Not everyone loves a McMansion.
John Brown is a University of Calgary associate dean of research in the faculty of environmental design who is the anti-McMansion man. He's spreading a new vision of the idea of home: it's smaller, more sustainable, and from the sounds of it, eminently more human-sized.
On his website, Brown posts a vlog a week discussing his vision of what a slow home is. Basically, it is a place that is simple, light and open.
Versailles it isn't--which is pretty much right in tune with the times. (See today's first blog, about the epidemic of bossnapping in France. They're feeling downright revolutionary these days.)
I have always wondered who wrote the book of interior design that said to fill every available space with something. It seems like such a lot of work when nothing quite often works just as well.
(Somehow, judging from a few of the photo spreads I've seen, Elton John, who is a notorious collector of objets of every sort, will not be dropping by the Slowhomes website anytime soon, either).
http://www.theslowhome.com/
This is a Lisa Rochon piece that ran in the Globe & Mail earlier this week about theslowhome.com:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090418.AROCHON18ART01153/TPStory/Entertainment
Showing posts with label Slowhopes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slowhopes. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Greg Freaking Maddux
Greg Maddux was the most ordinary-looking, least ordinary sports star Slowhopes ever came across.
He had a body like an office administrative assistant.
He threw a baseball with the ferocity of a Sunday afternoon, Central Park slow pitch superstar.
And he won. And won. And won. 355 times, against the best batters in the world, more than any pitcher in baseball except seven other freaks.
Maddux also is personally responsible for one of Slowhopes worst decisions of his life.
It was the 1996 World Series. The Braves v. the Yankees, who weren't quite the Yankees yet--they hadn't won a playoff series of any kind since 1978. Jeter was a rookie. Torre was the new manager in town.
And Slowhopes somehow managed to score tickets to Game 1 & 2 of the World Series!
This evident miracle rapidly turned into a fiasco. Andruw Jones, who was 19 years old, clobbered two homers in Game 1 and the A-T-L crushed the Yankees, which was depressing enough, but the very next night, Slowhopes watched in total despair as Greg Maddux completely shut down the Yankees. We think the score was 4-0, but it seemed worse--Maddux simply owned them in the way an ace sometimes destroys his opponents. He didn't throw hard, either. He looked like a librarian getting some fresh air, and threw like one, too, and the Yankees simply couldn't touch him.
Cut to:
The Yankees, against every conceivable odd, after losing those first two at home, won the next three in Atlanta! It was insane! Pettite won a 1-0 thriller v. Smoltz. Leyritz lined a three run homer into the ATL bully late in Game 4, erasing what remained of a 6-0 Atl lead. It was incredibly dramatic, sensational October baseball drama, all of which led to:
Game 6, Saturday night, Yankee Stadium.
Slowhopes, as luck would have it, possessed a pair of tickets for Game 7. The question was: would there be a Game 7? If the Yanks won Saturday night, it was all over.
Who was pitching Saturday night? Maddux the Witch.
Slowhopes had discovered, in the nascent days of the internet, a Yankees thread, and managed to wrangle an offer of an exchange: two Game 6 tix in return for his two game 7 tix. Plus $50 for beers and whatnot.
The only obstacle to this MLB Sophie's Choice was the witch. After sitting in pain through Game 2, in which Maddux utterly dominated the Yanks' lineup, Slowhopes made the call:
Don't bet against Maddux. We held on to our Game 7 pair and tuned in.
Only to hear Joe Girardi, of all the unlikelies, scorch a triple to deep left center early, to drive in two or three and stake the Yanks to a lead.
Saturday night, late October, a two or three run lead, 57,000 lunatics cheering: there was no hope. The Yankees prevailed, winning the first of their four 1990's World Series titles. Slowhopes was happy and heartbroken at the same moment. Later that week, he caught the D train to the Bronx and redeemed his two useless Game 7 ducats for $140, then caught the train back.
You were still one of the greatest, Maddux.
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8913826
He had a body like an office administrative assistant.
He threw a baseball with the ferocity of a Sunday afternoon, Central Park slow pitch superstar.
And he won. And won. And won. 355 times, against the best batters in the world, more than any pitcher in baseball except seven other freaks.
Maddux also is personally responsible for one of Slowhopes worst decisions of his life.
It was the 1996 World Series. The Braves v. the Yankees, who weren't quite the Yankees yet--they hadn't won a playoff series of any kind since 1978. Jeter was a rookie. Torre was the new manager in town.
And Slowhopes somehow managed to score tickets to Game 1 & 2 of the World Series!
This evident miracle rapidly turned into a fiasco. Andruw Jones, who was 19 years old, clobbered two homers in Game 1 and the A-T-L crushed the Yankees, which was depressing enough, but the very next night, Slowhopes watched in total despair as Greg Maddux completely shut down the Yankees. We think the score was 4-0, but it seemed worse--Maddux simply owned them in the way an ace sometimes destroys his opponents. He didn't throw hard, either. He looked like a librarian getting some fresh air, and threw like one, too, and the Yankees simply couldn't touch him.
Cut to:
The Yankees, against every conceivable odd, after losing those first two at home, won the next three in Atlanta! It was insane! Pettite won a 1-0 thriller v. Smoltz. Leyritz lined a three run homer into the ATL bully late in Game 4, erasing what remained of a 6-0 Atl lead. It was incredibly dramatic, sensational October baseball drama, all of which led to:
Game 6, Saturday night, Yankee Stadium.
Slowhopes, as luck would have it, possessed a pair of tickets for Game 7. The question was: would there be a Game 7? If the Yanks won Saturday night, it was all over.
Who was pitching Saturday night? Maddux the Witch.
Slowhopes had discovered, in the nascent days of the internet, a Yankees thread, and managed to wrangle an offer of an exchange: two Game 6 tix in return for his two game 7 tix. Plus $50 for beers and whatnot.
The only obstacle to this MLB Sophie's Choice was the witch. After sitting in pain through Game 2, in which Maddux utterly dominated the Yanks' lineup, Slowhopes made the call:
Don't bet against Maddux. We held on to our Game 7 pair and tuned in.
Only to hear Joe Girardi, of all the unlikelies, scorch a triple to deep left center early, to drive in two or three and stake the Yanks to a lead.
Saturday night, late October, a two or three run lead, 57,000 lunatics cheering: there was no hope. The Yankees prevailed, winning the first of their four 1990's World Series titles. Slowhopes was happy and heartbroken at the same moment. Later that week, he caught the D train to the Bronx and redeemed his two useless Game 7 ducats for $140, then caught the train back.
You were still one of the greatest, Maddux.
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8913826
Charlie Brown: The Original Slowhopes
It is always a little weird to see the things you loved as a child all those years later, when they turn out to be completely idiotic, trite, and not as funny as you remembered.
Happily, Slowhopes checked out A Charlie Brown Christmas Monday night and found it funnier, smarter and more enjoyable than he remembers it being when he watched it as a kid. (This could be even more disturbing. We're not sure).
Whatever!
Charlie Brown is a wonderful creation. Even though he's a loser/blockhead, who does everything wrong, Charlie's heart is in the right place. He is disheartened by the rampant commercialism of Christmas. He is a bit of a pushover as the director of the Christmas pageant, mainly because he isn't bossy, like Lucy, his chief tormentor. And when Lucy sends him out to find a flash Christmas tree, he comes back with a distinctly underwhelming, undersized, malnourished tree everyone hates but he sees potential in.
There is also a lot of very toe-tapping jazz piano that we have always loved, and Snoopy doing his ecstatic Snoopy dance, which we have always thought was one of the finest expressions of happiness ever animated!
We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas with Gus, the five year old, who didn't quite get all the anti-commercialism blasts, and even if he did, probably wouldn't have agreed with them. But we can only hope ABC will continue to broadcast A Charlie Brown Christmas year after year, and the message will hopefully take.
slowhopes@gmail.com
Happily, Slowhopes checked out A Charlie Brown Christmas Monday night and found it funnier, smarter and more enjoyable than he remembers it being when he watched it as a kid. (This could be even more disturbing. We're not sure).
Whatever!
Charlie Brown is a wonderful creation. Even though he's a loser/blockhead, who does everything wrong, Charlie's heart is in the right place. He is disheartened by the rampant commercialism of Christmas. He is a bit of a pushover as the director of the Christmas pageant, mainly because he isn't bossy, like Lucy, his chief tormentor. And when Lucy sends him out to find a flash Christmas tree, he comes back with a distinctly underwhelming, undersized, malnourished tree everyone hates but he sees potential in.
There is also a lot of very toe-tapping jazz piano that we have always loved, and Snoopy doing his ecstatic Snoopy dance, which we have always thought was one of the finest expressions of happiness ever animated!
We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas with Gus, the five year old, who didn't quite get all the anti-commercialism blasts, and even if he did, probably wouldn't have agreed with them. But we can only hope ABC will continue to broadcast A Charlie Brown Christmas year after year, and the message will hopefully take.
slowhopes@gmail.com
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