early 20th century on what is now Ground Zero, earlier this year becomes a surprise contender once again after the architect's death.

360-degree panoramas
of various sites in England. href="http://db.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/360/360_stonehenge_001.shtml">Stonehengeand Salisbury's Market Square are particularly cool.
Selling you a new past [via douzeLunes]
A town submerged - Photographic survey of Capel Celyn [via things].
A really quite interesting 1995 interview with Jim O'Rourke, 25-years old and fresh out of DePaul. Mr. O'rourke will be in the 2004 Witney Biennale.
Another Chicago's own, and this week's runaway meme, Jason Salvadon's Every Playboy Centerfold: the Decades. Seeing his 26 Top Grossing Flims of All Time, where the image and sound of 25 films are averaged into a single buzz, was actually quite the opposite of the caucophony you might imagine.
Deadmalls.com collects the work of "retail historians" [via prentiss].
Video Art: the Brazilian Adventure.
The GFP Bunny - a wierd mix of art, genetics, and media intervention.
How Ashcroft uses an 1872 law against "Sailor-Mongering" against Greenpeace activists in a disturbingly selective way.
This Playstation Ad is the most mesmerizing of yet seen.

posted by jeremy @ 5:32 PM

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10/24/03: Uncloggin' the backloggin'

Found Magzine's Find of the Week [I do miss Chicago sometimes].
16 photos of people hailing taxis
25 animated AOL icons having sex [not for workplaces, naturally].
Forgotten Detroit [via dublog]
Stereo Images [via spittingImage]
Scary shit - George Bush against Mt Rushmore
An NPR story archive for Aaron MacGruder

posted by jeremy @ 6:26 PM

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10/19/03: Settling, unsettling

My last apartment in Chicago was off of Augusta Street. My first apartment in S?o Paulo is off of Rua Augusta. Go figure that coincidence. If I had any belief in signs I?d be happy, but right now I'm also sort of squatting here so I'm more likely to be crossing my fingers. The lady that owns the building lives in another city a few hours away. The friend who left me the place has to go back to the US in a few weeks. He figures that once the dona da casa sees that rent money is still making it into her bank account, she'll put up with not knowing the tenants rather than come all the way back to S?o Paulo to fix it up, put out an ad, then wait a rent-free month for new tenants. And I figure I?ll trust Brazilian informality and risk of getting thrown out on short notice. The neighborhood is interesting and the place is substantial, cheap, well-furnished, well-equipped, and, well, it's damn hard for tourist visa expatriates to get their own lease anyway. In fact, if the appliances and plumbing weren't so strange to me (just what is a hose running from the wall between a toilet and sink used for?), I'd say it's probably the most comfortable place I've had.

And the neighborhood - called Jardins which kind of runs down the hill on the southwest side of Avenida Paulista - would remind me much of Lincoln Park if I had to describe it in Chicago terms. Lots of little boutiques; signs for Chanel, Armani, Diesel; ample restaurants and cafes and Interent places; a cheap vegetarian rod?zio; lots of interesting little high end bookstores, including one that carries an enviable selection of English language magazines (so I can still keep up with Frieze and Art Forum, however highly priced they get here). In Centro, where I was the past two weeks, the only offerings were Bingo and opportunities to catch gonorrhea.

I enjoy pretending to live here. There's a fresh produce and meat market where I?ll pick up two unfamiliar fruits and I'll play as if I'm comparing them even though I?ve never seen such things in my life. There's a huge park where acutely extroverted old women will chat with me with no regard to my atrocious level of Portuguese. There's lots of those impossibly beautiful professionals who wear dark sunglasses and walk little dogs and me walking by, homeless, placeless, and completely mute to whether I'm dumb or funny or interesting or whatever my story is but, keeping quiet, I?ll blend in okay.

Among the many miscellaneous objects I've inherited in my new apartment is a Brazilian desk calendar that includes every little professional recognition holiday that apparently exists here. Today is both Registrar's Day and International Air Traffic Controller's Day, while tomorrow I'll be celebrating... hmm... Publicist's Day as well as Public Expediter's Day (that's the best English title I can make up for Despachante P?blico), followed by Aviator's Day on Wednesday. After that, Saturday is all at once Cobbler's Day, Dentist's Day, and Orthodontist's Day. So many parties to go to, I'm sure to be passed out in the gutter by Public Functionary Day next Monday.

I've some posts up on the fotolog. There?s more coming. Do have a look.

posted by jeremy @ 3:33 PM

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10/14/03: Everyday is like Sunday

Last weekend I and Dr. Wex - who is every bit as hilarious as his target="_new">Wexfiles.com would suggest - took a small weekend trip to target="_new">Fl?rianpolis, a small-ish state capital /college town that is an apt
reward for the brutal 12-hour bus ride that's required to get there from S?o Paulo. Wex
was looking for a house for New Year's Eve. I'm just incredibly curious. Half the city
is the gateway to Ilhe de Santa Catarina, an island of sleepy beach communities whose
populations treble when the summer comes. It takes about an hour to drive from one end
of the island to the other, which we did often, wandering about two dozen beaches, and
picking up every hitch-hiking surfer, each of whom both knew someone who was renting a beach
house, and always with a very detailed argument for which beach here is the most perfect.

Ilhe Santa Catarina

Living in the landlocked Midwest my whole life (I'd never seen an ocean until last March),
I pretty much learned the whole criteria for picking out a beach - lots of people, no
people? high dangerous surfing tide, low snorkeling tide? little local bars, or a big,
crazy main drag? soft sand? warm water? does it smell? is the water really as clean as
it looks? In Chicago, they fill the marshes off of Lake Michigan with sand - there's your
beach.

Praia Arma??o

Actually, all the spots along Ilhe de Santa Catarina were well-varied and all
unbelievable, oddly empty on its off season, and southern Brazil's many little hills and
mountains are as complicated and fascinating as the big city streets. The people tend
toward the intimidatingly attractive beach people persuasion, especially next to my skinny, pasty
Midwestern-ness, but cool and generous and who speak a clear variant of Brazilian
Portuguese that I can actually understand. Wex and I were housed and fed by Karina and
Paulo, two unbelievably gracious law students who we'd just met through a
friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. One day I'll learn to be that cool.

Praia Brava

Apparently the second-largest Oktoberfest, next to Munich's, is in Brazil in a town called Blumenau. It took us a two-hour ride in a van full of drunken German backpackers
to get there. And there had to have been about ten thousand people there in this pastiche
of lederhosen-clad carnival that also oddly resembled a typical American state fair turned Island of Lost Boys. Unfortunately, unless you and your friends wear the same
costume, you lose each other immediately and you're left to wander alone through the dancing and playing and falling and puking and fighting and all that other good stuff. And even at Oktoberfest, the beer in
Brazil doesn't get much better.

As I'm no longer texting from a chilly East Ukrainian Village kitchen, but a chilly Boca do
Lixo hotel room, a newer older wiser about page is
appropriate. And Boca do Lixo means "garbage mouth" and is the best nickname I've
heard for the somewhat red-light-esque part of downtown S?o Paulo where I've been
staying. I'm crossing my fingers on a very cool little place in the Jardins by the end
of the week. Let's see...

posted by jeremy @ 7:27 PM

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10/8/03: You are all wonderful to keep coming here...

...and so I must apologise profusely that I'm letting this place rust. Working in a rather freelance situation right now, most of my Internet time (at R$3 an hour) is spent juggling e-mails and forms and lesson plans and all (while constantly deleting all of the instant messages for other people that constantly pop-up on this cafe computer). Pouring through hundreds of pages during an evening to pull out a handful of wonderful links just isn't feasible right now. That could change. Who knows. But I'm still happy to get your attention.

...but instead you should go to -

A blog that is designed for one post a month [via consumptive.]
A blog that scrolls from left to right (and is oddly gorgeous).
A blog by Neal Pollack that Paul Fisher has taken over.
A blog about sports by Sam Forsyth.
A site of really stunning b/w photos of Chicago by Peter Ha (a former co-worker of mine) [also via the former co-worker at consumptive].

And while on photos, I'm trying to put together a fotolog of S?o Paulo images and stories called peloLiminal. Check there soon.

I'm going to Florian?polis this weekend. Seeing more of this big country is working out sooner than I thought

posted by jeremy @ 1:32 PM

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10/3/03: Brazil is not for beginners

Update -

Leaped and landed without a hitch and am sorting my stuff out, coming to terms with a weekend of not knowing anyone within a ten-thousand mile radius, and getting over the immense shock of this city. I'm digging S?o Paulo already, but meu deus, nothing can prepare you for how nasty it is. It makes Chicago's "Ozone Action Days" seem like a puff of incense. I'm still overjoyed to be back in Brazil though, despite its many frustrations for me.

Anywho, I've got basic survival to figure out right now, so I'm putting the blog on pause 'til I get things figured out. Check back in a week.

posted by jeremy @ 2:59 PM

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10/2/03: Ok Expatria

I'm leaping into the void today.

If you're reading this on Thursday, I'm floating over the Equator in a cloud of beer and Unisom. If you're reading this on Friday, then I'm that wierd wide-eyed foreigner in Sao Paulo milling about awkwardly with an unmistakable glow. Expect a pause in LA beta corpo for a brief spell.

posted by jeremy @ 11:54 AM

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