Žižek @ Nuit Blanche

There is not a lot that could get me out to Nuit Blanche (which combines huge drunken crowds, exhaustion, cold, and corporate sponsorship of the arts) but I have very few celebrity crushes, and one of them was speaking at it. Accordingly, I ventured out to Symposium: Until the End of the World to see Slavoj Žižek talk about the apocalypse at Toronto City Hall.



( the apocalypse will be averted because the Communists will win )

Eyesore of the ages

Pop quiz: What's worse than letting starchitect wanker Frank Gehry crumple up a bunch of paper, 3D-render it, and plunk it in the middle of Toronto like so:



Letting him do so in the middle of a reasonably nice area of the city, in the process demolishing the quite lovely and human-scale Princess of Wales Theatre in order to shit out his architectural abortions.

Gehry apparently intends to TP several city blocks in the heart of the entertainment district. As you might know, I have a special hate-on for Gehry because he doesn't like wheelchair ramps. He represents the worst trends in contemporary architecture: utter contempt for usability and accessibility, aesthetic hideousness in the service of appearing avant-garde, and a complete disregard for the particular context of city spaces.

My first reaction was to projectile vomit. My second was to make sure that James Howard Kunstler knew about it ASAP. He is probably sick of people from Toronto writing him to tell him about our city's perverted love affair with monuments to poor taste and unsustainability by now. But really, is there any other city besides Dubai so slavishly devoted to uglifying itself?

Oh, and screw David Mirvish, too. He's apparently determined to fuck up his father's legacy as thoroughly as possible.

ETA: And Kunstler e-mailed me back, ZOMG! /fangirls