June 2009 – Page 3

The New Moscow Philosophy

Here’s the other book cover I’ve made for Twisted Spoon in the past year (first one is here): Vyachelsav Pyetsukh’s The New Moscow Philosophy. This one should be going to print some time over the summer.

New Moscow Philosophy

A bunch of Moscovites live crammed together in a flat originally intended for a single family during more prosperous times. When one elderly tenant mysteriously disappears, the residents start jockeying over her living space. The apartment itself is presented as the the dominant character of the story in a sense (the author introduces you to it before any of the characters, and its crowded conditions define the experience of most of the characters), so it seemed to make sense to feature it on the cover as the ‘protagonist’. The disappearance of the elderly tenant, moreover, is turned into a kind of meta-absurdist whodunnit, with conscious literary references to Crime and Punishment. So, hence, the ‘Colonel Mustard did it in the study with the revolver’ aspect of the design.

I’ve always had a fetish of sorts for floorplans, so it was fun to do a design around one. I only hope that I got the layout of the flat more or less correct– it was difficult to figure out on paper, nonwithstanding the author’s meticulous descriptions of which room is where.

World Series of Poker

I traveled to Las Vegas this past weekend and played in a World Series of Poker tournament. One hears a lot about the “Main Event,” but they have fifty-odd other smaller tournaments, and the whole production turns the convention center annex to the Rio Hotel and Casino into a sort of Poker Nirvana for almost two solid months in June and July. Or, to put it another way, a “degenerates’ convention.” The scene was truly surreal: multiple airport hanger-sized rooms, all filled with hundreds of poker tables, and, incessantly, the eerie clatter of a million poker chips in thousands of anxious hands, occasionally punctuated by triumphant/enraged shouts. The prize money for each of these tournaments is significant: in the one I played in, first place won $650,000, so life-altering consequences await at the turn of a card. (Of course, the vast majority of the entrants get nothing other than the thrill of participation.)

I had expected to see a much more subdued scene than in recent years given the economic climate, but there is apparently still no shortage of people willing and able to put down $1500 or more for a chance at big winnings and celebrity. At my table, there was a Midwestern gentleman with a beard and Cardinals’ hat who, I quickly realized, had come in third in last year’s Main Event, winning $4.5 million. Others at the table were huge fans of his, so I got to listen in as they quizzed him. “Did you quit your job?” they asked. “No, I bought the company.” He explained that in the past year since his victory, he had signed on with some poker web site (whose logo was emblazoned all over his body), which had flown him from world capital to world capital (more than 150,000 miles in the air) and paid his buy-in to all the major tournaments. And all this happened because he won a minor satellite tournament in St. Louis and hit the big money in Vegas one weekend.

I went with three friends from work, and we all gave one another a 4% stake, so that if even one of us made a serious run, we’d all come out on top. And that’s exactly what happened: while two of us (myself included) lasted about 9 hours into the first day before busting out, and a third made back his buy-in with a small payoff, the fourth was still in it late on the second day. We (and an increasing group of others who were interested in his fate) were tracking his progress on the internet, as poker blogs posted updates about developments on the felt.

By Monday afternoon, he was one of the final 25 players, already guaranteed a significant prize, and within shouting distance of the big money. At this point, of course, he had played about 24 hours of poker in the past 48 hours, and endurance became a significant factor. People like to joke about poker as a couch potato’s “sport,” but it is no joke to keep your mind sharp, observing your opponents’ every move, recalling the intricate details of betting patterns (“What happened before the flop? Has he done anything to suggest that he’s capable of laying down a hand?” etc.) for hour after hour on end. Our hero combined excellent and disciplined play with some incredible lucky breaks, and by late afternoon on Monday he had made the final table and was in second place in chips. Visions of a $20,000 payout for me were dancing through my head.

He finally busted out, in seventh place, on an aggressive move that backfired, for a payout of $93,000. Not life-changing, perhaps, but eye-opening for sure. And the three of us got all of our expenses paid and then some. I have a feeling I’ll be back next year.

William Eggleston and Big Star

Speaking of flying lounges, here’s William Eggleston’s beautiful ode to in-flight beverage service:

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Eggleston’s red ceiling photograph was used by Big Star for the cover of their Radio City album.

Given that Eggleston and Big Star were both from Memphis and both broke through around ’73/’74, it’s little wonder that Big Star basically sounds just like how Eggleston’s photos look. Still, I can’t think of another example of musician and visual artist who remind me so clearly of one another.

More Eggleston here.

More on flying lounges

Compare this photo with the swinging social atmosphere shown in Purephazed’s Pan Am post directly below.

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I’ll take the Pan Am party, thank you very much. The above photo is, of course, the grueling Amtrak lounge, a sort of airborne version of the bar scene in Star Wars.

What’s interesting nowadays about Amtrak from a self-parodic perspective is that their spokesman and key lobbyist is none other than Michael Dukakis.

There’s something poetic about two failed, lefty, Northeast institutions that are held in wide contempt by most of the country coming together like this.

Stuffed Animal Lamps

An old friend of mine has a new art project — stuffed animal lamps.

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Simple concept, elegant execution. A grafitti artist friend adds some decoration. There are a ton of them displayed here; I had trouble picking out my favorite one (I also like the sleeping camo guy, and the spiderman).

I like the marriage of functional and frivolous. I’m also reminded of a case I worked on as a law clerk for a judge, about whether it is legal to copyright a Halloween costume. The law in this area turned out to be completely incoherent, based on something called the “conceptual severability” test — the idea was that you could not copyright “functional” things, but if you could “conceptually sever” the design from the functional aspect of the object, you could copyright the design. Of course this test posed an issue for costumes — what’s the function? The law, of course, had an answer: masquerading! Anyway the details were absurd — for example, some aspects of the test had to do with the “plushness” of the object, and whether it could stand on its own (hat) or needed to be on something to assume its shape (glove).

Somewhat of a digression, but these lamps got me thinking about that — is the function just lighting, or also cuteness?

Steiff bear diagram

This graphic was introduced to me by a student, who did a really good presentation of the visual evolution of the teddy bear for an assignment called the Artefact Assignment. It’s a great sort of Rorschach test, in the sense that any given interpretation probably reveals more about the viewer than the object itself:

steiff

In fact, what this graphic diagrams is the change in design over time of the Steiff bear. The Steiff bear was introduced in 1903 by the German company Steiff, who became involved in a decades-long arms race (furry arms, to be sure) with the Mitchom company, who had released a ‘Teddy’ Bear in the United States around the same time (named after TDR, who allegedly refused to shoot a defenseless bear).

Please feel free to submit any alternate possible interpretations (psychosexual or otherwise) via the comments box.

Good times

Thompson&Thomson It always warms my heart to read about Eng and Chang Bunker, aka the original Siamese Twins. Despite being conjoined, they managed to lead dignified, productive lives, ride horses, marry two sisters (?) and sire loads of children (!). However, things were not always rosy. Eng and Chang’s fondness for gambling and drinking, respectively, caused several heated arguments and even a few fist-fights, the logistics of which boggle the mind.

Another case of brotherly pull-though-it-ness: a few months ago, the news channels here showed footage of the Prague Marathon and of the Karanjan brothers, Francis and James, from Kenya. Francis is blind and runs marathons holding the hand of James, who I guess sort of guides him along, describes the sights they’re passing and concentrates on running the 26.2 miles himself all at the same time. I like this.

Nerd Time: The Leopard Seal

Untitled A few years ago, I got really into reading accounts of extreme adventures and explorations. There’s something comforting about sitting in the warmth of your living room while other people haplessly freeze to death, fall of cliffs, catch on fire, have their still-beating hearts removed by Mayan priests, or get half-digested in a the stomach of a whale and emerge bleached and peevish.

During this time, I read two accounts of the Shacktelton expedition. Basically, Shackleton and his mates head off from the south pole, but their boat gets frozen in ice in the Weddell Sea, effectively trapping them for 6 months of dark Antarctic winter. Adorably, they actually stage puppet shows and stuff like that in order to maintain their sanity. Eventually, the ship is crushed by ice and the crew is forced to float around on giant ice bergs for months trying to sail their way out of the sea to land.

All sorts of terrible stuff happens, but one thing that was really a head-scratcher for me was the frequent account of attacks by Leopard Seals. Leopard Seals? Apparently, this is a species of carnivorous seal specific to the Antarctic. Shackleton and his crew are constantly trying to drift off to sleep on their flying ice floe when this leopard seal thing clambers out of the sea and starts attacking them. Apparently, it’s a worst-of-both-words proposition, in the sense that the Leopard Seal is dangerous (like a non-seal) but totally fatty and non-nutritious (like a seal). So, once they kill it, there’s still nothing in it for the beleaguered crew

All this makes for a good scenario to re-enact with guests as an after-dinner game. Just commandeer a few sofa cushions to use as ice floes.

(Above: real Leopard Seal cranium. Eek.)

Taqueria Dolores

I’ve added Mission Mission to the blog roll, and was pleased to see that they covered the jarring Taqueria Dolores in one of their posts.

It’s a ‘Mission-style’ taqueria in Berlin (in Alexanderplatz, no less- a really sterile, touristy square) with maps of the Mission on the walls and bottles of Anchor Steam to be had. Behold:

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Basically, you can have fun locating on the walls three or four places you’ve lived while eating a really, really non-greasy burrito. All they’re missing is the unbelievably loud juke box that bursts into mariachi at unexpected intervals.

Man, I miss Berlin. Even though I’ve never lived there. The ‘Czech-Mex’ here in Prague is comparatively unimaginative and second-rate.

Follow-up on Grizzly Bear

Krafty recently pointed out to me that the lead singer of Grizzly Bear, Ed Droste, is actually the son of our grade school music teacher, Diana “Ms.” Droste. This revelation immediately legitimizes in my mind the occupation of ‘grade school music teacher’, which I have to admit I’d held a skeptical attitude towards before.

I have few clear memories of Ms. Droste (as I was, like, 6 when she stopped teaching us), but they’re mainly pleasant. It’s when I think about the rogues gallery that followed her that I wonder how Will Ferrell hasn’t yet starred in an Anchorman-type role where he plays a music teacher in charge of leading small children in jocular rounds of ‘ta-ti-ti, ti-ti-ti-TAH-ti-ti-TAH-TAH!’