My Year in Media and Cities, 2010

Still inspired by Jason over at Kottke.org, I'm continuing my practice of cataloging some of the things I've done and the places I've been over the past year. You can find 2008's and 2009's lists by clicking on the numbers.

Here we go with 2010.

Cities I've attended, spending at least a day and a night in each locale
Alon Shvut, Israel
Jerusalem, Israel
Manhattan, New York
West Orange, New Jersey
Teaneck, New Jersey
Lake George, New York
Edison, New Jersey
Woodmere, New York
Honesdale, Pennsylvania
Spring Lake, New Jersey
Brooklyn, New York
Kiryat Arba, Israel
Hewlett, New York

Movies I've seen on the big screen
Sherlock Holmes
Crazy Heart
Hot Tub Time Machine
How to Train Your Dragon
Death at a Funeral
Iron Man 2
Shrek Forever After
Toy Story 3
Annie Hall
Inception
Despicable Me
The Social Network
The Town
Jackass 3D
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
Tron: Legacy
The Iron Giant
True Grit

Movies I've seen on the little screen
Young @ Heart
The Botany of Desire
Adaptation
Inglourious Basterds
Best in Show
Do the Right Thing
Winning Time
Big Fan
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
June 17, 1994
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
Futurama: Bender’s Game
Cyrus
X-Men
Pulp Fiction
Fargo
Get Smart
Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder
Zombieland
Little Shop of Horrors

Books I've read
How Fiction Works
Eating the Dinosaur
Anathem
Killing Yourself to Live
The Mystery Guest
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
The Art of a Beautiful Game
Persepolis
2666
Here is New York
Although of course you end up becoming yourself
A Sense of Where You Are
Cardboard Gods
Blankets
Netherland
Baseball Prospectus 2010
Loose Balls
Best American Non-Required Reading 2009
Baseball Between the Numbers
Into the Wild
Kafka on the Shore
The Book of Basketball
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
My Losing Season
Levels of the Game
The Human Stain
Freedom
FreeDarko’s The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History
Cooking for Geeks
The Case of the Gilded Fly
Missing

TV I've watched
The Simpsons
Seasons 6-8, 13

Mad Men
Season 4

Party Down
Seasons 1-2

Futurama
Seasons 1-4

Archer
Season 1

The Wire
Season 1

The Walking Dead
Season 1

Louie
Season 1

Each new episode of:
The Simpsons
Futurama
30 Rock
Parks and Rec
Community
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Modern Family

Sporting events I've attended
Monday, January 18
New York Knicks 99, Detroit Pistons 91
Madison Square Garden

Tuesday, February 9
Sacramento Kings 118, New York Knicks 114 (OT)
Madison Square Garden

Saturday, February 20
Oklahoma City Thunder 121, New York Knicks 118 (OT)
Madison Square Garden

Wednesday, March 3
New York Knicks 128, Detroit Pistons 104
Madison Square Garden

Monday, April 12
New York Knicks 114, Washington Wizards 103
Madison Square Garden

Wednesday, May 5
New York Yankees 7, Baltimore Orioles 5
Yankee Stadium

Monday, August 9
Boston Red Sox 2, New York Yankees 1
Yankee Stadium

Tuesday, August 10
New York Mets 1, Colorado Rockies 0
Citi Field

Tuesday, August 17
New York Yankees 6, Detroit Tigers 2
Yankee Stadium

Tuesday, September 7
Fernando Verdasco defeats David Ferrer
Louis Armstrong Stadium
US Open

Saturday, October 9
New York Yankees 6, Minnesota Twins 1
Yankee Stadium

Monday, October 18
Texas Rangers 8, New York Yankees 0
Yankee Stadium

Tuesday, November 23
New York Knicks 110, Charlotte Bobcats 107
Madison Square Garden

Wednesday, December 15
Boston Celtics 118, New York Knicks 116
Madison Square Garden

Plays I've attended
Tuesday, February 23
Rock of Ages
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Sunday, March 7
The Tempest
BAM’s Harvey Theater

Wednesday, June 23
The 39 Steps
New World Stages

Saturday, July 31
Twelfth Night
Divine Park, Spring Lake, New Jersey

Music concerts I've attended
Steve Earle with Allison Moore and Greg Trooper
City Winery

Saturday, November 13
The Baltimore Symphony
Carnegie Hall

So, on average, I've:

• visited a new place every ~28 days;
• seen a movie on the big screen every ~20 days;
• seen a movie on the little screen every ~16 days;
• read a book every ~12 days;
• attended a live sporting event every ~26 days;
• watched a season of TV every ~24 days (not including all the partial seasons);
• attended a play once every three months;
• attended a concert once every six months;
• and composed a blog post (including this one) once every ~3.5 days.

It's been a busy year.

The Problems with Penn Station

I'm not a huge fan of Slate (I think there's a fair deal of truth in contrarian-by-design criticism) and so I don't see everything they publish, but every once in a while one of their pieces either touches on a personal interest or is just so damn good that I hear about about it through those social networking sharing cycles. Here's a perfect example of the latter: Julia Turner's six-part series on signage.

Turner touches on everything from highway road signs, to competing EXIT sign designs to the varying maps and symbols people use to navigate London. But my favorite piece is the one titled "Lost in Penn Station." There's tons of good stuff here, but here's a choice selection:

When I first started interviewing sign designers for this series, I was surprised that they didn't talk much about signs. I'd expected to learn a lot about typeface and color selection. Maybe, if I were lucky, a revolutionary new arrow.

Instead, I learned there's a reason professionals call what they do not "sign-making" but "wayfinding." Their goal is to help users find their way through complicated environments. That requires a lot more than good-looking signs. To create a sign system that works, designers must first understand how people will use a space. When beginning a hospital project, they'll map out all the possible routes a visitor might take. How would a patient with an oncology appointment get to it? How about a visitor to the maternity ward? If they're designing new signage for an existing space, they often quiz the security guards. No one knows better what people find confusing.

[snip]

The problem at Penn Station is not that designers skipped these steps. It's that three sets of designers did them three times. Penn Station is owned by Amtrak, which manages its concourse on the western side of the station. But Amtrak leases the rest of the station out to the two other tenants: New Jersey Transit has the southeast corner, and the LIRR the northeast. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority oversees both the LIRR and New York City Transit, which manages the two adjacent subway stations; their sign systems are similar to the LIRR's.) The fundamental wayfinding problem at Penn Station lies in the fact that each of these entities manages its own signs, usually without consulting the others. As a result, the station essentially has three different systems of signage.

[snip]

Penn Station is a remarkably challenging environment for wayfinding. But it's a useful place to examine, because it highlights the single most crucial thing a wayfinding designer must do: think about the user and understand how he will perceive a space. When signs are good, and you pay attention to them, you can sense the level of thought that went into them. Someone, somewhere, anticipated the journey you are on, and the information you would need. At Penn Station as a whole, it's no one's job to think about how you'll get where you're going. And you can tell.

I love the idea of asking a security guard about problems visitors run into. This is exactly the type of architectural thinking that I find fascinating. The essential question is: How do people interact with the spaces they inhabit?

My Year in Media and Cities, 2009

Still inspired by Jason over at kottke.org, I'm continuing my practice of cataloging some of the things I’ve done and the places I’ve been over the past year. You can find 2008's list here. 

Here we go with 2009.

Cities I’ve attended, spending at least a day and a night in each locale

Manhattan, New York

West Orange, New Jersey

Allentown, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Baltimore, Maryland

Honesdale, Pennsylvania

Cleveland, Ohio

Detroit, Michigan

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Skokie, Illinois

Chicago, Illinois

Washington, DC

Missoula, Montana

Kalispell, Montana

Glacier National Park, Montana

San Francisco, California

Berkeley, California

Yosemite National Park, California

Bronx, New York

Jerusalem, Israel

Movies I’ve seen on the Big Screen

Slumdog Millionaire

The Wrestler

The Class

Watchmen

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Star Trek

UP

The Hangover

The Hurt Locker

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

500 Days of Summer

Inglourious Basterds

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

A Serious Man

The Shining

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Avatar

 

Movies I’ve seen on the little screen

Burn After Reading

The Big Lebowski

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Departed

Death Wish

Blue Velvet

North By Northwest

WALL-E

Baby Mama

Darjeeling Limited

The Graduate

The Dark Knight

Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot

The Hammer

Dirty Harry

Step Brothers

Waltz With Bashir

Rachel Getting Married

Being John Malkovich

Semi-Pro

Objectified

The Way We Get By

Tyson

Lost Highway

Adventureland

Donnie Darko

Anvil

Books I’ve read

Ender in Exile

Lolita

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Watchmen

Seven Seconds or Less

Baseball Prospectus 2009

God Save The Fan

White Teeth

On the Road

The Corrections

Going Deep

Armageddon in Retrospect

A Farewell to Arms

The Breaks of the Game

A Fraction of the Whole

Underworld

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

The Machine

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

Best American Sports Writing 2009

The Discomfort Zone

I Drink for a Reason

The Soul of Baseball

60 Stories

   

Sporting Events I’ve attended 

Wednesday, January 14

New York Knicks 128, Washington Wizards 122

Madison Square Garden

Monday, February 2

Los Angeles Lakers 126, New York Knicks 117

Madison Square Garden

Kobe Bryant set a Madison Square Garden scoring record with 61 points

Wednesday, March 4

New York Knicks 109, Atlanta Hawks 105

Madison Square Garden

Wednesday, March 25

Los Angeles Clippers 140, New York Knicks 135, OT

Madison Square Garden

Thursday, April 30

New York Yankees 7, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 4

Yankee Stadium

Wednesday, May 13

Tampa Bay Rays 8, Baltimore Orioles 6

Oriole Park at Camdem Yards

Thursday, May 14

Los Angeles Dodgers 5, Philadelphia Phillies 3, 10 innings

Citizens Bank Park

Wednesday, July 1

New York Yankees 4, Seattle Mariners 2

Yankee Stadium

Sunday, July 5

Oakland Athletics 5, Cleveland Indians 2

Progressive Field

Monday, July 6

Kansas City Royals 4, Detroit Tigers 3

Comerica Park

Tuesday, July 7

St. Louis Cardinals 5, Milwaukee Brewers 0

Miller Park

Wednesday, July 8

Atlanta Braves 4, Chicago Cubs 1

Wrigley Field

Thursday, August 27

Arizona Diamondbacks 11, San Francisco Giants 0

AT&T Park

Thursday, November 19

Syracuse Orange 95, California Golden Bears 73

North Carolina Tar Heels 77, Ohio State Buckeyes 73

Madison Square Garden

Tuesday, December 1

New York Knicks 126, Phoenix Suns 99

Madison Square Garden

Monday, December 7

New York Knicks 93, Portland Trailblazers 84

Madison Square Garden

Saturday, December 19

Los Angeles Lakers 103, New Jersey Nets 84

Izod Center

TV Seasons I’ve watched

The Wire

Seasons 1-5

Mad Men

Season 3

Flight of the Conchords

Season 2

Arrested Development

Seasons 1-3

The Simpsons

Seasons 3-5

Bored to Death

Season 1

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Season 5

The League

Season 1

Sit Down, Shut Up

Season 1

Each new episode of: The Office, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, Parks and Recreations, Modern Family, Community

 

Plays I’ve attended

Saturday, July 11

Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue presents The Oresteia

Monday, December 6

Hamlet

Broadhurst Theatre

Concerts I've attended

Wednesday, February 11

Brett Dennen

Webster Hall

So, on average, I've:

• visited a new place every ~18 days;
• seen a movie on the big screen every ~21 days;
• seen a movie on the little screen every ~13.5 days;
• read a book every ~15 days;
• attended a live sporting event every ~21 days;
• watched a season of TV every ~21 days (not including all the partial seasons);
• attended a play once every six months;
• attended a concert once every 12 months;
• and composed a blog post once every ~4.2 days (including this one).

It's been a busy year.

Destination Maps

In the fall of 2007 I took a class called Envisioning the 20th- and 21st -Century American City. The first assignment consisted of designing a map of "my New York City." I was still growing accustomed to navigating this metropolis--if my knowledge of the precise order of cross streets is not perfect now, it was barely functional then--and drew up a destination-based map of my New York, ignoring directional conventions in favor of organizing locations around which subway line I took to get there. It was a fun project, reminiscent, P. Geyh mentioned in my subsequent analysis of this personal map, of medieval destination-based maps.

So it was pretty cool to find this three-year-old's view of the NYC subway. This is very similar to my project except way better designed (I remember that it took a surprisingly long time to print, cut out [with scissors], arrange, and tape [with masking tape] all the parts of my non-graphically designed map) and meant for a toddler.

But this type of destination-based map might be growing in importance. My dad always used to try to get me to pay attention to the route we were traveling in the car. I think he gave up once I got a GPS. And now, with just about everyone carrying an iPhone or a Blackberry, etc., step-by-step directions are always available. While awesome and convenient, this type of resource encourages our reliance on easily accessibly information, to the detriment of retaining knowledge. I know people who can provide driving directions from just about any point on the east coast to just about any other point on the east coast. All of these people are 50 or older. I, for one, welcome our new destination-based map overlords.

Paris, Rebooted

As part of The New York Times Magazine's recent Architecture issue, Nicolai Ouroussoff composed an article titled "Remaking Paris," examining the effort of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to improve one of the world's most iconic cities. According to Ouroussoff,

One of the first things Sarkozy did after he moved into the Elysée Palace was to convene a meeting of prominent architects and ask them to come up with a new blueprint for Paris. “Of course,” he said, “projects should be realistic, but for me true realism is the kind that consists in being very ambitious.” His job was to clean up the city’s working-class suburbs, and at the same time build a greener Paris, the first city to conform to the environmental goals laid out in the Kyoto treaty.

It's no secret that I'm fascinated by how cities work. I worked on compiling the index for the recently published Cities, Citizens, and Technologies: Urban Life and Postmodernity (a fine title, if I've ever seen one), and, more important, I attended a class taught by that book's author. That's really the extent of my formal training in architecture and city-planning, so many of the details described by Ouroussoff were lost on me. Also, I'm sure my comprehension of the various plans wasn't aided by the fact that I've spent a grand total of five days in Paris, with most of that time devoted to eating in restaurants and looking at things in museums. (Though, if you do want to learn more about what the various proposals would entail, there is a helpful narrated slideshow accompanying the article on the website; I would embed that slideshow here, if only The...Times allowed its videos to be embedded.) No, the really fascinating part of the article is Ouroussoff's conclusion, reproduced below for your edification:

Sarkozy has asked the 10 architectural teams working on the Paris plan to collaborate and produce a more cohesive blueprint for the future. The chances of a definitive plan emerging from such an effort seem remote — and even if one does, architecture won’t solve all the city’s social ills. Nonetheless, the Grand Paris project represents a critical shift in how we think of urbanism. The tabula rasa Modernist experiments of the 1960s and 1970s not only damaged cities across the world; their failure spelled the abandonment of visionary master planning. In places where large-scale urban projects did re-emerge, like China and the Middle East, older, poorer neighborhoods were often bulldozed to make room for new development at a frenetic pace, with little regard for how the pieces fit together.

The plans presented for Grand Paris suggest that it is possible to believe, once again, that government can play a decisive role in achieving a truly egalitarian city — and that architecture is essential to that transformation.

The goals of Sarkozy's project diverge strikingly from New York City's prime example of this type of city-engineering, that of Robert Moses's quest to incorporate large public works projects into the city and to improve automobile access in the five boroughs. The goals of the Paris plan --creating a city that is both egalitarian and green--are undoubtedly worthwhile and should be pursued. It might be because I've watched too much of The Wire in the past six months, but I find it hard to be optimistic that governments and its related bureaucracies can make decisions for the long-term public good, rather than for the short-term benefit of politicians. Time will tell if Sarkozy manages to pull this off. If he does, it might go a long way in allaying doubts about the effectiveness of what governments can do for cities.

My Year in Media and Cities, 2008

Inspired by Jason over at kottke.org, I decided to spend a bit of time thinking about some of the things I’ve done and the places I’ve been over the past year. This would have been way cooler if I had started keeping track of this a few years ago, but better late than never. Now, at least, in a few years time I’ll already have started. Since I only thought of this game yesterday, I’m almost certain that I’m forgetting some things. If I’ve attended a city with you, or seen a movie in your presence, or listened to you read a book aloud to me, and you don’t see that city or movie or book on this list, please let me know, and I’ll add it.

Feel free to record your own lists in the comments section or on your own blog or in your diary or carved into your dining-room table, etc.

Cities I’ve attended, spending at least a day and a night in each locale
West Orange, NJ
East Hanover, NJ
Manhattan, NY
Paris, France
Dublin, Ireland
Madrid, Spain
Barcelona, Spain
Eastman, GA
Atlanta, GA
Denver, CO
Kill Devil Hills, NC
Indian Orchard, PA
Boston, MA
Philadelphia, PA
Bronx, NY
Seville, Spain
Granada, Spain
Delray Beach, FL
Westhampton Beach, NY

Movies I’ve seen on the Big Screen
Iron Man
WALL-E
Tropic Thunder (twice)
Miracle at St. Anna
The Dark Knight
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
Gran Torino
Milk
Funny Games
Role Models
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Sweeney Todd
The Rocker
Hancock

Movies I’ve seen on the little screen
Pinky
Salt of the Earth
The Searchers
Imitation of Life
In the Heat of the Night
Night of the Living Dead
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rocky
Quiz Show
Malcolm X
Daughters of the Dust
Birth of a Nation
Chan is Missing
Paradise Canyon
Annie Hall
Taxi Driver
Raging Bull
Rushmore
Eraserhead
Grindhouse: Death Proof
Swingers
Bananas
The Warriors
Batmans Begins
Dr. Strangelove
Get Shorty
Kung-Fu Panda

Books I’ve read
Infinite Jest
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Boys Will Be Boys
FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Men With Balls
Portnoy’s Complaint
No One Belongs Here More Than You
On Chesil Beach
Should You Be Laughing at This?
Invisible Man
Moby Dick
Ant Farm
Everything is Illuminated
Saturday
Pistol
Girl With Curious Hair
The Broom of the System
Slaughterhouse-Five
Baseball Prospectus 2008
Baseball Between the Numbers (in progress)
Flyaway
K Blows Top
Billy Budd and Other Stories
Musicophilia (in progress)
Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative (in progress)
The Elements of Style
Goodbye Columbus
Captain Freedom (in progress)
Neo-Babylonian Court Procedure

Sporting Events I’ve attended
2k Sports Classic
Thursday, November 20
Duke 83, Southern Illinois 58
Michigan 55, UCLA 52
Madison Square Garden

Jimmy V Classic
December 9, 2008
Davidson 68, West Virginia 65
Texas 67, Villanova 58
Madison Square Garden

September 15, 2008
Yankees 4, White Sox 2
Yankee Stadium

August 26, 2008
Red Sox 7, Yankees 3
Yankee Stadium

October 29, 2008
Knicks 120, Heat 115
Madison Square Garden
Mike D'Antoni's first game as Knicks coach

June 5, 2008
Celtics 98, Lakers 88
TD Banknorth Garden
Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals
The Paul Pierce Wheelchair Game

August 4, 2008
Nationals 9, Rockies 4
Coors Field


TV Seasons I’ve watched
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Seasons 1-4

The Simpsons
Seasons 1-10

Mad Men
Seasons 1-2

30 Rock
Seasons 1-2, plus all episodes released during 2008

Flight of the Conchords
Season 1

Deadwood
Seasons 1-2

The Office
All episodes released during 2008

Plays I’ve attended
Hair

[Note: the averages that follow are now slightly wrong, because I've been adding more media experiences to the lists as I remember them, and I'm too lazy to recalculate.]

So, on average, I’ve:

• Visited a new place every ~19 days;
• Seen a movie on the big screen every ~24 days;
• Seen a movie on the little screen once every two weeks;
• Read a book every ~12.5 days (books in progress count as half of one);
• Attended a live sporting event every ~40 days;
• Watched a season of TV every ~16.5 days (not to mention all the other TV I watched; ugh, it’s been a heavy TV year);
• Attended a play once every twelve months
• Composed a blog post once every ~4.6 days (including this post).

It’s been a busy year.