Boing Boing linked to a wickedly cool site: James Howard Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month. James takes a no-prisoners approach to pointing out how the great banality and poor taste evident in a lot of American architecture is representative of failures and disturbing trends in other aspects of life in this country.
In one of my favorite pages from July of 2003, James posts this under the photo of a Denny's with an enormous American flag in front of it:
Do you have this problem -- you walk out of the Target store at 4:30 in the afternoon after a day of shlepping and chaufeurring and. . . you forget what country you're in??
Where the fuck am I??
Portugal??
Lichtenstein??
Oh, thank God, there's the American flag. Whew, that's a load off my mind. Now I can drive eleven miles across the metroplex and pick up the kids at Soccer World.
Actually, I have a theory about the promiscuous deployment of Old Glory all around the tilt-up utopia of Parking Lot Nation. A flag is a sort of supernatural totem, meant to protect the bearer against animadversion and harm. We're trying to distract ourselves from the spectacle of ugliness and banality that we've created, and protect our sensibilities against the suspicion that we have become a land of wicked, self-destructive slobs.
Happy Independence Day.
Genius. Enjoy...
Great stuff! I read them all and am amazed that he can restrain himself for a whole month. Heck, I could give him a daily eyesore from West Chester or Mason (the new Tasteless Urban Sprawl Training Center). Hamilton! could take it to an hourly updated page. Ohio is an ugly place.
I doubt Ohio is much uglier than any other state, but the Tri-State's suburbs are about as architecturally apathetic/inept as anyplace you'll find. Just IMO, of course.