Random Thoughts Relating to the Pyramid

• While it's not my dream use, the Bass Pro development is a use that is a re-use, and that is good. At the very worst, Bass Pro will be a placeholder for great future uses that will happen if we don't do something stupid in the meantime.


• Some people think that demolition is to Memphis as magic beans were to Jack. In fact, demolition is to Memphis as the Luftwaffe was to Guernica.


• The Pyramid is a monument that we've been afraid to treat as a monument. Consequently, we've confused the means -- an arena -- with the end -- a monument. So confused, we think it has no use if it's not an arena.
  
  Thinking about it as a monument -- have we ever tried giving it to the National Park Service?
  


• Many people have noted the recent article about the Pyramid in the New York Times. Dan Barry's biblicalesque narrative of wandering in the Memphis desert captures well our local variants of the sacred and the profane -- the pompous and the goofy. Plus he called the Pyramid "glorious."


• From another NYT article:
  

  After a century of flirting with its version of the Great Pyramid of Cheops along the Nile at the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, pyramid power is coming to the home of Beale Street blues and Elvis Presley.
  
  The structure, which is expected to take two years to complete, is designed as a homage to the Egyptian namesake of Memphis and an eccentric coming-of-age monument.

  Forget coming-of-age, remember eccentric.


• The Pyramid is to monumental architecture as the Jungle Room is to interior decorating.


• The Pyramid was an acquired taste for me.


• The Pyramid is an ironic mullet. The world's largest ironic mullet.

Previous random thoughts on the Pyramid.