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Larger Than Life

Andreas GurskyTwo Fridays ago, I went to the Musuem of Modern Art to see the Workspheres exhibit, which was a pleasant distraction though a little disappointing. What made the whole trip worthwhile was the Andreas Gursky exhibit showing upstairs — an amazing photographic tour de force. I’ve seen some write-ups of this show that included reprints of the works, in a recent issue of Architecture Magazine for instance, but none have been able to capture either the vivid, stunning color quality or, more understandably, the immense scale of the originals. Go see it for yourself.

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Now They Just Laugh

I’ve been meeting a lot of new people in New York, some socially, others through the painful urban raindance known as the apartment search. When the question comes up of what I do for a living, I’m painfully reminded of the state of our industry. Where once a new acquaintance might have been impressed, now he or she just laughs. Ha ha. Sigh.

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On the Night Table

This morning I finished Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which holds up as a snapshot of the decadent Eighties. I’ve since made it thirty pages into Lorrie Moore’s “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?,” a stunningly well-written remembrance of a childhood friendship. Next on the list is Joseph McBride’s book-length interview with Howard Hawks, titled (logically enough) “Hawks on Hawks,” loaned to me by a friend.

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Like a Bouncing Ball

I found myself in New York again last Friday and I’m still here. At every juncture when I think I’m going to plant myself down for at least a good amount of time, I end up leaving sooner rather than later. At any rate, it looks like I’m sticking around New York for a while.

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The Brutal, Blood-Red Remains

New TechniqueYou certainly don’t need to turn to Subtraction.com to hear this news, but I thought I should mention that the market had a miserable day anyway. The Dow Jones fell a dizzy 436 points, while the NASDAQ fell below the psychologically frightening 2000 mark. A friend of mine, using MapStation from SmartMoney, sent me this visualization of what happened today with the NASDAQ. Red indicates equities that lost ground today. The one green bar is Compuware (CPWR), who must have cut a deal with the devil or something.

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