Toronto Royal Ontario Museum | ?m | ?s | Daniel Libeskind

Wonder if the whole building to lite up at night or it will be dark like all other buildings...(Greeniac people, please, some buildings deserve to lite up at night)
 
Renovations can be nail-biters, which is why you must get good workers. The two guys banging and screwing half the week up in my bedrooms laid me some lovely new red oak flooring, and it was done on time and on budget because they knew what they were doing.
 
lolgrin051.gif
 
[fiendish rant]
Have never put in my opinion on this building, so take it for what it's worth. I'm not going to justify it on any grounds other than a gut feeling. But now that it's more or less complete, I need a moment of catharsis. It's been too long.

I wanted to like this building.

I've really, really tried to like this building.

I've told myself a hundred times that I *should* like this building.

I've argued with myself, during moments of various levels of sobriety while walking that stretch of Bloor, that I *must* like this building. I've read all the threads, taken in all the commentary (ex-Babel, Alvin, etc.) by those more knowledgeable than myself. And I've tried, really tried.


But, but...


...I can't do it. I can't. I really cannot like or appreciate this thing. And now that's it's nearly complete, I can finally articulate it. And everything I feel about it is negative. Whether that's a testament to the building's excellence in the sense I'm not indifferent to it, I don't know. Or care. But I can't stand it.

It's pushy in a rich-asshole-not-signalling-with-his-Porsche kind of way.
It's an obnoxious prick on a cellphone in the booth next to you in a restaurant.
A loud jerk in the library.
A dog that won't shut up while you're trying to read.
A pushy yuppie mom in the checkout line.
It's Nickelback opening for Radiohead.
It's an ugly fat chick baring her breasts at Mardi Gras for attention, *any* kind of attention.
It's a McMuseum.
It's absurd in a Sir Elton John, Sir Mick Jagger sense of the absurd.
It's farting and giggling during a funeral.

It's the Marlen Cowpland of museums, the Pam Anderson of institutions, all nips and tucks and peek-a-boo plunging necklines, fake tans, fake lips, with curiously upright nipples in front of a tired, worn-out body.

It's an absurd haircut your girlfriend gets that you say you like even though you don't because you don't want to lose your shot at some nookie.

It's the jeans that *does* make her ass look fat. You know it, she knows it, but they're $300 dollars, so they *must* look great, right? Right?

It's all those things that feel so, I don't know, so profoundly, mutely, instinctively wrong. All crass and cheap exhibitionism. A Museum Gone Wild. It's Pete Doherty and Lindsay Lohan architecture. A train wreck, sure. Fascinating, a guilty pleasure to partake in, but no one with taste and class would say anyone else should emulate. Not for me, thanks.

Like most benders, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It lacks grace, or dignity. It spits at history. It wants, Sally Field-like, to really, really like me.

It's the difference between some vulgar trophy wife with fake plastic tits and rings and baubles and a "look at me! look at me!" tainted sheen, and, say, Leslie Feist. It's a bimbo building.

I think it's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I laughed when I saw the rendering. I thought it was a joke. I think it *is* a joke. It's the trucker hat of buildings, all empty hipsterism and a monument to transient, fleeting fashion. A vain, pompous monument reflecting a shallow, vapid age. I will always avert my eyes walking by it and pretend it's not there, like a particularly ugly and smelly homeless person.

It feels so fundamentally wrong, insincere, inauthentic and grasping to me. Don't care what the cladding looks like in the sun, or on a cloudy day, or at different angles. You can serve shit on a silver platter at the best restaurant in the city, accompanied by the finest wine, and it's still shit. Still looks like shit, still smells like shit, still tastes like shit. The ghost of Julia Child could prepare it herself, and it can be pronounced "daring" and "bold" and "iconic" and all the Right People gush and rave over it. But shit it is, and shit it remains.

Nope, I can't do it. I may be wrong, I may be wrong-headed. I may be a philistine. Whatever.

I hate this building.
[/fiendish rant]
 
Without a doubt:

Best. Fiendish. Rant. Ever.

Even tops the "bullshit gobbledygook" classic, wholly righteous, idiocy-annihilating assault on another equally richly deserving, vastly and smugly pompous, blithely un-self-aware target.

Fiendish is my Hero. Please, sir - post more!
 
LOL!

Well, considering the obvious effort fiendish put into his commentary, I guess the building is serving its' intended purpose.

AoD
 
LOL

I don't agree with your opinion, but that was another quality rant fiendish.
 
I get a mild feeling fiendishlibrarian doesn't quite like the building.
 
Word to fiendish's rant. I've felt uneasy about this project from the beginning. Now I'm mostly embarrassed. This could be Toronto's version of the "I got a crazy tatoo while I was drunk" routine. It'll be even harder to get rid of.
 
fiendishlibrarian said:
[fiendish rant]
Have never put in my opinion on this building, so take it for what it's worth. I'm not going to justify it on any grounds other than a gut feeling. But now that it's more or less complete, I need a moment of catharsis. It's been too long.

I wanted to like this building.

I've really, really tried to like this building.

I've told myself a hundred times that I *should* like this building.

I've argued with myself, during moments of various levels of sobriety while walking that stretch of Bloor, that I *must* like this building. I've read all the threads, taken in all the commentary (ex-Babel, Alvin, etc.) by those more knowledgeable than myself. And I've tried, really tried.


But, but...


...I can't do it. I can't. I really cannot like or appreciate this thing. And now that's it's nearly complete, I can finally articulate it. And everything I feel about it is negative. Whether that's a testament to the building's excellence in the sense I'm not indifferent to it, I don't know. Or care. But I can't stand it.

It's pushy in a rich-asshole-not-signalling-with-his-Porsche kind of way.
It's an obnoxious prick on a cellphone in the booth next to you in a restaurant.
A loud jerk in the library.
A dog that won't shut up while you're trying to read.
A pushy yuppie mom in the checkout line.
It's Nickelback opening for Radiohead.
It's an ugly fat chick baring her breasts at Mardi Gras for attention, *any* kind of attention.
It's a McMuseum.
It's absurd in a Sir Elton John, Sir Mick Jagger sense of the absurd.
It's farting and giggling during a funeral.

It's the Marlen Cowpland of museums, the Pam Anderson of institutions, all nips and tucks and peek-a-boo plunging necklines, fake tans, fake lips, with curiously upright nipples in front of a tired, worn-out body.

It's an absurd haircut your girlfriend gets that you say you like even though you don't because you don't want to lose your shot at some nookie.

It's the jeans that *does* make her ass look fat. You know it, she knows it, but they're $300 dollars, so they *must* look great, right? Right?

It's all those things that feel so, I don't know, so profoundly, mutely, instinctively wrong. All crass and cheap exhibitionism. A Museum Gone Wild. It's Pete Doherty and Lindsay Lohan architecture. A train wreck, sure. Fascinating, a guilty pleasure to partake in, but no one with taste and class would say anyone else should emulate. Not for me, thanks.

Like most benders, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It lacks grace, or dignity. It spits at history. It wants, Sally Field-like, to really, really like me.

It's the difference between some vulgar trophy wife with fake plastic tits and rings and baubles and a "look at me! look at me!" tainted sheen, and, say, Leslie Feist. It's a bimbo building.

I think it's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I laughed when I saw the rendering. I thought it was a joke. I think it *is* a joke. It's the trucker hat of buildings, all empty hipsterism and a monument to transient, fleeting fashion. A vain, pompous monument reflecting a shallow, vapid age. I will always avert my eyes walking by it and pretend it's not there, like a particularly ugly and smelly homeless person.

It feels so fundamentally wrong, insincere, inauthentic and grasping to me. Don't care what the cladding looks like in the sun, or on a cloudy day, or at different angles. You can serve shit on a silver platter at the best restaurant in the city, accompanied by the finest wine, and it's still shit. Still looks like shit, still smells like shit, still tastes like shit. The ghost of Julia Child could prepare it herself, and it can be pronounced "daring" and "bold" and "iconic" and all the Right People gush and rave over it. But shit it is, and shit it remains.

Nope, I can't do it. I may be wrong, I may be wrong-headed. I may be a philistine. Whatever.

I hate this building.
[/fiendish rant]
Click to expand...

And that's bad?
 
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