Middle Sex

I finished reading the novel Middle Sex by Jeffery Eugenides a few weeks ago and wanted to talk about it. I picked up the book randomly, not knowing whether or not it was well received (sans the NY best seller accolade on the cover). So I started reading it..

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

So, the book is about a hermaphrodite born Calliope (female) who now goes by Cal (male). To my surprise, the novel spans three generations to tell the story of how Cal's family ended up in Michigan and how Cal came to be intersex. In a way, the novel plays out like a three generation long Forrest Gump. Where Forrest Gump charts the life of a common man in the US from the 1950s onwards, Middle Sex plays out like an epic telling of the immigrant family assimilating into America. In Forrest Gump, Forrest finds his way into some of the most iconic scenes in American history (alongside John Lennon, JFK, etc). Similarly, the characters in Middle Sex find their way into cataclysmic events from the 20th century. While Jeffery Euginides places the characters in settings I was unfamiliar with, like Smyrna in Greece during the Balkan Wars, the entire novel is relayed through Cal's midwestern POV. As a result, I found these foreign events relatable.

The book speaks very little of the turmoil of actually going through a gender identity change. As it were, Jeffery Euginides didn't do any interviewing with intersex individuals stating,   

"[I] decided not to work in that reportorial mode. Instead of trying to create a separate person, I tried to pretend that I had this [physical feature] and that I had lived through this as much as I could".

He succeeds in creating a distinct voice in the narrator, Cal. However, Euginides decidedly focuses on events inspired by his own Midwestern upbringing and Greek heritage more than imagined events unique to intersex individuals. The resulting narrative is less about gender transformation than the diverse ways our lives can change throughout their course. The book charts the way 20th century America took in Europeans and spit out post-modern Americans three generations later. Because of its scope, each character illustrates distinct points during this slow transformation. The initial change takes place in nationality. Greeks become Americans (Cal's grandparents). The second change is from lower class to upper class (what up American dream?). While Cal's grandfather Lefty struggled to make ends meet, Cal's father Milton ends the novel owning a successful chain of hot dog joints (which are more lucrative than one might think). The final change is from Modernism to post-Modernism (I went there). Cal ends the novel living in Berlin, having gone through a gender identity swap, and beginning a fling with another exPat, who is Japanese/American. If Cal's parents came from a society that was racist (and similarly sexist), Cal is from a generation that is beyond both race and sex.

The story is long enough that I have distinct memories of the various settings in which I tackled the novel. It's not overly smart, and its accessibility is perhaps its greatest feature. It stands highly recommended.

I Saw a Film Today Oh Boy (My impression of the Wolf on Wall Street)

I went to see the Wolf on Wall Street tonight. After spending 3 hours in the theater watching this relentless film, I am exhausted. Director Martin Scorsese is dealing with some heavy issues here such as money laundering, prostitution, drug abuse, and domestic abuse. The result is a heavy film that I don't recommend trying to lift.

The film starts off with sex and cocaine within the first 10 minutes and doesn't let down for the entire 3 hours. We see Mark Hannah (Mathew McConaughey) coked up while advocating a lifestyle of sex, drugs, and stocks to young Jordan Belfort (Leo DiCaprio). We then spend a very brief amount of time seeing Jordan Belfort becoming exactly the character of Mark Hannah as he devises a plan to sell penny stocks for high commissions and make a boat load of money. At first I thought this was going to be a tale of one man building his own version of the American Dream, but the film has Jordan Belfort coked up and wildly successful within the first half hour. Then I thought this was going to be a somber tale of how this lifestyle inevitably backfires, or a stand off duel between an intelligent Wall Street broker and the FBI. Unfortunately Leonardo DiCaprio's Belfort is presented as a drugged out idiot and makes it really hard to believe that he could possibly outsmart the FBI. If anything I thought to myself I actually already know what to do to avoid and FBI investigation (put all my money in an offshore account entitled to someone else and press the delete key over and over on my work computer). The real takeaway from the film is that Wall Street is a religion, one with so much promise that its hard to resist. Seeing an entire firm on brokers pounding their chests and praising their leader evokes a wildly passionate Christian Mass celebration. But if Christian's praise a life of virtue, the practitioners at Stratton Oakfort, Jordan Belfort's brokerage, praise the ability to sell stocks. The more potent scenes in the film involved the FBI agent who was investigating Belfort facing the temptation of this religion as he lives an honest life in the middle class.

I didn't realize this was a surprisingly true story, based on a novel written by the Jordan Belfort. That definitely ups the ante on the content of the film resonating. It reminds me a bit of the Goodfellas in that respect. A group of guys build fortunes breaking the law and adopt totally reckless lifestyles. In the Goodfellas I remember being really concerned for Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) at the end of the film. I also remember being totally astonished at the outcome of his life (what?! the witness protection program? he got off after only how long in jail?!). Pluse, the mob is a totally intimidating group of guys who will do anything to keep their power. In contrast, in Wolf we get a crazy group of assholes who need cocaine to come up with anything novel and probably don't know where the safety is on a gun. What's redeeming about these guys? Scorsese briefly suggests that these guys are so good at what they do that they deserve the worship they give each other. However, anytime an explanation is offered in the film for their brilliance, Jordan Belfort literally stops and says its not important. In the end, I'm left needing to watch Jordan Belfort's post jail motivational speeches in real life to know that answer.

Pros: Funny on occasion, clever overdubbing, Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio

Cons: Been here done that, way to long, on par with a soap opera in terms of drama, uninteresting characters

I am learning how to write

So, I started this blog a few years ago and have slowly been adding content to it. When I say slowly I mean at the pace of a child who doesn't really want to play guitar but keeps resigning up for lessons every year only to quit a few weeks later. That being said, I want to start writing more and sharing my experience of just about everything through some digital format that doesn't scream for attention. So for the time being, this is it.

I'll position this post as a general get to know me thing. I'm 25 years old. I live in Oakland, CA where I make art, meditate, cook, design apps, and develop them. I'm keen on occasional cold showers, which will likely lead to me jumping in the Bay and swimming sometime this winter. I make collages right now. I started finding objects on the ground when I was living in the Mission District in San Francisco this summer and I thought that it would be a very cool thing to create collages of the objects that people leave behind the Mission District and replace them in the public space as sort of a 4 dimensional document of the streets. Well, I've been hoarding the collages in my room, but I am on my way to making quite a number of them.

I'm also designing an art application right now. As a result, I'll likely be reviewing a lot of apps and posting those comments on this blog. As for tech, I'm working as an iOS developer in the city of San Francisco, which is something like working on Wall Street in the 20's I'd imagine (just without the glamour and Gatsby parties). I actually don't have a working iPhone right now, so my being an iOS developer is slightly ironic.

I really like sweets, and if I didn't have a penchant for biking and staying fit would paying the price for this indulgent affinity. I have really been into Fig Newton's lately. Figs are really underrated in my opinion. So are dates. Dates kinda suck because of the huge nut in them, which you have to spit out, but they are really tasty. Raisins are alright too.

So yeah. Here I am. Oh yeah my name is Corey. And the only dance I know is the Snoopy dance.

A Day at the MoMA

In an ongoing survey of museum companion applications, I made use of the official MoMA companion application during my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I'm actually smartphone-less right now, so I rented out (for no charge) a new iPod touch from the MoMA with the museum's companion application installed. The iPod I rented came with a neck strap and a pair of headphones... Somewhat reluctantly I put the device around my neck and ventured off into the museum.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed wearing the device around my neck. This allowed consistent access to the application, making it much less intrusive than taking out my smart phone. As a result I found myself using the app to take pictures as I made my way around the museum. I'm used to using the iPhone 4, so I really also enjoyed the large amount of screen real estate on the new apple device. 

Three stills of the MoMa App (courtesy of Rachel Sekai of Cooper Hewitt Labs)

The primary use case in the app is getting supporting content while viewing an artwork. To do this, you can enter a numeric code from the placard into the app and you will go right to the artwork's profile page. Here you can listen to audio content from the museum's curators. I had my first digital docent experience while looking at Picasso's Girl in a Mirror, one of my favorite paintings. The museum's (European) curator was talking me through a visual analysis of the work while I was digesting it myself. If there weren't an audio element to the application and I was forced to just read about the piece in the app, I would have been likely to forego doing so, particularly because the application doesn't make the accompanying text analysis of a work very easy to digest. I'm not super keen on having art explained to you, but I definitely enjoyed the experience of viewing an artwork while listening to the museum's curators. However, I didn't make use of it too extensively.

Images of Claude Monet's Water Lillies taken in the app.

From the artwork's profile page I could favorite the work to view later. In this fashion I went through the museum, locating work's I enjoyed and saving them into the application. I had just seen a Water Lilly painting by Claude Monet in the Cleveland Museum of Art and remembered that the MoMa has an entire triptych of his, so I definitely wanted to check that out. Using the app I searched for "Monet Water Lilly" and found that it was two galleries away, so I decided to skip ahead to check that out. One definite downside is that the application doesn't locate you in the museum, so I had to try to figure out where I was on the current floor based on the entire floor layout (total pain point in my ass). Before I knew it I had viewed Monet's Water Lillies and snapped two really great images of them using the application.

My favorite part of the application was the ability to share my entire experience through social media very easily. I signed in with my email address and was able to view a digital artifact of my entire visit through the internet. Revisiting my trip at home was really great and very easy to do. The app enhanced my experience by being so easy to use. I now have pictures that document my trip through the MoMA that I wouldn't have bothered taking if I wasn't using the application. 

Click here to check out the document of my MoMa trip! 

http://www.moma.org/path/208CB274-D058-416F-B96C-C0BCBFA166EC

Alive at Gallery One

I visited Gallery One today at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Gallery One is the latest in interactive museum experiences. The experience was really innovative. I, as a museum goer, was actively curating my way through the museum's extensive collection. It began with the large interactive touch screen wall which displays over 3,800 of the museums 40k+ works. Viewing such a significant body of work really let me dictate what works I had to see vs. galleries that I didn't necessarily need to visit. Placing the iPad we rented on the stand in front of the wall, the wall became our pool of artists and we were the curators. I didn't realize how to create a tour from the works we selected, so we had to manually check what galleries the works were featured in  and go from there. 

The functionality such as scanning works to get points of information was a really great feature, though it only existed for a small portion of the works. 

As a companion, I found the iPad to be very informative. I would often find myself reading descriptions of works from the iPad itself instead of the note cards on the wall. The navigation occasionally hiccuped, which prevented me from quickly accessing metadata about the gallery I was in. 

The whole experience leveraged the latest technology. Microsoft Kinects let users recreate works of art through body gestures and movements. I reconstructed (and customized) a clay sculpture from scratch, from rolling out the clay to placing all the features. I loved the work so much that I added my own likeness to the piece (example seen below). 

Points of contention with the UI/UX. The lack of general gallery pages in the iPad application was unfortunate, as I would have liked to browse the galleries from the iPad and create a tour on the fly. Instead we got narrow columns with featured works of the galleries. Additionally, the lack of an easy way to export my favorite works and artists that I saved during my trip was a missed opportunity to really bridge the experience between museum viewing and continued interests. 

That being said, the experience was really awesome. If I went back through the museum, its very likely that I would rent the iPad again.

Girl Talk during Pacific Rim

So I saw the new Guillermo del Toro film Pacific Rim tonight in iMax 3D. I don't see a lot of the big budget hollywood films that are released, but I do make an effort to catch what might be deemed the main wave of things. These are the Avatars and the Spidermen, enough to stay up with the most attractive stars and the latest styles of filmmaking.

Enter my experience of Pacific Rim. I am not familiar with del Toro's films outside of Pan's Labyrinth, which I fell asleep during many years ago (due to the time of night, not the quality of the film). My interest in this film was based primarily on my love of Neon Genesis Evangeleon, which was highly influential in this film's story and style. I can say that I share many of the influences that del Toro called upon in making this film. Certain scenes were very clearly influenced by existing films. Outside of the plot being a reworked, westernized telling of the Neon Genesis series, Blade Runner, Inception, Avatar, and Shadow of the Colossus were the main influences I saw in the film.

The film was a good, big budget hollywood film. Guillermo definitely has good taste, pulling from the appropriate sources when necessary. The film doesn't break new ground in any sense, but it was a well crafted, enjoyable experience. It makes me think a little bit about Girl Talk's mash up albums. When those are successful, each moment is calling upon a collective appreciation of the appropriate source material. This is analogous to del Toro's film making here, and the reason for the film's success.

Yelp vs. Trip Advisor (The Meal Edition)

HELP! I'm hungry... 

I just moved to San Francisco and have settled down in the Mission District. I've become reliant on Yelp to help me get situated in the area. I decided to see what else was out there, and downloaded the Trip Advisor iPad app. The showdown began tonight, as I tried to figure out where to eat.

User Interface: 

Both UI's have their idiosyncracies, but Trip Advisor's UI is littered with inconsistencies that absolutely wreck the user experience. The app designers tried to cram the too many browsing options into the left panel of the app, which overcrowds that side with different options. The app is a whos who of contemporary UI tricks, with a page out effect to show different map types, a side panel on the right for the filer, a zoom in and out button and pinch gestures to zoom... I'm overwhelmed! Additionally every time a user moves in the map in the Trip Advisor app, the map listings change letters, which confuses the absolute hell out of me when I'm using it. Their top navigation bar is very poorly laid out. 

(Trip Advisor's map view)

On the contrary, the Yelp app has me comfortable and situated. It brings the additional UI elements into a bottom bar that accompanies the map view in the app. The top navigation is nicely laid out, segregating between the left panel options and the map options. The filter is much easier to find and use in the Yelp app. And, the search feature is much more responsive in the Yelp app, allowing you to search by keyword where the TA app forces you to search for a specific location.

(Yelp's map view)

Plus, the Yelp app has kick ass features like a monocle and a picture grid for viewing search listings.

(Yelps Monocle... I don't imagine I'll ever use this, but its totes rad)

Information Layout

Trip Advisor

Tabs?!! Come on TA, are you serious? This is not the best way to present information to a user on an iPad. I will say I do appreciate the formatted menu option. While Pizzeria Delfina sounds enticing, you are just not getting me excited about heading there...

Yelp

This is more like it. Do I even need to elaborate? In case I do, scrolling through a nicely designed information view is much sexier than clicking tabbed info dumps. One gripe... A menu option is totally missing from the Yelp app. (Although I found it on the mobile app as I was walking to the restaurant). Cha-Ya here I come!

Small note on Visual Design: 

Anecdote... My father took me golfing when I was growing up. I haven't golfed since. Don't make me feel like I'm searching for golf courses when I'm trying to go out! It makes me unexcited about doing anything in this city. Red on the other hand makes me want to get up and go!

The winner... YELP! 

And animals everywhere rejoices as we enjoyed vegan num nums.