Author: harold

I re-watched Mind Game. I kind of have no words on how amazing it is.

But first I have to get it off my chest: the 11 year old, breast obsessed angle is juvenile and didn’t age well. It’s just unnecessary. Breasts and ample, large ones are great and can be used in animated movies, no problem. But the obsession is just childish which is stupid because the movie’s theme –be yourself, live your life fully- is not childish at all. A little dissonance here.

Having said that, I still believe that Mind Game is the most amazing animated movie I’ve ever seen. It mixes absolutely every single technique –rotoscoping, slide show, stop motion, 3D, photos, cel shading– available at that time and everything works together. If you love graphic design, it’s a joy to watch and a must-see.

It was Masaaki Yuasa’s second movie that he directed. Yep. I’m not jealous at all.

Every shot has some of the wildest angles and crazy perspectives you can possibly get. It puts to shame so many narrative video games that want to be edgy, 16 years later. It is just phenomenal. The sound design is fantastic, the music is perfect. Especially for that scene that still gives me goose bumps. The love scene (no spoiler ahead).

The way it happens after they both laugh at something really cute and funny… The way the music starts and how it moves on screen… I think it’s one of the best depiction of making love I have ever seen (including the reference to old movies). That’s it. That’s how it looks like if emotions felt while kissing and feeling someone’s skin were visuals.

Find a way to watch it. And because it’s dense as hell at first, watch it a few times. A true hidden gem.

I saw my foster mom on video chat last Saturday and it feels like it didn’t even happen a week later.

We looked at each other without saying a word for seconds at time. Wide open eyes and smiles. Calling me with my nickname that only her and my cousin call me with. Asking me the usual questions. How are your parents? Do you have a girlfriend? I just say yes to everything, it’s easier.

She considers me her last son and I consider her my first mom. We’re joking that she’ll put all my handwritten cards in the casket when it will be time but I’m like “what time? Take your time”.

My parents and my foster family haven’t talk to each other in over 30 years. My foster dad passed away years ago. I just re-read my post when I was there. That day was so hard.

Both my family and foster family are having big (never happened before) internal fights. You know, people not talking to each other anymore, divorces etc. The thing is, EVERYONE talks to me. I’m not in bad terms with anyone. In the current context, having all kinds of white folks telling me how they feel when my black ass is in the US, mostly in Black America, in this political climate? Man, it’s beyond exhausting. Far beyond.

There are two things I will do when I finally get offered a full-time job: one, buy cigars and good wine and go up a hill for sunset.

Two, buy a plane ticket to go see my first mom and tell her how much I love and owe her.

Trolling is lucrative. Look at the current president. This is how he shot right up to the white house.

Look at this recent shit storm, Doja Cat. And before her, Emoblackthot who I still can’t believe did this shit. Fuck him. And her.

And before them Tyler, the Creator. People forget everything in 48 hours-2months max but I remember how harsh his anti-gay trolling was in 2009. It was brutal and totally not in the zeitgeist. Shocking for shocking value. It didn’t even look true.

Look at his ass today, gayer than a rainbow.

For the past twenty years mainstream culture showed that a lack of authenticity was more and more okay. Everything –reality TV, music careers, fighting the good fight– can be and sadly often is, made up. Go hard on the faux outrageously edgy, get viral, get deals, get money, feel weird and depressed. Get cancelled.

The twist is that individuals, us, still value authenticity a lot. That thing called trust is beautiful and will never not be beautiful. I cherish it like a Hobbit caressing his ring. It is still how we move socially speaking. Trust involved accountability and boring stuff like that. It works, though. It unleashes a needed peace of mind. I crave that and it looks like we all do, in some ways.

But money (and power, those two are the same) wise, especially in creative and artistic fields, we need to perform at various speed and we’re living in the “whatever it takes” paradigm because the world is an increasingly hard place (though it doesn’t have to be). We end up witnessing some wild stuff these days.

The dichotomy between performing (especially at the edge) and actually being, is hurting us so bad. We’re collectively neurotic now. I don’t like it.

I’m a John Lautner hoe. I can’t lie. I visited a few houses he’s made and they changed my life. We really all live in shoe boxes and it’s dumb.

Here comes the Wolff House that I was eyeing for a bit. It went for sale last year and a couple tours were organized. I hit up my special agent and she got me in.

John is a goddamn supreme master of volumes and mystery. From the street going up, you don’t fucking know anything about what’s going on in this “house”. But you know it has to be neat. You can just feel it in the detail, from the floating white ceiling to the brass-made balcony to the giant rock walls.

This is the carport. The entrance to the house is on the right, hiding. There’s more style in here than in the entire Gehry’s catalog. It’s strong yet light. It’s aggressive yet peaceful. I would take pictures all the time in there. Notice the little white camera that wasn’t supposed to be there. John would rip this shit off. John would be right.

It is a bachelor pad. It is not big. But boy, it’s sumptuous. Here some bad picture of the 16 feet doors (that you push like they weight less than a model on the runway) that open onto the balcony with its built-in bench. Absolutely wonderful. You feel extremely protected yet free. Love it.

Peep this! How the ceiling is cantilevered to oblivion (I mean, as far as technically and physically possible), floating over the rock walls. Having this light coming through a line, all along the house, is life-changing. It does make something thick and vertical a lot more open and airy. The recessed lighting looking like the one in the carport. The continuous wood line under it, underlining the ceiling and hiding more lighting… It’s smart as hell, brings unity in the house and ultimately, feels good to the human chilling inside said house.

So this is the view from the bedroom, under the living room. A level below is the small (but deep) pool. It’s cantilevered over the road. See the little concrete triangle? This was supposed to extend over the road, but the city of Angels said “uh, nah bruh”. John said “who do you think you are? I am! Let’s keep it but let’s make it rise”. The rest is History. It looks cool. It adds a little bit of privacy when soaking. John Lautner didn’t give a fuck.

Back to the balcony. When sitting on the built-in bench, this is what is in the corner. A built-in BBQ. Small, but the house is small too so stop hating, jeez Louise. It’s a detail but it’s really well designed and placed, smoke wise. D E T A I L

Well, I was taking notes. This glass is roughly thick like my finger. That is a seriously long sheet of glass though. *costs estimates happening*

Harold for the corner 3 above the road!.. BANG. (yes, there’s a little gap in the corner, I’m suing)

This goes to the guest house on the right and to the laundry room. This means that you have to use those stairs up and down to do laundry. Yikes. That shit is cool looking but you’re tipsy and you can die rather quickly. Split your head wide open on mean concrete steps. No railing, nothing to hold your ass. If you die, you die. John didn’t care about no kids or no pets.

Small, vertical. Lots of stairs to move around. Amazing feeling of shelter and protection without feeling like living in a cave.

If I could, I ‘d buy it and chill in there in winter when I feel like it. Just normal stuff.

I miss that place.

I was wondering why I didn’t play on the roof more often but then I remembered how sweaty I was holding a big ol’ bass amp in one hand while going up a ladder on a small balcony. Yeah, nope.

It was good though.

Yes, I visited it. It was great. Once again, this design is from 1927 and looks contemporary in 2020. I love it.

The Lovell House is very interesting in that it’s one if not the very first steel frame house in the whole country and one of the first with sprayed concrete. The frame was prefab and assembled on site in under 40 hours. That is absolutely amazing and even more if you consider that it was built in the middle age, in the early 1930s when everyone wanted Spanish and Italian-looking houses and mansions. Bold AF.

So,

– Revolutionary design and engineering

– Brand new aesthetic

– Built with health in mind: abundant windows for sunbathing, kitchen optimized for raw food diet, a pool for soaking and a yard with fruit and trees

This is totally my shit. I needed a chance to go and I got it last year.

Fine, my photos that day weren’t great. Just imagine that this is very quiet with birds sounds and great acoustics, thanks to the thick white carpet. It’s airy. You go down the stairs and arrive in this giant, soft living room. It feels just right. The breeze is cool and sweet with all those windows and trees outside. The chair on the right is original furniture from 1927 and it’s PRISTINE. I can’t believe how impeccable it was despite having kids and an entire family living in this house for 60 years.

It’s a simple house. There’s not much going on. The usual modern built-in stuff. The bedrooms all have outdoor patios to use as “sleeping porch”. There are quite a few outdoor-yet-private spaces and you know, it’s useful in the middle of summer in a heat wave while being horny. That house has probably seen some filth, is all I’m saying.

Those volumes fit perfectly in this little canyon and are fun. Anyway, it was amazing to tour this house but it was equally fantastic to meet the people who lived in here for the past sixty years. Betty Lou Topper raised five kids in this house and I met her and one of her son, Ken. Betty, 92, was in her wheelchair and insisted in saying hi to every single visitor.

I hold her hand and said “Hi, my name is Harold and I’m a designer. Thank you so much for having me here”. She replied with a wonderful smile, a little hi and a palpable excitement because well, I’m not too fugly. Ken was incredibly sweet and provided us stories of what was going on around when he was growing up there. How Neutra –the architect was a bit obsessed with the house and would swing by whenever he wanted, to move some furniture or suggest how to use a space. How in the 80s people would  throw parties in Griffith Park and wake them up or how 90s gangs would shoot at each other on the hill and how some bullets actually hit the house and the garage. How they shot the scenes for L.A. Confidential etc.

 

Just fascinating to imagine what it feels like to grow up in an iconic house that people from all over the world come to see while for you, it’s just the house. Housing is some boring shit yet, it is everything and beyond.

Betty passed away a week later.

I’m just glad I got to meet her, that she left us knowing that her house will be preserved, loved and taken care of and that there was this young-ish black man who looked like a kid in a candy store, perusing everything.

Thank you, Betty and Ken.

First there was that time when the police showed up in their car on the basketball court with the dude coming out of it, pulling out his baton from his belt and yelling “how are you doing?” at me, alone runnin’ and shootin’. It was late morning during the first week of lockdown. I wasn’t impressed but I was annoyed. They were killing a bad ass streak of swishes. This officer was getting closer with his baton and I was walking away from him.

Then same place, same me but a big LAPD SUV pulls up. Time slows down. I don’t hear them coming so I’m surprised and I guess, scared. Time stops. My breathing too.

There’s this unbelievable second of…”is it.” There’s no cut to dramatic or peaceful music. It’s just silence and peace. That peace that you have to find within yourself to understand the possible situation. Situation that things might end prematurely. Everything. Next seconds. It’s bizarre. You know it’s wrong.

So I keep doing my little runs baseline. The squad car only slows down. Tinted windows, can’t tell anything. My heart is beating, there’s not a soul out there. I feel like I need to feel like a king, to dare. To not back away, attitude and energy wise? I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. It goes by so fast. They leave.

It wasn’t the first time I experienced that Silent Second in Front of the Cops but this was an intense one. It’s 2020, it already feels like the end of the world. Being black, shot and killed is such a regular life occurrence, sometimes I tear up just thinking about it. The fact that we have to be wary of the people in charge of protecting us in society is some monumental, twisted shit.

I have things to do.

Breonna Taylor, 26, an EMT and aspiring nurse in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot eight times by police after they barged into her home in the middle of the night in March, in what her family is calling a botched drug-warrant execution. No drugs were found.

It keeps happening. It keeps being traumatic. It’s impossible to look away. It’s very easy to shut it all down.

There’s this thing where we have all the information about those horrifying murders online, including footage, but in the real world… Housemates, coworkers, family. I don’t know, no one talks about it. As if those people, Breonna, Ahmaud and more didn’t even exist. As if the news, social media, comments about them didn’t exist. I fucking hate that.

I understand. We do not have the emotional bandwidth to deal with them. But that’s where I force myself. I force myself to look and absorb some of the pain because it’s too easy, far too easy to slide into the dark side of IDGAF. It is my problem. I am concerned as well. My safety is in question.

I’m with them. And they’re not with me anymore.

As it’s been said all over the online world, The Last Dance is really good.

There was this bit about how his mom, Deloris Jordan, pushed him to go see that struggling little shoe company called Nike instead of trying to sign with Michael’s favorite brand, Adidas.

It’s not a mom thing. It’s a woman thing. It’s something a majority of women absolutely excel and outperform men on a daily basis: doing what you’re supposed to do.

MJ was supposed to go see Nike. We men think we’re smart as hell trying to outplay the game. Trying to cheat the game. Trying to take a shortcut. It sounds smart, but it never really is. The problem is that it usually backfires. And then you have to clean up your mess and swallow Ls.

Imagine MJ doesn’t go see Nike, basically sending the message “I don’t deal with amateurs” (Nike at that time was often selling shoes from the back of cars). Then he thinks he’s in bed with Adidas, who didn’t care about Michael. He doesn’t get the contract with his favorite brand, goes back to see Nike, who now passes on him because he’s shifty.

Had MJ followed his cocky, man mind, the Air Jordan story would be so wildly different. It wouldn’t exist.

Basically men are loudly like “but I don’t like it, I can probably find a way to…” and women are softly like “nut the fuck up, go through the steps and smile, you bad, savage bitch”.  It often works for them because well, it’s a pretty good plan most of the time.

Including when you’re a young black man from Chicago meeting with older white dudes from Portland.

Thank you, women.