Recharger The Dog » cool stuff

Can-Fantastic!

Billy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:57:38 +0000

Canstruction, which just finished its run at the World Financial Center, teamed students, mentored by professional architects and engineers, who created humongous and slightly disturbing can structures. Made entirely of unopened cans (with an occasional cereal box or peanut butter jar), the sculptures varied wildly from a map of the world, a slice of pie with a fork, and a Quaker Oats jar (including, disconcertingly, the Quaker Man’s face), all made entirely of metal cans.

The exhibit will travel across the country to a number of cities over the next year and a half.

The Other Guys

Recharger — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:03:42 +0000

EVEN WITHOUT PHOTOSHOP, THIS WRECKING BALL, RENTED FOR THE MOVE THE OTHER GUYS, IS A DOUBLE-TAKER. The Other Guys stars two sure-to-be-hasbeens, Will Ferrell and Marky Mark, in what we used to call a caper/comedy. If the film is half as cool as the wrecking ball, we might catch it on late-night TV.

This is so friggin’ cool!

Recharger — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:08:56 +0000

THE ORIGINAL CITY HALL SUBWAY STATION CLOSED IN 1945, and since then has remained hidden as we, unawares of the beauty below us, dragged our sorry asses from home to work and back again. Now we can glimpse what used to be. If you stay on the #6 train, past the final stop–the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station–you will make a u-turn (don’t freak out; transit officials allow riders to stay aboard for the u-turn) until you are facing up-town. Beforehand, get yourself to a front window (sadly, newer cars have double front windows, killing one of the true joys of subway riding). Peering through the dark, you catch a glimpse of the past, the original City-Hall station, opened in 1904 and considered the crown jewel of the New York Subway System. For more info on this treasure, visit Forgotten New York.

– Doreen He

This is your brain on drugs

Recharger — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:54:08 +0000

Our trip to the Brooklyn Museum–the second largest art museum in the United States–was wildly successful (see below), but the new facade, designed by the firm of Cresson, Cresson, Cresson & Asshole, still vexes us. We don’t know much about architecture, but we do know that it should make some kind of, uh, sense. The glass addition to the old building, aside from having no apparent function looks like someone stuck high-tech chewing gum to a gorgeous antique bedpost. It also looks like scaffolding, giving us a panic attacks that the painters have not only abandoned the job, but maybe also died.

The museum is better than it was on our first visit in 1980. President Reagan, in his heroic attempt to deny the poor any government money, cut CEDA funds–the program that put poor people to work. So the museum was half shut. It was July, no AC, no fans, and the ancient guard, feeling bad, invited us behind a partition to see one of the shuttered collections and to “have some fun.”

Ewwww.

In spite of that, the museum had cool stuff, including, on the main floor, an funky collection of totem poles. The new improved museum, in its appeal to yuppie scum, has removed about half of them. Since then, they’ve also purchased Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party” for the permanent collect, which is like purchasing original dogs-playing-pool painting. The Dinner Party will go on display this year, tragically taking up space that could have otherwise been devoted to coat racks.

Even so, today was special. Because we had tickets, we laughingly waltzed passed the putzes lined up for the Annie Leibowitz exhibit. Heretofore, we didn’t have much use for Leibowitz, whom we pegged as a celebrity photographer. Smugly, perusing the pics of Mick Jagger, Philip Johnson, et. al. we reaffirmed our original assessment…until we came to the one of the oval office–Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powel, Connie Rice, George Tenet–standing with formal serenity in the vortex power, all giving Liebowitz don’t-fuck-with-me stares. Mesmerizing.

That was nothing compared to the Ron Mueck sculptures. They were not life-life, they were alive, preserved humans–some humongous, some tiny–all freaking alive. Gimmick? Yeah–all super-realism is. But scary too, standing several feet away from the giant naked man and his big mean weenie. And the giantess in bed.

Two more days to see The Amazing Station

Recharger — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:27:39 +0000

Designed by “award-winning Broadway scenery and lighting designer Clarke Dunham and his artist/writer wife Barbara” (from the spine-tingling brochure), the Amazing Station is pretty cool. Four railroad scenes representing four vanished train-stations over the four seasons. For those of us who long for all-that-is-train (everything, that is, except for Metro North commuters obliviously screaming into cell phones), this is the place to be.

The Amazing Station: 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Citigroup Building, 153 E. 53rd Street.