Weekly Update!!!

Lots of stuff going on:

Project update: The client gave the interior designer full creative control over the project, which we think was arranged between them from the get-go. I thought maybe we'd drop the project, as insulted, backstabbed, and bamboozled we were, but the company decided to stick it out because (a) its business, and business is to make money, (b) they want to be seen as able to work with any company, and (c) its a high profile project with a big client they would like to continue to work with. The interior designers are a mess to work with, they're basically not doing the work they said they would do, and they keep trying to take the project back to square 24 when we're on square 193. I'm working out roof assemblies and structural connections while they're rethinking the shape of the building. It's incredibly frustrating because they need to prove that their designs are better than ours (which is supposedly how they got creative control) but their problem is that there are so many constraints on the building, OUR designs are the simply the best, optimized solutions because we worked months on them trying out options and configurations. The "designs" they are beginning to arrive at are virtually identical to ours except less interesting.

Tonight, I was picking up some photos at Walgreen's when I ran into the night manager there, and it turned out to be an old friend of mine, Erik Brekke. I am terrible with names, but for some reason, his always stuck with me. Maybe its because he's a huge six and a half foot Scandinavian who dances like Michael Jackson. Anyway, I was surprised to hear he'd graduated and gotten married, and was putting away money to move to the east coast.

Tonight Saori and I had hit the central phoenix Buffalo Exchange and picked up some new clothes. I got a LeTigre zip up jacket (no replacement for my lost Zara, but nice anyway), a dickies jacket, and a nice slim cut sweater/shirt. Saori got some cool clothes too. We were killing time waiting for the hour photo developer.

Cameras! We've been doing a lot of cameras lately. It started with Saori getting me the lomo multi-exposure camera (which we're finally figuring out how to get images superimposed on top of each other). Then last weekend we picked up an old "Partytime II" Polaroid camera and a dirty old manual camera which looked pretty nice for $20. With a bit of research we found it was a Pentacon RTL reflex camera with a Hoya Asahi lens. Everything manual. Detachable coated lens made in Japan, camera body actually made in East Germany in 1960's. We cleaned up the lenses as best we could and shot a roll of film. The photos are really cool. Focus is really nice and the lens coating gives everything a warmer tinge. Learning a lot about cameras too.

Last thursday Saori and I went to the Muse concert in Mesa. For my birthday, Saori got me tickets. We were one of the first groups to get in, and we got a good seat in the middle. The venue was the Mesa Amphitheater, which is an outdoor theater, but it was really good. They set up a flat, standing area for the 50' or so feet from the stage, and then they step it up with terraces, so you can see over the mosh pit crowd to the stage. Really hard to find a bad seat. Muse was really cool, they played a set of their biggest hits and it was just a great show. The lead singer had a piano set up on stage, and in one of the songs he switched mid-song from playing guitar to playing this electric piano, and they had the piano set up an array of lights so you could see the notes playing across it. Huge crowd of people.

Friday was the birthday of one of Saori's and my friends, Mai, who is currently a roommate of my old roommate, Sal. We brought some drinks and barbecued on her back porch with a mix of Japanese and Taiwanese and Mexicans. It was a really fun night.

Saturday night we were supposed to meet my studio friend Joe and his wife Nicole for dinner, but we discovered the Phoenix symphony was playing Tchaikovsky, so we decided to hit that up. It was really fun, we got to get dressed up, drive downtown, and grabbed a bite of pizza with the DeLaree's, and then listened to the concert. It was a good concert. They started with a new composition of a local composed, which sounded to me like a movie score for a mediocre historical drama. Then they played some Tchaikovsky's piano music with an incredibly talented Pianist whose hands literally blurred with how quickly they were moving over the keys. He was a bit of showman, adding lots of dramatic arm movements and flourishes. He also returned for not one but two encore songs.

At intermission, a man in line asked me if I liked "this stuff better than R&B." Most people there were the stereotypical city matrons and couples in their late 40s onward. After intermission, they played a complete ballet written by Bernstein, which sounded a lot like New York, New York, and West Side Story. I realized that John Williams sounds a lot like Bernstein. They finished off the concert with a series of Hungarian Dances by Brahms, concluding with the famous Dance Five. Saori was jumping up and down in her seat she was so excited, because we'd been humming the tune for a few weeks without being able to recall either the name or the composer.

That night we played asshole, a card game, with Saori's roommate. Its actually a lot of fun, and very addicting. Its like a stripped down version of Bridge, with no partners, trump suits, or bidding. All cards are dealt out, and people lay down cards in turn increasing in value. 2 is high, 3 low, etc, and the objective is to get rid of all your cards first. After the first game, the winner and loser exchange the worst and best two cards, respectively. Its fun. One Saturday, Mai, Saori, and I played it for 9 hours straight. Part at Mai's apartment, part at a coffee shop, and part at Saori's apartment.