Adventures of Mr. Chris

So this weekend I had the pleasure of wandering around the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with a friend at their Sakura Matsuri Festival, which was a combination of the annual cherry blossom festival plus lots of other Japanese cultural events–taiko drums, cosplay, origami workshops, Ukiyo-e artists, musical performances and more. The cherry blossoms themselves actually weren’t that impressive, as a lot of the trees have still not bloomed yet, but there were a few nice examples that were in bloom, such as this one below.

Cherry blossoms at the Sakura Matsuri Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

Apparently Google decided to combine Easter and April Fools this year with a treasure hunt. If you go to Google map today, you’ll see a map like this.

And if you go hunting around the map, there are a number of hidden items and other neat additions. Here is a small sampling of some of what I found put into one image. I suspect there might be something more to the numbers on certain figures, but I haven’t spent enough time trying to figure out what it is. Maybe gps coordinates? Maybe a sequence of clues? Not really sure.

Whatever the case, if you’re a treasure hunter and pirate lover, today is your day!

Until next time…arrrr, where be my treasure?

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In case you’ve missed all the hubbub the past few days over the leaked Ford Figo ad from JWT India ad agency in Delhi, here’s the main image that has gotten everyone in an uproar and had Ford and JWT’s PR teams working double time on damage control. Although the ad was never used, the political work is already done.

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For those who missed it, there was an excellent event recently at The New School called Hip-Hop: Race, Politics, and Hyper-Masculinity that was organized by some former and current New School folks, and featured two panel discussions about hip-hop culture and politics, with a strong emphasis on race, gender and sexuality. A big shout to the organizers for putting on this excellent event, and I hope we see more of these in the future. Being a lifelong hip-hop fan, as well as thinking a lot about the politics of hip-hop, I found this panel both exciting and frustrating at different times and for different reasons. Read More

While I was adventuring in the midwest, I did manage to squeeze a bit of operatic culture into my trip. Well, I’m not sure if a night at the movies really counts as “operatic culture,” but really, who’s counting? For those of you who haven’t already seen the new Les Misérables movie, don’t worry, I’m not going to be giving and spoilers. If you’re not familiar at all with the original Victor Hugo novel, you can learn more here.

Now I’m not a theatre geek like my friends were in high school, and I’ve never been much of a fan of opera, but I do love the French Revolution and partisan politics, so surely that must count for something. But in all honesty, it was a fairly well done production of the original story. The major highlights for me were more to do with the production and direction, and less to do with the stars themselves, who were fine but left much to be desired for a true opera fan–which luckily didn’t phase me much–with the exception of the innkeeper and his wife . Read More

So while enjoying my holiday respite in Cleveland I spent a fair bit of time watching other people’s TV watching habits. During one of those days, my Cleveland suburban friends’ son was watching cartoons, and by chance an episode of the Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba was playing. By some act of cosmic Doctor Who intervention, given how many possible episodes or segments of episodes that could have aired, the clip that happened to be playing was when one of the female characters named Toodee (who coincidentally is a blue cat-dragon–how awesome is that?!) gets sick and a doctor comes to visit. And like all good kids shows, this inevitable leads to a song and dance routine featuring a special visit by Anthony Bourdain as “Doctor Tony.”  Read More

Thus begins the chronicle of my monumental journey throughout the midwest over this recent winter/holiday break. To begin our journey, let me tell you about a far off place called the Dragon Realms, where sky pirates and dragons duel. Within this realm there is a place known as Skylands, home to the Skylanders, creatures who wield the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Magic, Tech, Life, and even the Undead. In their off time, they double as plastic kids toys and video-game merchandise.

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So I am officially ABD as of Friday afternoon. One more hurdle cleared on the long march towards completing my PhD studies here in New York. Having completed my dissertation proposal defense this Friday at The New School for Social Research, it seems like as good a time as any to reflect on what this means, and where I go from here. (Thanks to Sabine for the great abd cartoon.)

So a PhD proposal defense, for those not familiar with it, goes something like this. You send a draft of your proposal (here’s mine) to your committee members–four in my case–and once they feel it is ready to defend, you set an oral defense date. The committee then gets together on a set date and discusses your paper for about 15-30 min, then calls you in. You then have about 10 minutes to describe the larger thrust of your project. I also included a large visual map to supplement my presentation, which was taped to the wall. Following that is a question and answer grilling, in which your proposal gets dissected and recombined, hopefully into something that both you and your committee feel makes sense. Then they ask you to leave and discuss amongst themselves if the proposal seems solid enough to approve with some modifications based on the previous discussion. Then you are called back into the room and read the verdict, which in my case was approved. A short discussion followed, and the defense concluded. All told it took just under 2.5 hours. Read More

Come hell or high water tomorrow, which in New York these days it’s hard to know which is more likely, my PhD dissertation proposal defense will be over. I’m expecting it to be successful. However, I was not able to use some of the multimedia and visuals I had hoped to be able to use in the defense itself. But that wouldn’t stop me. If technology is the problem, so be it. And so I went back to old school-ish methods–the printed, large-format visual bricolage. Viola! So in all its glory, here is my attempt to compress some of my project, which is looking at the intersections of religion, science, popular culture and environmental politics in the Anthropocene, into one large visual map. Apologies if some of the smaller sections are harder to read. The full original is 72″ x 48″.

If you want to read more about the project, check out my proposal here. If you’re wondering what the Anthropocene is, check out some of my older posts here.

Until next time…banzai!

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Before I could even say shazam, there he was, the famous monster Frankenstein, giving us the latest weather news on Hurricane Sandy. Ok, that’s not quite true: Frankenstein came later, after the news, but before The Doctor. That is truth. But did you notice Monsterville is now a part of Eastern Virginia? Love it.

And then there was my neighbor, who decided that the oncoming Hurricane Sandy was a perfect time to go out and prune the roses hanging over their fence! New York, you are truly amazing!

Until next time…Here’s some science versus magic Frankenstein fairytale fun for you all.

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