I’ve been enjoying James Howard Kunstler’s Eyesores site, which features a new eyesore every month. Most of them are architectural in nature, each chosen to support his impression that the whole country is sliding toward urban blight. Despite his pessimism, this ex-Rolling Stone writer from the 70s snarks with great energy. Take this picture entry for example:

Biloxi, Mississippi, again. A tourist trap on Highway 90, formerly a grand beachfront avenue on the Gulf of Mexico, now “improved” into a wilderness of curb-cuts, parking lagoons, signage, and the usual furnishings of our drive-in Utopia. Paradoxically, the shark’s head portion of this ensemble is probably its best feature — putting aside any considerations of kitsch or “camp,” ( that is, the love of vulgarity for its own sake.) No, what gets me, really, is the quality of the pink building behind Sharky. In a perfect world its function would be a poodle euthenasia center.

The rest of his website is about the books he’s written on the subject of urban renewal (or rather the lack thereof). There are also some funny capsule reviews of movies…they remind me a bit of Anthony Lane without the diplomacy:

The Missing — (Director Ron Howard) A nickel-plated stinker, director Ron Howard must have phoned this one in. Everything besides the props, sets, and horses throbs with inauthenticity. Cate Blanchette is a widowed homesteader in New Mexico whose teenager daughter is abducted by a renegade Indian sorcerer-thug. Her erstwhile father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, wanders into frame as a wasted-but-wiley old ne’er-do-well and he undertakes to rescue the girl. Everything that follows is utterly phony. The fight scenes are so badly blocked and photographed that you can barely make out which of the bad guys is getting it and how — a basic violation of the revenge movie. Deserves to be melted down into guitar picks ASAP.

I do so enjoy a good rant.