The Duplex by Glenn McCoy for June 17, 2010

The results of our sitcom society.

He’s not doing much drawings these days Eno.

It’s too bad Eno is not a classic movie buff, because then he would have guessed Howard Roark from The Fountainhead.

Eno’s such a dope….never even heard of Hank Floyd Wright.

How ‘bout I.M. Pei?

I have that movie, Sheik. I thought it was very good.

How about Art Van Delay, George Costanza’s alter ego????

Hey Nabu-Q

That’s a good idea. It’s about all your grandkids will have left after we start paying off the ObamaDebt. Beer and Soda cans!! Hey Rahm and “AxelProd” are you reading????

I think it’s Frank Lloyd Wright.

Oh, god, The Fountainhead is a horrible movie. Philosophical content aside, it’s just an awful screenplay: one-dimensional characters mouthing slogans: “I’ve devoted my career to destroying you, Mr. Roark, because I cannot stand true genius.”

And Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay herself, so she’s got nobody else to blame…

The Sydney Opera House was Jørn Utzon, but Saarinen was the one who retrieved Utzon’s design after it had been earlier rejected.

Santiago Calatrava is doing some fantastic stuff around the world these days. Most of it is in Europe I think, but he did the new Art Museum in Milwaukee and I think he’s got something in the works in Chicago.

He does a lot of bridges, too, and I REALLY wish they’d give him the gig for the replacement span of the SF/Oakland Bay Bridge. But there seems to be a failure of imagination on the part of the planners (yeah, it’d probably be expensive, but it would be another good tourist draw).

Fritzoid, you sound like a movie critic. It’s’s like you’re writing one of their reviews word for word. I for one loved the movie and the cast.

Without fail, if there’s a movie that the critcs don’t like, I’ll love it, and the ones they love, I’ll hate it

Nope. I’m just a fan of good dialogue, and the dialogue in Fountainhead was abysmal. Rand had no ear for how people actually talk; the line I quoted wasn’t an exaggeration, it was verbatim (or at least as close as I can recall). Here’s another: “Howard, you’ll never get any jobs as long as you hold on to your principles! Why don’t you sell out?”

If you can’t make your dialogue sound natural, at least make it clever. Rand was incapable of doing either; all she was interested in was driving home who were her heroes and who were her villains, with a sledgehammer if necessary.

It’s a propaganda piece, and is about as convincing as Reefer Madness.

So.Carolina, America’s intellectual toilet bowl. That cracker thinks that we’re dealing with Obama debt. It’s not Ronnie Raygun’s or the Bushies’? Wow.

Unless you are a superstar, you will find architecture just above teaching for being most educated and least paid. Most architects eventually go into property development and make money selling land that some company builds a design generated by robots and $10.00 an hour drafters.