Autodidact Gang Rise Up
with Kate Wagner
-
AT&T Building (550 Madison Avenue)
The Chippendale pediment as postmodernism's calling card, with a gentle correction: Johnson, not Michael Graves. Kate Wagner
-
Bank of America Corporate Center
Charlotte's spiky crown, hated for decades, vindicated now that nineties corporate architecture is being rediscovered. Kate Wagner
-
Empire State Building
Its vertical window rhythm cited as the ancestor of Pelli's Charlotte tower. Kate Wagner
-
Mar-a-Lago
Where money as personal virtue meets architecture, the McMansion logic taken to its conclusion.
-
Megalopolis
The visionary city of the future, which Kate notes architects have been pitching since 1995.
-
The Running Man
Watched on a plane out of loyalty to Edgar Wright, and no fun at all.
-
The Running Man
The Schwarzenegger original: a bad movie, but charmingly so, unlike the remake.
-
Ridiculousness
Back to back episodes as proof that MTV, and culture, quietly stopped.
-
Hung Up
Held up as the comeback single that actually worked, the bar for the promised sequel.
-
Confessions on a Dance Floor
Named as sequel culture arrives in pop: she is really calling the new one two.
-
Tristan und Isolde
Sold out nightly at the Met, suddenly chic in the wake of the Chalamet opera discourse.
-
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Her favourite thing in the world: seventeen hours of Norse legend, leitmotif and brutality. Kate Wagner
-
Nymphomaniac
How one host knows the Ring cycle at all, and a genuinely great use of it.
-
Euphoria
Filed alongside The Pitt: hate the creator, hate the characters, watch every episode.
-
Bleak House
The opening English majors reportedly read as a literal dinosaur walking through London.
-
Structural Issues
Her book in progress, on how an ugly world makes ugly buildings, if we get to 2028. Kate Wagner