Yes, I am sweet on Pith lately and I can’t help it. I even promised to be nicer to Tracy Moore and Brantley Hargrove. I have lost all street cred. I’m embarrassed to even show my face around here. I am a failure as a blogger. Maybe even a sell-out.
But here’s the thing.
Pete Kotz is the fucking Ghost of Midwesterners Past and I am a sucker for old Midwestern men. And ghosts.
It goes against my genetic make-up and is an insult to my people if I don’t like him.
All I can do is be honest with you. I am a little biased towards Pith lately. You’re not imagining it.
“We’re going to have wood in the ball room because guitars are made out of wood.”
“We’re going to have a giant instrument play on the hour! But we can’t tell you what kind, because we’re just making shit up!”
“Seriously, all the hip kids call that road that comes off the Gateway Bridge ‘KVB.’ No, really.”
“We’re not going to show you an example of the kind of art Nashville puts up in its round-abouts because we’re controversial enough as it is. We don’t need the Baptists out at Two Rivers on our cases because we showed shots of naked dancing people.”
My absolute favorite part is the wavy roof. I mean, sure, you see a lot of wavy roofs in Nashville, but that’s because we’ve got 10% unemployment and people can’t afford to get them fixed. But it appears that the people who designed the Music City Center thought that was just trendy. Oops. But you could sell people on that roof if you opened it to sledding on the rare occassions we get snow. Or maybe put a series of Slip & Slides on it?
Here’s the thing. It’s ugly. No amount of sentences that are some variation of “[Something that has to do with Nashville] inspired [something to do with the MCC] and that’s just how the citizens of Nashville want it” is going to fix that. Sure, maybe there are people who look at this video and say, “Well, at least it’s not the typical rusty-rose brick and sand and glass look every other new building around here has.” Okay, maybe even I am one of those people.
But it’s still ugly.
And serves to confirm that we are indeed the Home for Wayward Architecture.
Shoot, maybe it’s time to stop fighting that designation and just embrace it.
Think of how much fun it would be if every architect had to find some way to make their building as uniquely strange and ugly as possible before it was allowed to be built here… I bet people would watch a lot more of the zoning commission meetings.
“You want to put up a strip mall? But where are the monkey bars? And I see no place in your plans for an open air toilet! Or a kissing booth. No, go back to the drawing board.”
It’s a little troubling to see how comfortable these old men (Ginsburg isn’t quoted in the article) seem to be with allowing school administrators access to the genitalia of school children based on nothing more than a hunch that they might be “crotching” some ibuprofen.
I just wonder when we ever sit back and ask ourselves why, after 20 years of DARE and all these draconian measures, kids are still doing drugs? Is there ever a point when we admit something is a failure, stop doing it, and move on or does failure just indicate we need harsher measures?
Yesterday I had to remove someone from my feed-reader who was all “I’m sick of all these panty-waist liberals crying over the torture of terrorists. We should have done more to them and worse! We need to protect America.”
I haven’t said anything about all the torture revelations because what can you say? There’s something many moms try to convince their heterosexual daughters of–“If he does it for you, he’ll do it to you.” If he steals from his sister to buy you things, someday he’s going to steal from you. If he lies to other folks about you, someday he’ll lie to you. If he cheats on his girlfriend with you, someday he’ll cheat on you. If he leaves his wife for you, someday he’ll leave you.
It’s not always true, but more often than not. People are usually pretty up-front about who they are, if you will listen.
And yes, I am against torture for all kinds of reasons. I know it doesn’t work. I know it breaks the people it’s done to. I know it breaks the people who do it. I know that it makes the world a more dangerous place for our soldiers. And I know any time you’re adopting the methods and strategies of your enemies, you have lost your moral compass as a nation. Not to mention that it was breaking the law.
But the main reason I would expect any American, liberal or conservative, to be appalled and pissed off about torture, to be screaming in the streets for people to be arrested and tried and thrown in prison, for even fucking Nancy Pelosi to have to answer for how she could hear about this when it was going on and not have the guts to risk her political career to end it, is that these are just men and women who did this, who ordered it and who carried it out. Men and women in our goverment.
And, like our moms tried to warn us–if they’ll do it for you, they’ll do it to you.
Tiny Cat Pants 