Excuse me, Mr homophobe. Is that Heinz mayonnaise dribbling down your cheek or are you just pleased to see me?

So apparently we’re all up in arms over an advert that we haven’t seen because it got pulled after lots of bothersome Mary Whitehouse-types wrote Very Angry Letters to Ofcom (except on YouTube, where a mere 150,417 views have been taken. Take that you pesky complainer people!)

So everyone’s missing the point here. The complainers (as has been pointed out) have egg(mayo) on their faces because the ad couldn’t be shown at kiddie-friendly times as the product contains too much salt. Or something. Because, if you were a homo-hating fascist, you wouldn’t want kids to ask about why two men were kissing, would you? Having said that, couldn’t they use it as a little educational exercise…

Cute Blond Kid: Hey Mom, why is that man kissing that other man in that white hat?

Homo-hating Fascist: It doesn’t matter but it’s evil and if you ever do it I’ll send you to Canada!!!

Cute Blond Kid: Doesn’t daddy have a hat like that?

Homo-hating Fascist: No no, it’s much more pointy.

So actually the ad’s funny, and well acted. But it’s not exactly progressive. I mean, this is a situation where a man living with another is presented as strange and purely for laughs (oh, and to sell stuff). Dianne Abbott in her Early Day Motion get’s it more or less right, though Nick Clegg tries a bit too hard with “The depiction of a same-sex kiss in this advert was innocent both in tone and content”.

Big-nosed know-it-all kid: Hey Mom, you know I think that same-sex kiss really wasn’t that innocent, either in tone or content. I really don’t think I should be watching it.

Guardian-reading Mom in Big Sweater: You’re right Kyle, turn Doctor Who off now please.

So it’s been just simply forever and a little longer too

and for that I entirely apologise. Really both of you deserve much more from this astonishingly unproductive non-blogger. Especially now. As Sarah the Travelling Cukoo sharply spotted, this minor bog of ours now appears as the top result on a popular internet search engine. You know the one - provides censorship on behalf of human-rights-infringing regimes; infringes copyright; rhymes with “frugal” - that sort of thing.

So I’ve not been up to that much of late in architectural terms. I suppose I’m still mildly hungover from NYC, so here’s some leftover pics for a nostalgic tripette down memory lane.

The Woolworth building, another of those that once held the “tallest building in the world” title. It’s basically a big Gothic spire, almost Disneyesque in scale and form, set atop a bigger rectangular base. There’s an amazing picture on Wiki of the tower being built. It brazenly fronts onto City Hall (entirely dominating the area), giving a rather clear message of where the money really is.

This is an astonishing building in the NoHo/East Village part of the world. It’s actually still being built, though it appears occupied at night. As you can sort of see from the picture, there aren’t many other buildings this tall in the nabe; there is some doubt and dislike locally, as there is to all tall buildings. Architecturally speaking though this building is incredible: the taughtness in the skin is both playfully thin - it seems to be stretched between the floors - but it doesn’t seem fragile, as it exposes the structure (the central and side pillars and the floors). And the shading in the glass and the panelling emphasises the smooth curve and the change in light in the window reflections. Anyway, enough twittering, here it is:

And now that I’ve whetted your proverbial, I’m off. Sorry ’bout that.

That bridge

Hello there one and both. So I’ve been here for a while now and frankly it’s getting a little boring.

 

HA HA!! Had you fooled! I was joking, of course. I’m currently chez Machado, listening to Mark Ronson’s Authentic Shit (sorry Mum) radio show which was actually broadcast last week or something, though we went to see him do his schtick on Friday (before we went to the Planetarium and danced to some pumping dirty house music (sorry Mum)) though he wasn’t actually DJ-ing as he had a guest DJ though he was sitting in the background sipping a beer or somesuch though he didn’t look like he was enjoying himself much though he probably was.

I think I may be playing this a bit loud and that it might be interfering with my sentence structure. Sorry about that. Turned it down now. Mr Buttress might, with his implicit interest in all things Gothic, be interested in this post, being as it is about one of the finest Gothic structures on Earth. No, not Rheims Cathedral, nor the Palace of Westminster. Don’t be so foolish - I’m in New York; and I thought my readers were clever. Huh. No, sorry - yes, er, right. No, so not either of those but this one:

Seagram

Wandering around Manhattan, the number of corporate glass-and-steel boxes can lead to a form of building fatigue, known as the International Style Syndrome. But once upon a time, say in the Fifties, such buildings were fresh and new and, yes, beautiful. The very finest example of these is the Seagram building, built as the headquarters of Joseph E. Seagram’s & Sons, purveyors of fine liquor. The architect was none other than Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who, working with Philip Johnson, designed the perfect corporate structure. Serious, expressive of its construction, expensive, well-positioned and imposing. And it retains a cool elegance that speaks volumes about its time.

Rockefeller

The Rockefeller Center is admired by many, your Mr Cinnamon included, as a fine complex of art deco buildings. Unremarkable from afar, they come into their own when one is close enough to see the detailing, the sculpture and planning, and be overwhelmed by the scale of the place. Lots of pics after the jump…

From Flat to Empire

So apparently there are lots of skyscrapers in Manhattan. Who knew? Arguably the big skyscrapers started with the Flatiron, still considered by some to be a particularly fine example, mainly for its exceedingly intelligent use of space (it cuts a fine dash where Broadway and Fifth Avenue collide).

So there I was, waking up in the city that never sleeps

and it wasn’t the sirens or the good folk yacking loudly in the street below; nor my aunt’s big fluff ball cat; nor the kitchen porters emptying last night’s trash; nor the soulful rhythms from a pounding car stereo. None of these woke me, though they all featured in my dozy dreams. No, it was the lovely Osmond’s mobile phone alarm brought all the way from Blighty and proudly informing me that it was 7am back on the other side of the pond.

East Village apartment buildings are, as a matter of arch self-importance (masquerading as practicality), liberally scattered with fire escapes. Auntie Bonus’s pad is no exception and, through the bars and horizontals of wrought iron, the blackish branches of the trees beyond, a fine late-spring day was presenting itself in the green, greener and greenest of the leaves and the full blue sky.

We have arrived! And the queues and the airline food and the packing and the faffing were all worth it because today, and for 14 more of them, I’m in New York and I can do whatever I damn well want. Which is pretty much the whole point of this fair city. Anyway, I’m off to dinner with Bonus and Oli and John the Famous Local. So I will see you later and photos should well be uploaded just as soon as I can figure out how on this foreign machine.

 

Brighton Deco

At the West end of Brighton, just before it rudely interferes with Hove, you’ll notice a couple of Art Deco-ish gems standing proud along the promenade.

Embassy Court for so long was a run-down, rusting, dilapidated hulk of a building that, when I was living just up the road from it, it proved a useful marker when giving directions (”turn left/right at the big ugly block of flats”). However, I always felt a pang of guilt when describing it as such, and were anyone else to do so I would instantly leap at its defense. No! I’d cry - it may look like a dodgy concrete tower block but it’s a fine Deco lady, once home to Rex Harrison none the less.

Now, though, since its revamp it’s once again been restored to its former stature and is (as in this photo) a fine complement to the beautiful peace statue beneath.

The rude health of popular music

It’s often claimed that popular music has died a death, never again to be resurrected; that the masses will abandon all sense of communality and that the long-reigning pop sensibility will collapse upon itself into its disparate component parts. At least by me it has. So I found myself curiously aroused (not like that, you dirty trollops) upon watching the latest top forty run-down through the tellybox.

Yes, alright - not every one of the songs currently featured are decent or tuneful or reasonably-crafted, but a significant number more than usual seem to be. Or I’m getting weak. Let me tweeze out the highlights.

I know, I know…

I’m a dreadful blogger. I blog and then FOR AGES I don’t blog. And it’s not because I don’t love both my readers, rather that my camera has lost all enamour with my company and decided to stop taking decent photos of anything at all. The fact that I’ve left it silently encased in the dark depths of some courier-type bag for a week I think may have had something to do with its miserablist attitude.

So - sod the camera. Who needs the grumpy bastard when armed with the full force of the English language? Dante never used a camera. Nor Voltaire. Or Confucius for that matter. And just look what they accomplished with this marvellous bastard-hybrid of a lexicon. Oh, hang on a mo. I think I may have made a mistake there….

[Never mind, Cinnamon! Plough on! This is no time to de doubting yourself in front of your brave and elegant readers!]

….I mean, yes. So. Words are nice. And utilising said power, I shall write one of those “Huh, well, like, this is what I’m doing today” sort of posts.