Yesterday I visited, with a friend, the Rhode Island School of Design.  My friend is applying to the Rhode Island School of Design and I am helping him with the process.  So, we visited the school.

I thought that the school was just a semi-famous design school in Rhode Island.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  Put it this way.  That place made me want to apply to art school.  And I can’t draw and have no desire to build anything.

The tour guide that took us around was an architecture major who talked about the architectural concept of adaptive reuse.  Yeah, yeah, yeah…

Um, so…

Let’s see who gets this right.  This is a:

1. Entry to a bank.

2. Portal to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

3. Entry to a dormitory

4. Entry to Donald Trump’s house

Well, sorry.  Time is up.  This is the entry to a dormitory and the library at the Rhode Island School of Design.  Yes.  This is a building where people sleep and study.  That was transformed from a pre-existing bank.  My jaw was also on the floor when I saw this.

Oh and the Grand Central part.  Yeah, here’s that.  That is, by the way, the library.  Where I would find a corner to live in, even if I resided in the dorms in the building:

Yeah, it was a difficult afternoon in Boston, so I boarded a plane and went to Venice.  Here’s photo from my trip:

Yeah, that’s a gondolier I saw on the Grand Canal.  But I didn’t run into George Clooney and his new bride.  We missed each other by mere hours.

Nah, just kidding!!!  My faithful audience knows I keep it local up here.  I never wander too far away.  Too much to see my dear friends.   A dog might just fly or a drag queen might just greet me and I won’t be there.

Well, an explanation about these photos.  They are from a ingenious event in Providence, Rhode Island called Fire on Water, where stacks of logs are lit on fire at night.  I mean that’s what I thought it was when I first heard about it, but it is so much more than that.  Opera is played up and down the canal, while gondoliers slowly float up the canal with the fire in the background.  It is the only thing I have seen that has actually captured the ambiance of Venice, not an easy thing to accomplish.

Let’s continue our journeys through Venice:

Good artists copy.  Great artists steal.  From guys like Rene Magritte:

In the deep reaches of my mind lives a location where I resided for a brief moment in my life that is to this day, unforgettable.  It was filled with delight, heartbreak and experiences enough to fill a lifetime.

It was also filled with weirdos.  In this place that shall forever live in my mind lived a young man who called himself Mr. Tuborg Jensen.  Tuborg, after the great Northern European brew, Jensen, the family name.

Recently I visited the Harpoon Brewery and thought of the long ago Mr Tuborg Jensen.  The Harpoon boasts a collection of beer cans that would be the envy of your average fraternity house.  It features beer from far off, beer from nearby, beer from noble sources and beer from not so noble sources.

To paraphrase the great Auguste Escoffier, you show me the beer a man drinks, I will tell you who he is.  Here, for the Tuborg-Jensen’s of the world, a collection of beer cans for the Bluto Blutarsky in us all:

Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Sure Mr. Melville, but I am not in pursuit of a whale that I suspected as having severed my leg to exact revenge upon this animal.  I just went to look at them.  Well, find them and look at them.  And I did both.

Call Me Wrong Side of the Camera.  Some hours ago, having very little money in my purse and not a great deal to do, I set upon my journey to see a watery part of the world.  Whenever I find that the September air is growing too warm, I set to sea.  It is what prevents me from going around and knocking the iPhone 6’s out of people’s hands.  

All men in some degree or another should at some point take to the sea:

No flying dogs.  No photos of people desperate to become a part of an ephemeral cultural zeitgeist.

Just some lovely photos I took in a cafe in the North End:

 

My favorite character on Mad Men is Roger Sterling.  Sure, Don is the sexy one and Campbell the smarmy little striver, but Roger, he gets all the good lines.  I knew I loved him when Don asked him in the first episode “What do women want?”  And Roger said “who cares?”

My all time favorite line from Roger was when he was doing some kind of youth-centric campaign that neither of them quite grasped.  Roger goes “there’s probably a guy in the bible running around going ‘kids these days.'”

I work in a school with people who were born when I graduated from high school.  And some who were born when I graduated from college, so I know this sentiment very well.

So, this is my “kids these days” entry.

A couple of days ago, the announcement came from Apple about the iPhone 6.  Larger screen, some kind of other changes, blah blah blah.  So now the people on the train in the morning were going to have larger iPhones.  I write this as an iPhone-less person.  I have an Apple computer and an iPad and and an Android phone.  I have all I need on the phone and as a bonus, I use it to occasionally call someone.  I haven’t actually started a business on it or filmed an Oscar nominated movie on it or anything.   I also generally dislike small screens with small buttons.

Today I went by the Apple store on Boylston street to take a look at people waiting on line for the iPhone 6 that goes on sale at midnight tonight.  There were chairs and sleeping bags and quite a line for something that isn’t really that different from what is currently available.  Not to mention most of the people on the line were actually using iPhones.

Now right here I could go into an entire politically tinged rant about all that is wrong in the world but I won’t do that.  Like I always say, this is a blog about flying dogs, bad fashion and the weird things I do on the weekends.  Politics doesn’t really belong here, unless it is someone who is wearing a giant Obama head.  Then you are welcome.

But I will instead post a ten item list of things I would camp out for:

1. Tickets to the next Olympics.

2. Personal dinner cooked by Eric Ripert.

3. Free tickets to any ski resort in Switzerland.

4. Free tickets to the Westminster Kennel club dog show.

5. One hour swimming lesson with Michael Phelps.

6. Free Canon 7D giveaway.

7. Free rent for an entire year.

8. One hour sarcasm-off with Michael Kors.

9.  Trader Joes shopping spree, where everything is free.

10. Project Runway Finale show tickets.

Photos of people with some other ideas:

 

Oh, what I would have given to have seen on be-in in Central Park in the 1960s.  Bill Cunningham, my camera would have competed with yours — and won.  Just kidding Bill.  I love you.

Well, this isn’t quite a be-in.  Just the Hemp Fest in Boston Common over the weekend:

Be nice to me!!!!: