Goodbye Slumpy

The house at 284 Eliot in Brush Park, Detroit, was a very special old house with a unique history and horrible crumbling structure. I photographed this place for years, and when the front facade crumbled, a group of us went to salvage some of the heavy terra cotta pieces. We were confronted by the cops at the end of mission accomplised, and H almost blew our cover. But I digress...

Amidst all the years of shooting I watched this poor mansion go from bad to devasting to downright dangerous. Last summer, on an all-nighter, G, M, D and I spelunked it. I'm surprised it didn't fall down on us, but it was a thrilling adventure to get inside. The pic on my website is from about 5 years ago, just after the initial facade crumbled and they installed steel stripping. There was hope of rehabilitation. This project, like so many others, was abandoned, while the neighborhood around her was re-built and gentrified.

Well, Ol' Slumpy's gone now, demolished, her memory and architectural splendor squandered by a city that sells the jewels for the price of the polish. In her memory, here's the video of the last of her facade crumbling and some fantastic pics of the demolition by Detroit Funk.

Richmond ROCKS! Don't stop Believin'!!!!

After an awesome, drunken, totally really really ridiculously good-looking weekend with Matt and Marianne where we spent a good portion of time discovering Richmond and a lot of the places I haven't been yet, Christian finally came home after a two-week work hiatus in MI. With much guilt, but little apprehension, I took Saturday completely off from studies and he and I spent a bit of the afternoon exploring what I call the Granite Planet...this part of the James River Park that is miles of huge granite boulders that you can hike all over and make your way across to get to the James River and Belle Isle. Yes, Richmond has a Belle Isle, and I'll tell you what, it ain't ghetto. Once we made it to the river, after climbing an abandoned dam and finding all kinds of cool trails, we found an area of the river where people were picnicing, swimming, and swimming with their DOGS! Now I can't wait to take Wilson to the river. I've never seen him swim, but I know since his heritage is part Newfoundland that he will love the mossy river water. Not worried about him stinking like mossy river, he already reeks.

Tonight we ate at a wonderful restaurant called Comfort, which is only 4 blocks from our house. I had a kobe steak with sides of mac n cheese and squash cassorole. Amazing.

I can't believe how nice it is here...and I love VCU so far. A totally energized, positive environment. Shit gets done here. Good shit. The MATX program is incredible. I have never experienced such a calm, collected and inspiring work environment - and I have never been treated so well personally and professionally. VCU bought four empty buildings on Broad St., right behind my house, which are being renovated to be the studios exclusively for us MATX art folk. And since Richmond has it's First Fridays Art Walk every month, on Friday, me and a few of my new MATX friends decorated/installed the windows of our new buildings with our art - one of my films and some objects to go along with it, Guido's animation, Belinda's print work, Katie's glass, Jenn's sculpture, etc... I'm only here a month and I already have a film showing/art space and a few really cool friends in the program. That's fucking outrageous!

Who's next on the visiting trail? DANA!!!!! Yay! Or maybe, you?

Briar Rose

What a BITCH.

No not really. Briar Rose was one of the easiest and most exciting papers I've ever written. Couple reasons: the hypertext version of the story was amazingly fun to read. It bounced all over the fucking place! It never ended! It never actually ENDS. And then there's the fact that I can pretty much pick apart the end of the "traditional bourgeois novel" and scream out loud - hey, not every fucking spoiled college kid or their grandma own a motherfucking computer or have time or the inclination to sit in front of a machine to read a text. Books are our friends, still. Old, archaic, but useful friends. Narrative, as we traditionally know it, is NOT DEAD YET. So that was fun. Of course, I did not use the term "motherfucking computer" in my paper. I'll save that for the hypertext version...coming your way....soon. Motherfuckers.

I definitely recommend the experience of reading Briar Rose and know this, my paper will be on my website soon enough (just have to figure out how that pesky dreamweaver operates). Why is it that I can easily learn a video editing software, figure out depth of field charts by sight, conjure up a million useless tidbits of information, but I cannot for the life of me, figure out dreamweaver?