You know, sometimes I feel sorry for people that aren’t me. Because the people that aren’t me don’t have the fascinating and interesting life that I have. Like the realization that perhaps, you may be a butthead, but you never know when that realization is going to hit your butt. I wake up in the morning and I think “hey! I’m not a butthead!” and then BAM! The realization hits that yes, Hixx, you are a butthead.

My butt has been hit with buttheadedness, and I honestly gave myself a little hug. It keeps life interesting being me, and for that, I am thankful.

So, let me just say that:

A. Ms. Zulkey and I got a chance to chat today, and she is awesome.

B. I knew this already, and wrote what I wrote so that I would get a chance to talk to Ms. Zulkey today and have her be my new gmail friend.

C. I am not embarrassed or ashamed, ever, of the things I write and this is precisely what a blog is for.

D. My post for tomorrow will be panning Heath Ledger’s movies so that he can become my gmail chat friend too.

So yeah. Let’s move on shall we? Oh my lord, I slay myself.

So…I took this four week class at the architecture foundation with a guy who was my FAVORITE speaker during our regular docent training a few years ago. My last class was last night and this guy is just…amazing. If you ever get a chance to take a class with, talk to, or just be near Tim Wittman, do it. (I’m sure he’s reading this right? Wanna be my gmail friend?). Here are some of the things I learned that have stood out for the past month:

1. You know all those parts of the roof that hang over Frank Lloyd Wright buildings? They’re not just there to be “Prairie School” and part of his aesthetic, but they’re there to play with light. In the summer, when the sun is high, the light will be blocked out and cool the house, and also, give you a beautiful, unencumbered view out of the window. In the winter, when the sun is low, it lets light in to heat the house, but also shines directly on his beautiful stained glass windows, so instead of seeing dead trees and grass, you see Wright’s abstract flowers and gardens through his stained glass windows. Neat.

2. After the Columbian Exposition, everyone wanted buildings like the Beaux Arts buildings the tentative Burnham built. People started building lots of them, and then the depression hit and after WWII, people started building again, and that’s when Mies Van Der Rohe left Germany (well, before WWII yes?) and came to Chicago. Our enemies, Germany and Russia, started building their governmental buildings in the Beaux Arts style and America didn’t want to be associated with that. And that is why Mies’ modernist buildings became so popular here. It was our way to distance ourselves from our enemies after the war, and be new, and progressive, and technology oriented. The Federal Building by Mies, is in direct response to our new Cold War threat, and distancing ourselves and democracy. Neat.

3. Mies wanted his buildings to hold a perfect truth, a mathematical truth. His buildings were the “Golden Rectangle”, 3 is to 5 as 5 is to 8. If you look at many of his buildings they are this structure, 3 bays wide by 5 bays wide, etc. Wittman brings up the monolith in 2001, a Golden Rectangle, and how that shape is God. So Mies is using that perfect shape in all of his buildings. But then in 1969 (date?) the Big Bang Theory was released and suddenly everything that was exact was no longer exact anymore, and that Mies actually died at the perfect time (1969) because suddenly, his buildings were not a perfect mathematical truth anymore. Neat.

4. The Museum of Science and Industry is the only real building standing from the Exposition, why? Because originally that building was the Arts Building, and when it was first built for the fair, no one would insure a building basically made of stucco, so they made the Arts building of stone.

5. The Tribune Tower was basically the end of Neo-classicist design. It was a laughing-stock and was part of the impetus to the end of the Beaux Arts design that swept the country after Burnham’s fair and move on to Art Deco design that only lasted about 10 years.

There are so many other cool things I learned like: the invention of fluorescent lighting in 1933 changed the way buildings looked forever (we didn’t need anymore “light courts” like the buildings built at the turn of century. And that when Chicago was applying to be the city to host the Columbian Exposition along with New York, St. Louis and Washington D.C., we were told to give a one hour presentation on why we were the city to host and Daniel Burnham gave a thirteen hour presentation…

So effing cool. I need to make a cheat sheet so I remember all this cool stuff come next May when I start the river tours again, because I learned so much about the Trib Tower, Marina City (Bertrand Goldberg was a student of Mies’! Can you imagine? Marina City built by a student of Mies? Mr. Rectangle? Mr. Perfect Mathematical Rectangle? Apparently Mies called Goldberg an “apostate”), so much stuff, so much stuff.

Tonight John promised me a pizza, ANTM party. He is my savior.