spasticrobot

Party Like It's 1996

I finally have internet at home, well if you call surfing dialup at my mother-in-law's that. This Katrina experience really has me rethinking the way electronic communication works. It's just so flimsy and crapola when faced with natural disasters and terrorist attacks. We need something better. I'm kind of impressed with this Verizon BroadbandAccess internet service but it's an awfully high price tag for the speed. I'm kind of just better off plugging in the old phone line and dialing up some good old fashioned cheap-ass dialup.

Dutch Design Symposium in Chicago

I just booked arrangements to be in Chicago next week for this incredible symposium entitled Sustainable Waterfronts - Learning from the Dutch Experience. They have added an extended program called New Orleans and the Dutch in order to discuss how Dutch design methodology can be employed in the reconstruction of New Orleans. From the website:

After the devastation left behind in New Orleans and the Gulf region by hurricane Katrina we received numerous requests and inquiries if we would include presentations on this subject. We therefore decided to extend the program with presentations and a panel discussion about the Dutch expertise on water management and urban planning and if this could be of use in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Speakers from the Netherlands and the US will be announced shortly.

I'll be up there furiously taking notes, trying to get my two cents in and making contacts for the New New Orleans Initiative. I'll also be posting the whole thing so check back for updates.

Saints!

I received some very good news today that I may be able to share shortly. Let's just say that life may be returning to semi-normal for me sooner rather than later. More to come on that. In the meantime tonight I will be heading to the local sports bar to watch my beloved New Orleans Saints take on Eli Manning and the New York Giants. Bless you boys, I know you can win it for all us displaced peeps. Who Dat! It's all we got at this point.

Covington Notebook

It's funny how mixed up I'm feeling these days. Friday night Willcore pulled into town in the most luxurious BMW I've ever seen and later on I met up with Wes who was fresh in from NYC. We spent the rest of the night celebrating (drinking) at various Covington watering holes. It was really nice to be around all of our close friends who are using Covington as their home in exile.

The next day Shanna and I spent the day buying new clothes for our wardrobes that need to be fully rebuilt and new books for our book collection that we're starting again from scratch. That and some insinuations about being relocated temporarily for work were enough to send me into a two day tailspin. It's just so difficult not knowing the condition of so many of our things and not knowing what the future holds for us.

The weekend was redeemed in the end though by April & Roy's BBQ where most of us exiles met up and had a great afternoon together. We watched Roy's video footage of the city from last week and it made us all hopeful.  The next few months will be rough but I have a good feeling that by January we will all be back in the city together, raising toasts and proclamations, preparing for the March of St. Anthony and rebuilding our lives together.

New Architectural Opportunities for New Orleans

With the unprecedented opportunity to rebuild large sections of our city, we need to be brave and think about new and innovative architectural forms. The worst thing I can imagine is the Disney-esque results of trying to reproduce the architectural forms that dominated the sections of town that will need to be rebuilt. The majority of the historic portions of the city will still be intact and there is no reason to try to recreate them. Instead let's embrace some new ideas and move them to the forefront in New Orleans.

Here's a partial list of some of the things I'd like to see:

A Pattern Language utilized for all rebuilt neighborhoods. Everyone involved in the replanning of New Orleans should be reading Christopher Alexander and the Center for Environmental Structure's classic treatise on the design of buildings and cities. We need more bike paths, more parks, and neighborhoods that live and breathe.

Rural Studio style dwellings. It would be great to be able to use some of the flotsam generated by Katrina in new construction.

Modernist Pre-Fab homes or any architecture that embraces the new feel-good modernism of Dwell and its ilk. I'd love to see whole neighborhoods that look like this and are built with materials that are meant to stand the test of time and are hopefully waterproof.

Mixed Reviews

I've had a couple of friends that have made trips over the bridge into the city. Sounds like things are good and bad. Uptown looks like a wreck of structural damage and downed trees but nothing that a few months of heavy duty construction won't fix. Downtown and the French Quarter look amazingly intact. Danny just showed me photos of the quarter that look like they could have been taken the week before the storm but with empty streets. We are really lucky that our most historic parts of town are intact. I can't wait to take the trip over next week.

Summer Inventory

Here's my summer inventory, a few weeks late. I exculded all things Katrina to preserve a record of how tranquil and balanced my life was before this bitch of a storm threw me for a loop.

Books
Complete Bike Maintenance
Smart Cycling - Arnie Baker
Idoru - William Gibson
All Tomorrow's Parties - William Gibson
A Very Old Fashioned Future - Bruce Sterling
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling

Movies / DVDs
Batman Begins
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Upside of Anger
The Notebook
50 First Dates
Angela's Ashes
The Cider House Rules
Matchstick Men
Constantine
Secondhand Lions
Meet the Fockers
HArry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Entourage: Season 1
A Very Long Engagement
Kinsey
The Sopranos Season 4
The Sopranos Season 5
Million Dollar Baby
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Notting Hill
Love Actually
You've Got Mail
In Good Company
Star Wars Episode II
National Treasure
A Dirty Shame
A Series of Unfortunate Events

Music
Stereolab - Oscillions from the Anti-Sun & Mars Audiac Quintet
Broadcast - America's Boy
Los Indios Tabajaras - Serie Platino
World Psychedelic Classics Vol. 3
Dungen - Ta Det Lungt
various World Music
KCRW
KEXP
WWNO

Projects
Aboutcox.com CSS Retool
Neworleans.cox.net
Cox Direct Mail Pieces
Jlangenbeck.com CSS/XHTML Redesign
Cox Newspaper Ads
Cox Marketing Intranet
Cox Rich Emails
Cox Web Banners
Spasticrobot.blog
Sugarcane Recordings Site
Design Experiments

Events
Danny's Gallery Opening
Tour de France
Covington/Abita Bike Weekend
Northshore Hurricane Avoidance
Damon & Sarah's Going Away Party
Cass & Heather and Sarah & Rick's Engagement Party
Mandina's & Brocato's Double Header with mi famiglia
Falling in love with my wife more and more each day!

Stuff
Motobecane Le Champion SL!!!
Riding Bikes like a MF
Water
Life Improvement
Smoking Ciggarettes once every 2 weeks instead of once every 2 hours
Hot Coffee with Skim Milk
Skim Lattes
Boca Burgers
Cheerios with Skim Milk & Bananas
Red Beans & Brown Rice with Turkey Sausage
Grilled Tuna
Salads
Turkey & Swiss Wraps
Cajun Trail Mix
Hot Tamale Trail Mix
Larabars
Mom's Spaghetti Sauce
Revolution Flatbread
No Egg Tofu Salad
Cherry Vanilla Granola
Bulk Treats

A Post-Katrina List

Bruce Sterling - Heavy Weather
Delta Works
Booze in all of its wonderful forms
Las Manitas Migas
Guero's Tacos
Austin's Cafe Culture
St. John's Coffeehouse - like the old days
The Green Room - like the wild west
Red Beans & Rice
Friends & Family
Cov Love
Cox Communications

Semi-Normal Monday

I'm back at the coffeehouse in Covington on what feels like an almost normal Monday. I'm working on some projects, the New New Orleans Initiative included, but things just feel so weird. It feels almost routine but so very far away from normal. I just wish I was back at the office working on a print piece and doing site updates.

The Green Room

I just moved down the street to the Green Room which is a bar that feels like a post-apocalyptic Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca. There are people here from Veterans for Peace, Michael Moore's group, and other indepenent journalists who are sitting at tables editing video footage, photographs and news reports which are being spit out on onto the net through their 802.11g network. What a weird and wild situation I am now surrounded by.