I was back in San Diego for another class, for another week. I was online trying to figure out what to do with myself during my free time (a common work problem for everyone, I suppose) and I stumbled across a thing called Salvation Mountain while researching the Salton Sea area.
Out in the middle of nowhere is a hill. And one day in the distant past, a crazy religious nut named Leonard Knight wandered by and decided to paint it. Actually, much of it he built with adobe clay and straw, and then painted over top of it. He's been bricking, baling, and painting this place every day since 1984. He estimates that he's used well over 100,000 gallons of paint.
You might think, given my history of anti-religious rants, that I came out here with the intention of being condescending and smug about such a massive, insane ode to religious fervor. Surprisingly, especially to myself, the fact that it was a huge glob of toxic, colorful paper-mache out in the middle of the desert was the irresistible draw, and the thought that it was dedicated to a God and a religion with which I disagree vociferously barely registered.
Also, the opportunity to take pictures, as always, completely overshadowed any thought of religion the whole time I was there. I often feel a sort of physical disgust when I go into lavish European or Salt Lake City cathedrals, for example, but that was not present here at all. Salvation Mountain is bizarre, it's insane, it's folk art, it's baffling, but it is not asinine in the same way that official religious locales are.
There are several broken down old vehicles scattered about, and it's obvious that in his off days Leonard was still under a compulsion to throw paint on whatever he happened to be sitting near. The image in his head of his love letter to God was obviously an obsession; up there he's painted a 2D representation of his vision. And down here, he apparently thought the desert needed a boat.
On the side of a painted tractor, I'm guessing that some visitor left these here as stiletto fuck-me shoes don't seem to fit in with his ideas. But it makes a nice contrast.
Ok, one last scope photo... before we go into the rabbit hole. In case you haven't picked it up from the photos, the mountain seems to be painted in a sort of waterfall motif, where the blue and white lines are the water representing God's flowing Love, I suppose.
There is a path going up the front of the mountain, which you are encouraged to tread along.
It's yellow. I'm supposing that's to represent the streets of Gold in Heaven. Or perhaps he's just showing some playfulness...
Yup, playfulness. A technicolor child's dream of Heaven, perhaps.
Sea anemones? But even if Leonard thinks that there are sea anemones on the path to God, the amount of attention to the details of his vision combined with the dedication of giving his entire life to the project are astounding.
Looking out upon his works.... And I was perhaps unduly fascinated by this next shot, having always wondered what the edge of the Universe might look like, or the other side of a painting or a mirror. In Leonard's Universe, it stops right over the lip.
So right next to the mountain is another project. He has created a hollow hill of hay-bales, propped up by trees and interspersed with old car windows. Front view:
Approach view from the top side:
Rear view:
And inside is a warren of painted bales, trees, and pictures. It's bonkers.
Did I think we were entering the rabbit hole before?
Pictures can't really convey what it was like to walk through here.
But I sure did my best.
When I couldn't take any more shots down tunnels, I pointed my camera upwards. It. Just. Never. Stops.
And then I would find more tunnels.
I spent about 2 or 3 hours at Salvation Mountain, taking shots almost non-stop the whole time. I can't begin to express how many pictures I'm actually sparing you from. It's odd how one loony-bin's obsession can become yours that way.
Here is an adobe cave he built for himself to live in; a nice place to escape the heat. Only he never moved in, opting instead to stay in his trailer because he couldn't not paint the hell out of everything he did.
Here's a random clatch of his sea anemones I found off to the side somewhere, for example.
So remember how I said I came without smugness or condescension? Well, that blissful state of photgraphic being was briefly shattered near the end of my stay. The whole time I was there, I was so in awe of the visuals, and obsessed with capturing them, that I hadn't really paid any attention to the words he was writing in paint. Until I went out and around for one last round of shots and I started way back out, by the mailbox.
Erm... poor choice of wording there Leonard. Maybe that's how it's written in the Bible, but some paraphrasing might have been beneficial. All this does is make me think that you wanted Jesus to violently prison rape you. Granted, I'm sure I'm more dirty minded than you, and I have been watching HBO's OZ on dvd lately, but you've got to think about your audience, after all.
The smugness and condescension went away fairly quickly though. I may be infantile about certain things but I have learned that remaining infantile beyond the shock moment is probably unhealthy.
The problem though is that once I started paying attention to the words, that's all I could see, and it admittedly became more difficult to ignore my anti-religious feelings.
At any rate, to distract my self from getting too snarky, I wondered what paint on the ground looked like up close after baking out in the California desert sun for years.
I took a seat at the makeshift viewing area before leaving, and found yet another photo op.
And one last distance shot, because I. Just. Can't. Stop.
Hundreds of photos, and I kind of wanted to go back at night and get some more in different light. But I didn't. If I'm back out that way again, then maybe. But with this post I'm glad to get this mountain of obsession out of my system.
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, rearrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head" - Banksy
"The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires..."- Banksy
After checking out the aspens, I drove down into Park City, Utah. I almost decided not to even stop in town because from the road it sort of looked like a typical cutesy American main street chock-a-block full of quaint shops, which depresses me. So many American towns sell themselves as Historic or as a good tourist destination when in reality all that they have to offer is a short stroll past shop windows and Galleries full of crap. However, the Sundance Film Festival is held in Park City every year, so I figured there might be something worth seeing. I parked on a hill, walked down some steps that led to an alley which exited out onto Main Street Park City. And just as I was getting to the end of the alley, before I even really caught a glimpse of the town, I did a double, triple, quadruple take at the above work of graffiti on the wall. I recognized it immediately as a Banksy! Well, and not just because the locals framed it with a big BANKSY nameplate, neither.
"The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some people are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising some people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers."- Banksy
Needless to say, I stood around that corner for about a half hour taking shots, not even really noticing that my assessment of Park City as yet another whimsical trade street was otherwise entirely correct in my desire to use it as background.
"You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity." - Banksy
Although I love Banksy's work, embarrassingly it was a bit of time before I came down off of the high of discovery to actually think about the meaning of the piece very deeply. I mean, my initial assessment was that it was a sort of anti-film industry statement and I left it at that. Then when I'd gotten off a few shots and calmed down a bit, I started to feel a bit stupid as I began to suspect that the joke was on me and my need to photograph everything, and that's the type of mania that Banksy was lampooning. I got a little shy and surreptitiously looked around to make sure that the locals, who were probably in on the joke by now, weren't laughing at me. Nothing too overt, but a girl walked past and I swear that she snorked at me.
"We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves." - Banksy
Then I decided that I had better study it more closely. I slowly began to realize that maybe it was more of a comment on places like Park City; People find a beautiful bit of nature and WHAM! Ruin it by plunking down a town full of boutique shopping, ski slopes, spas, gigantic resort hotels that resemble Hogwarts and a million vacation houses which, due to the non-stop real estate frenzy, wind up all facing and contemplating each other, thus destroying the open natural beauty that had made the area a popular destination in the first place.
"People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that’s only if it’s done properly." - Banksy
Feeling satisfied that Banksy wasn't necessarily having a laugh at my expense and being happy with my pictures, I wandered through town for a bit casting internal aspersions on the stupid snorking girl and continuing to contemplate the piece. One thing that Banksy is right about for sure; seeing a work of art in context is much more thought provoking than seeing it on a wall in a highly secured building, or in a book. I imagined that there was a reason he chose to paint that particular piece in a town where the rich and famous gather in obnoxious droves every year to celebrate themselves. I eventually decided that perhaps it was a comment on art and celebrity in the media, how in the race to put something under the microscope and on film for exploitative purposes, you destroy what may or may not make it valuable. Then I saw some photographs of aspens in the shop window of a gallery. I "ooohhhed" and "ahhhed" in the privacy of my hypocritical head, and went in to see. Inside is where I learned about aspens, and also that the reason that Banksy had been in town was for the opening of his film "Exit Through The Gift Shop". He street arted the place up, and then later on the locals framed it with pride for him. I'm not exactly sure what Banksy's current stance on permanently framing his work and hanging his name on it is, but I suspect he has complicated emotions about it. The gallery attendant told me of another small piece that Banksy had left behind (and also locally framed), and where to find it.
"I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said "that's a clever anagram of art" and I had to pretend I'd known that all along."- Banksy
He's famous for his rats. They're a bit of a trademark; better than a tag, really. At any rate, by the time that I left town, I'd decided that the main piece could probably mean any or none or all of the things that I went through thinking it might, which is the great thing about seeing it live. Though the Banksy book that Julie has will always be one of my most treasured rat books, isolated on the page I got much less highly dignified contemplation out of his hundreds of great pieces than I did from seeing that one where it was meant to be seen.
"Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie"- Banksy
The only other thing in town that tickled my fancy was an advert for a certain beer in a bar window. Normally I wouldn't have cared much, but being in Utah, with the Mormons and all, I was compelled.
"I used to tell everyone I met to be an artist..... I don't do that any more."- Banksy
I want to do a book report on Brian Greene's new publication in the worst way, but I'm not sure that I am capable of it. I used to read popular science books quite regularly, and I'd realized that it's been years since those days at about the same time that 'The Hidden Reality' caught my eye. As I was going through it I realized that reading, and keeping pace with, popular science texts is a skill which must be practiced, especially if one is not particularly well trained in physics.
That's not to say that he doesn't do a great job of explaining the concept behind 9 different types of multiple/parallel Universes quite engagingly; he does. It's more that, once I put the book down for a few minutes after every couple of pages to think about the implications of whatever mind-blowing concept he's introduced, the particulars begin to drain away because my poor little head is not lately used to holding on to the strange and complicated concepts behind Infinity, Relativity, Quantum physics, and String Theory.
However I'm going to try because I feel that my motive in writing about this book is more an effort to hang on as best as I am able to the understanding of a beautiful dream that fades quickly after waking than an attempt to convince anyone else to read it. Of course after completing that last sentence, I've sat and stared at the book cover for about ten minutes trying to figure out how to start. Sigh.
So here then; let's begin with the apology. Mr. Greene himself goes to great lengths in the book to make the reader understand that, at the moment, no versions of the multiverse which he posits are actually provable with hard data, and therefore may fall slightly outside the boundary of science. I say slightly, because though their detection may currently lie beyond our best detectors, they are in fact unavoidable outcomes of certain aspects of science which ARE scientifically sound, mathematically speaking.
As a comparison, when Einstein published his theory of General Relativity the technology available at the time was not capable of disproving his math. He came up with that theory using creative visualization, math and perspiration. And whatever other tools of genius he had at his disposal. But he himself did not go out and measure the Cosmic Background Radiation which ultimately helped to prove his theory correct. Now I'm not comparing Brian Greene or any other String Theorist to Einstein, (and neither was Greene in his book) merely the scientific process itself which is at work here. If you follow the math it leads to amazing places which, more often than you might think, describes the cosmos as it is in reality, even though it may also lead beyond all common sense. So this exploration of the side effects and the possibilities of infinity, string theory and math is extremely valid science, even if in the end it turns out that they've missed something and there are other things at work. You have to explore every avenue if you want to find out what's actually out there.
So why bother getting all excited over Parallel Universes if there's a chance it's inaccurate? Because it's exciting. And because, all things being equal, it's probably not inaccurate. It is currently science's best guess, much as Relativity and Evolution once were, and therefore worth a lengthy consideration.
So I'll start with the multiverse which I understand the most clearly, naturally. He calls it the Quilted Multiverse and here is how it works: There is some question in the cosmologist community whether the space that we inhabit is either very, very, very freaking large but ultimately finite, or whether it is in fact infinite. It all depends on the overall shape of the universe, which we don't yet know. (It's important to have a good grasp of the concept of infinity for this one, which I am lucky to have in some finite degree thanks to Rudy Rucker. His book 'White Light' is a rollicking exploration of infinity, and with extremely visual storytelling really helped me to glimpse what mathematicians actually mean when they use the term infinity. I highly recommend it.)
At any rate, If our Universe in fact turns out to be infinite (as the current trend of thought among cosmologists apparently believe is the likeliest scenario) then there is almost certainly another messiestobjects out there, writing up a book report about a publication by Brian Browne, (the last name of the author perhaps being the only difference between that Earth and this one) and positing some strange world where a version of himself is typing up a book report on a publication by a Brian Greene. In fact, there would be an infinite amount of Earths out there, that look just like ours. And there would be an infinite amount of other possible Earths as well. One, perhaps, that was solely inhabited by shrimp. Or one with no shrimp. Let your imagination go wild, like mine!
The reason why this would be so is simply statistical. Matter is evenly distributed throughout the visible Universe on very large scales. What that means is, you can take a really big box, say about 100 million light years cubed and chunk it down here, then weigh all of the matter in it. Then pick it up and chunk it down over there, again weighing all of the matter. Do this in several locations throughout the Universe and you will find that each box-full of matter will weigh in at about equal amounts, and it will be so all throughout the Universe. The idea here is that while matter may be evenly spread throughout an infinite Universe, there is a finite amount of forms that matter can take.
So the implication of this is that matter, as much of it as there is, can only arrange itself in so many ways. It's like a deck of cards; there are 52 cards in a deck, and 52 cards can be arranged in 1067 unique ways. That number fully written out is 80,658,175,170,943, 878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000 which is obviously a really huge number. However, once you have arranged those 52 cards in that many unique ways, the cycle will repeat and you will start to get duplicate arrangements. Of course, some arrangements are more likely than others, so you will have odd random assortments of cards duplicate more often than you will see the deck fall out completely arranged from aces to Kings in all four suits, but as unlikely as that is, it will happen eventually.
The same is true for the arrangement of matter. In the entirety of our visible Universe, there are about 1010122 possible particle configurations. Which again, is a totally inconceivable number yet is definitely a finite number. Once you've reached every possible unique combination, the patterns will begin to repeat, and repeat infinitely. Thus, messyobjects is out there, messierobjects, and even an evenmoremessiestobjects, all trying to say hi to me right now. Since our brains and life experiences are nearly completely identical and in some cases absolutely identical, I can say hi to them and they've received the message! I know this because I've received their message, having sent one myself. We're totally braintext messaging across the infinite light years right now. They say hi back, and ask how's the wife and pets and I say oh, the same as yours, pretty much. ad infinitum. (Of course it's not a very interesting conversation, having identical thoughts and all, but there's always a downside.)
Whew. That was the first and easiest version of a multiverse in this book, and believe me they get far more difficult to grasp. The existence of the Quilted Multiverse depends only on discovering the shape of the Universe we currently reside in without calling any of the more unproven forms of science into the matter, but it is important here to note that Brian Greene and other String Theorists did not go out looking for multiverses. They did not read some ridiculous New Age drama and say "Oy, how can we finagle the math to come up with parallel dimensional portal-thingies in order to dazzle the public?" No, the attempt to understand actual observed phenomena through the framework of String Theory led them mathematically all on its own to many other different types of possible multiverses.
The Inflationary Multiverse, which better fits the definition of a multiverse in my extremely humble opinion, is one in which bits of our universe break off and inflate into bubble universes of their own, our Universe having broken off from another "larger" one at its own birth. There are also the Brane, Cyclic, Landscape, and Quantum types of multiverses. I like the Quantum Multiverse; it basically goes back to the Schrödinger's Cat thing, and Quantum uncertainty.
(jpeg of a print by Jie Qi) In case you are not familiar with Schrödinger's Cat, it is a Thought Experiment designed to help one visualize how Quantum Particles behave. The way it goes is, you put a cat in a box, close the lid, and have a radioactive atom timed to decay and open a flask of poison. In the quantum world, there is an equal possibility of the decay happening and causing the cat to be dead or alive when you open the lid. Until you open the lid, the cat is actually in an uncertain state, being both alive and dead at the same time which would be an unsettling thing to witness, I'm sure. The traditional outcome of this little game is that when you open the box, the probability wave collapses and the cat becomes one or the other. Thus the very act of observation determines the ultimate quantum state. (For a more accurate and less confused rundown of the thought experiment in mid-twentieth century science nerd jargon, visit the wikipedia page on the subject)
This is weird. But this type of behavior has been observed in quantum particle physics, hence the Quantum Uncertainty Principle and it does not apply to the world of things of our size, only to the realm of the very, very small. There is a gap between the quantum scale and ours where Quantum Theory breaks down and reality then becomes guided by Newtonian physics and Relativity. If you add String Theory math to this experiment, you can bridge the gap and in fact the cat is actually both alive and dead for realsies, in two different universes! Long, complex, nearly-incomprehensible-to-a-non-String-Theorist story short, the reason that Quantum particles behave so oddly is that we are seeing them play out every possible state of existence across a multiverse.
As an interesting aside, that particular multiverse explanation is where the idea comes from that every time one makes a choice, universes diverge and a separate reality for each choice carries on it's course. It may sound a bit hippie or New Age-ish, but if String Theory turns out to be correct, this in fact may actually be happening, right now, right next to you.
Another multiverse is the Holographic Multiverse, which is conceptually easy, but also very hard to explain the whys and wherefores of. This one is due to the nature of information and how it is stored in the universe, and when looked at closely begins to look a bit as though all matter as we see it is actually a projection of another type of matter on a distant quantum dimensional surface. In this multiverse all of our actions, in fact all interaction between all forms of matter everywhere is a shadow play. We're hand puppets. Don't ask me to explain the science though. It has something to do with Black Holes, very tall drinking straws, and math. Beyond that, I haven't retained a thing. Damn it.
The final multiverse of the book is the so-called Ultimate Multiverse, a distinction earned due to a new twist on the Anthropic Principle, which is the idea that asking the question "How is it possible that our planet, our very universe have the conditions necessary to bring forth life?" is meaningless because life evolves in the place to which it is suited. In other words, we are here both to ask the question and be the answer. I like this one for purely philosophical reasons, as it's an (yet another) answer of sorts in the debate between religion and science, at least for a certain set of debate points. The religious often like to point out that the Universe, Life, and Everything are far too complex to have "just happened" which is about as far as their understanding of the sciences of Cosmology and Evolution usually go. A very sad, limited viewpoint indeed.
At any rate, the Ultimate Multiverse answers the question of why the Physical Laws of our particular Universe are just right in order for galaxy, star, planet, and life formation to "just happen". Because in an infinite multiverse, where every possible Universe that can exist does exist, one with our physical laws and conditions for life merely becomes an inevitability, not a miracle. Therefore there is no "why" of existence, merely the statistical likelihood of it. You'll note that the Ultimate Multiverse differs from the Quilted Multiverse in the sense that, with the latter, there may be an infinite set of volumes with repeating particle configurations, allowing for infinite versions of themselves, however they are all still set in the same Universe as we are and subject to the same physical laws, merely separated by distances too large for any technology to ever cross. The Quilted version answers the question of why there is life on Earth, but does not answer the why of the overall conditions in our Goldilocks Universe and its particular laws of physics being just right in order to allow life to come about in the first place. The Ultimate Multiverse does, however. It states that while there are Universes like ours with just the right amount of density for galaxies, stars, and planets to form, there are also an infinite amount of stillborn ones. Our Universe is the Royal Flush that comes along once in a blue moon... or rather once in a Blue Iteration.
There are solid mathematical underpinnings to the Ultimate Multiverse, as well as for all of the others, but I'm not going there. If you want to try to understand them, or any of the other concepts, I suggest that you pick up a few popular science books and get cracking. 'The Hidden Reality' is wonderful, but unless you've already attempted to come to grips with the ideas behind Relativity, Infinity, or Quantum Physics, you might want to get a more basic picture of the Universe first. 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan is an excellent place to start for basic Cosmology, that Rucker book I already pimped for Infinity, and Brian Greene's earlier work 'The Elegant Universe' is a great introduction to String Theory. So get busy with the head scratching, braniac!
Another great way to contemplate infinity, by the way, is to obsessively-compulsively watch fractal zoom videos. I've posted about fractals before, here and here. I don't know how, but I'm sure that fractal math figures in to multiverses somehow. This one magnifies the Mandelbrot set 10275 times, and ends up at a copy of itself. Apropos.
February was a slow month. This time of year usually is. The only trip of note I went on was to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Just off the highway between Fort Leonard and St. Louis in Fanning, MO on route 66, is the world's Largest rocker. Wheee-hoooo.
I didn't go into the taxidermy studio. If I'd had that kind of time, I would have gone back to the St. Louis Gateway Arch again. Oh well, next time.
However I have some exciting photo geek news. I've discovered how to merge shots of different exposures. I've known it was possible for a while, so very occasionally in the past I'd take Auto Exposure Bracketed shots (AEB) in the hopes I could figure out how to merge them one day. I never really did until recently, and sad to say I never did have the forethought to take very many AEB shots. No idea what I'm talking about? Let me explain. These next three shots of a scene in Death Valley National Park were taken as AEB; three shots of the same frame at different exposures:
And with the correct software, they are merged together to look like this!
It takes the best light from each object in the photo and puts 'em together for what is called a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. This is an especially useful tool for instances where the light on the subject that you're photographing is just too disparate. As you see in the first three photos, when I exposed for the detail of the basalt rock, the sky and background get washed out, but when I tried to expose for the background, the basalt gets blacked out. One such common occurrence in photography are indoor shots with windows during the daytime. If you want to see what's outside as well as what's inside, HDR rules. My Den:
You'll notice that the HDR images don't look quite as sharp as a regular photo; they almost look painterly. That's just a detailing option you can use in the software. It can render the image more normal looking as well, it's just a preference. Here's my HDR Den, more normal:
I like the painterly look. It makes my less interesting photos look more interesting. Someday I hope to take an AEB photo that is interesting in and of itself. I'm excited about the software, so hopefully it will happen. In the meantime, here's another AEB shot I took way back on a Sacramento California trip.
Despite popular belief, Parisians are not, in fact, all assholes. Every Parisian we interacted with was lovely. It wasn't my first time there either; it was my third visit to Paris and I've found that to be true each time. I think that the reason that so many Americans seem to think Parisians are jerks is because Parisians are actually quite friendly and accommodating, and as a result they lose patience really fast with people who do not return the same courtesies. Americans are typically known in Europe as rude and oblivious travelers, though in fairness I don't think we mean to be. But, and obviously I'm stereotyping us here, our habit of not trying to understand the customs or the languages of the places we travel to is fairly considered to be pretty asinine. There are cultural and geographical reasons for our seemingly built-in xenophobia and obtuseness, however when leaving your home and entering another's, it's not unreasonable for the host to expect a little understanding that things are done differently there and that while it may be their duty to make us feel welcome, it's our duty to try and fit in.
So that's our lecture for today kids. God I'm getting preachy in my old age. Aw who'm I kidding, I've always been preachy. ANYway, obviously after hitting Barcelona Julie and I night trained it up to Paris. As I said I'd visited a few times before, but Julie hadn't and as it is quite a lovely honeymoon destination, we hit that. We were there for three days. What can I say about Paris though? It's a beautiful city, with a crap ton of cool stuff to do. You might find it odd that after having said that, I pretty much only have pictures of the Sacre Coeur church to post.
There's a good reason for that. Paris was bloody cold. Actually from here on out, the rest of our trip was bloody bloody bloody bloody cold. It wasn't often that I had the gumption to pull my camera out of the bag. But the Sacre Coeur has a special signifigance for Julie and me. She's had a painting by Maurice Utrillo of a street scene on her wall in her bedroom for many years; It had belonged to her Nana and she'd always loved it. She would stare at it and wish she could enter the painting and go there, but she never knew what or where it was. Not until I once had occasion to see the painting myself whereupon I said to her "Hey, that looks like the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, Paris. I've been in that exact spot. Cool picture."
It's possibly a little more commercial in that spot nowadays than it was in Utrillo's day. But still a cool looking scene. So of course this was one of our most important must-do's on our honeymoon. Julie said it was quite surreal to stand in this spot after all those years of staring at it and wishing she could go there, but perhaps she will wish to comment more on that herself. At any rate, of course we went back there at night when shops were closed and no one else was out, mostly because it was snowing and was bloody bloody bloody bloody cold. But very attractive.
We did do other stuff in Paris of course. But posting photos of paintings in the Louvre is rather dull. There were still a crap ton of people in the Mona Lisa room. Probably the same ones who were there last time I was there. However we did pass by proof that all of the paintings there are fake stand-ins. They train 'em right there, during normal business hours!
We also passed a window which had a really nice view of Montmartre, so I pulled out the 'ol telephoto lens.
And a bit more tele, please.
Another very, very important aspect of Paris was the food. You can not go wrong in Montmartre. We hadn't had the greatest food luck in Lisbon or Spain; the Tapas were kind of nasty. I think we just picked bad places somehow though. But everything we ate in Paris was awesome. That stereotype is absolutely true. Julie sated a yen for Foie Gras and I sated a yen for Creme Brulee, along with many other italicized satiations and some great wine. The only bad experience was at this one trendy fondue place. The fondue was delicious, but the restaurant itself was a bit unpleasant. It was tightly packed with squealing young foreigners, Julie was forced to stand on the table to get over to her seat where she became quite literally booby-trapped for the evening, and in a final indignity they served their passable house wine in baby bottles which is exactly where I drew the line. I immediately took the lid off as I have a snobby attitude toward wine which tastes of rubber nipple.
Julie apparently does not. She's much more fun than I am.
I'm not really sure what exactly the gimmick was supposed to be. So then Parisians may not all be assholes, their food may be all kinds of awesome, but they are also kind of weird sometimes. Anyway, we also hit Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, of course. And the catacombs. Gotta hit the catacombs. Because miles of human bones deep underground are cool.
Two-headed ogres live down there.
And that's pretty much our Paris trip. I left stuff out, such as the five story spiral staircase we had to climb three to four times a day, and the unforced evacuation of the Louvre which we did not participate in, or the Christmas concert in Notre Dame, but really those are just details which are better kept between ourselves.
One post closer to Krampus! Sorry it's taking so long to get there. Busy time of year and all that. Here's the next teaser pic.
We took a night train from Lisbon to Madrid. I've been on night trains in Europe before, and once from Cairo to Aswan, Egypt, and they are awesome. You get a bunk bed room with a sink. You hang out, drink some wine or whatever, pass out. Then you wake up at your destination well rested and ready to sightsee. For some reason, the Lisbon to Madrid night train wasn't so restful. I mean, we did everything right; we had a private room and a bottle of genuine Porto bottled Port Wine. (Which we learned was invented by the British in the Portugese city of Porto. They didn't like Portugese wine, so they mixed it with Brandy and voila!) Maybe I'm just getting... well certainly not older. I'm the same age I always was. Maybe just out of practice.
At any rate, all we saw in Madrid were train stations as we attempted to find a way down to Seville. They don't make it easy, the damn Spaniards. But we made it, and spent a night. We didn't like the tapas, but the old Cathedral that looks a bit like a mosque in the last two pictures was pretty. We opted not to pay the overpriced entrance fee to check out the interior, however. How's that for hard-hitting travel journalism?
This was a museum which we also didn't go in to, but I dig the lion device over the archway. Hey, we were still a bit jet and train-lagged, and we were just glad we had the energy to wander around town at all at this point, ok? So after Seville, we got an early morning train to Granada.
Again, still exhausted, and Granada was extremely stressful and confusing at first. But after hauling our packs onto many buses and over many hills, we finally found what we were looking for, the Alhambra.
To be honest, I'd never heard of the Alhambra before Julie convinced me that we had to go see it if we were going through Spain. I feel a bit confused by that now; it's like never having heard of the Louvre, or the Roman Colliseum. How does that one go under one's radar? Washington Irving lived at the Alhambra for a time and wrote a book of tales about it. And I'll be embarassingly honest once more; at first I was a bit cranky, and did not enjoy walking around it. My excuse? Again, train-lagged and we had hiked over a lot of hills already that day, and the place is HUGE.
But you can't stay cranky for long with these kinds of sights. On the one hand, the place is awe-inspiring. An aggregate of palaces and gardens, constructed by various conquerors of contrasting empires over a period of centuries. On the other hand, my inner proletariat was outraged once again by the excesses of the wealthy at the expense of the subhuman working class.
But at some point you just have to let the rage go and enjoy the views.
Or not, you know. Bitterness is a good frame of reference for the traveler. And either way, it IS beautiful. It's not like I want to visit the shanty towns of South Africa as a sightseer, or even the poorer districts of Granada. Bloody rich people.
If I seem conflicted, it's because I am. You can't walk around this planet without a healthy dose of confliction. I despise the overly wealthy, not because they're wealthy but because they seem to spend their lives and their wealth making sure that the mass of humanity gets screwed, but of course when you travel as an American, one realizes that I am overly wealthy compared to much of the world. Which is kind of sad and makes me even madder. And then I try to put it all out of my mind and just enjoy the trip.
So you know, Travel for the self-loathing! I oughtta work for Carnival or Disney. At any rate, the Alhambra was really wonderful to see. But the best part of the day was dinner. After hiking back down into the main district of Granada, I found a Doner Kebap place! Doner Kebaps are the Turkish version of Gyros and are way awesomer. They are all over Europe, but I have yet to see one in the States which is crazy. You could make a small fortune if you opened a Doner stand. One last view of the Alhambra, and then it's off to Barcelona.
We spent a few days in Barthelona. That's how they pronounce it. It's a really neat city, with loads of the usual city life kinds of things. Nightlife, sidewalk cafes, museums, etc. Our first night there though, we hit the Gaudi stuff.
Gaudi was a religious nut, and judging by his architecture at least partially insane. But you know, that's a good combo for art. They started building the Sagrada Familia cathedral in 1882, and it is still under construction, to be completed in 2026. That's freaking crazy right? But it really is an amazing looking building.
And honestly, it also looks a bit demonic. Like a big church made out of flesh. Maybe that's why I like it.
We also checked out his Casa Mila, which is awesome but I feel like it falls a bit short of his vision. I don't understand why all of the windows aren't desgned the same way as that big one on street level. The webby soap-bubbly like pattern of the door frame is awesome, and the other windows are all just, square.
The next day we hit the Picasso museum, once again at Julie's prompting. And I have to say, it did it's job. I'm a convert, I like Picasso's stuff now. I didn't really care about him much before, though I always thought that his attempts to render the idea of actual three dimensional vision rather than two dimensional representation of the third dimension onto canvas was rather awesomely nerdy, if a bit inherently flawed as a concept. But being in a room full of his weirder stuff is definitely one of the few times in my life where I actually felt wonderfully affected by art, because I'm not normally big on paintings and sculptures and such. But, you're not allowed to take pictures of his paintings, dammit.
We spent a lot of time in Barcelona just walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. I have loads of pictures but they're mostly touristy, so I'll leave off with this one.
And that's it for Spain. One post closer to Krampus! Speaking of which, here's the next teaser pic I promised.
The Dansbury Depot in East Stroudsburg burned down! Well, like a year ago. But they'd finally decided to move the old building last week, and preserve it. For the history. So I stopped by a night or two before the move to get some nice night shots of what was left of it.
Why would any sane Stroudsburger do such an odd thing, you ask? Well, there's this photo club in the area I'm trying to break into, and this is a photo project they've been working on ever since it became clear that the Depot was going away. Big Dipper! So I submitted a bunch of these, but the kind lady in charge said I could post them independently if I wanted to. So here's a few of my favorites. The reddish colored photos, like the one above, are unphotoshopped. Except to shrink and tag them, of course. The bluer photos, like the next one, are those with which I messed in order to bring out the more vivid colors of the night. Big Dipper! I have another reason for being fond of the Dansbury Depot, even if it's a bit of a stretch to justify a photo shoot or a blog post or even a mention; It was my family's first stop in East Stroudsburg when we moved to the area in '89. For those of you who are not familiar with the area, no we did not arrive by train. It's an old train station that had been converted into a resaurant.
That's all I can come up with, I think, to talk about The Dansbury Depot. So one last shot. It's the same as the first, but I used a built-in effect from photoshop on it. I don't normally like those effects, because any artiste can push a button on a computer. Plus it can get time-consuming and I'm lazy. But I wanted to wrap the Depot in plastic before they shipped it off, so there you go.
Happy new year, and best wishy washies to all and to all a good night and all of that standard, socially acceptable holiday greeting card junk. Now that's out of the way, I can move on to what's important. I self-published a book of my photographs. Mainly because it made an easy Christmas gift to fob off on friends and family. I was kind of embarrassed to willfully join the ranks of the self-published, but my wonderful Miss Luongo, who is a %100 bona fide properly published sexy author, assured me that self-publishing is a perfectly acceptable route to go for photography. You can use it as a portfolio and so it serves a legitimate function in addition to massaging one's vanity.
If you click on the book cover up there, or on the handy little badge which I've inserted permanently on the left sidebar, it'll take you to the website where you can preview and buy it. But do not by any means feel obligated to do so out of charity, as part of the benefit of an online self-publisher is that the books cost me nothing so it's not like I need to sell them. When you buy one, only then does the company print one out and send it to you! Very nice.
Also, I am supposed to be hanging some of my pictures in Sweet Creams in Stroudsburg this February. So if you're in town during the shortest month, and therefore the shortest show of the year, stop in for a hot almond milk and some of the best sandwiches this side of nowhere. Too bad for you that it's a bit cold for ice cream; theirs is awesome. My pictures may or may not be there though... during last year's show at The Main Street Jukebox they all got a bit of moisture damage (my fault, I failed to tape them correctly) and I never got around to flattening them out. So now I have like two weeks to fix 'em up because I currently can't afford to re-do them all. Urgh. But I'll facebook an invite when I know what's going on.
Ever wonder what really happened to the dinosaurs? Chick knows! Click on the comic to read more!
Chick is now online, and all of his wonderful messages in cartoon can be perused at your leisure! Chick tracts were around when I was really young, and I remember one in particular that scared the living crap out of me. Something about an MC 500 foot Jesus coming to rip my guts out. I love how evil all non-Christians are in Chick's fabulous brain.
Incest and murder are my things? Comedy gold. But there are many many other classics, including one about how to convert Muslims to Christianity by insulting Allah!
And one of my personal favorites about a rather testy old Evolution teacher. Those bad science professors sure need some calming Christ in their life, don't they?
Have you noticed how all of the main characters, both good and evil, in Chick tracts are white? Well, don't feel left out, people of color. Lest you think Chick might be racist, Chick made a tract for you, too! (I pasted the description onto the tract cover from the main tract listing page)
And not to spoil the ending of Oops! or anything, but I also think it's important to note that Chick gives black people a very important role in his mythos:
There are other tracts made just especially for the blacks too. There's Soul Sisters, (featuring black Adam & Eve and a black Angel! See? Chick's no racist!) Who Loves You?, and Chick even took the time to kindly redraw the Allah Had No Son tract just for them! He retitled it Who is Allah?
And no post about Chick would be complete with out a tract about the totalitarian rule of the costumed anti-Christ during the last days on Earth before Jesus comes to rule the world. Sadly, we don't get to see Jesus in a Batman-like costume come and pummel the joker here, but I guess the implication is enough to get Chick's message across.
A panel from this strip explains away all the contradictions about Christians who are anti-environmentalist, and who cheer on nuclear wars and unrest in Israel:
That's why I'm so excited? Christians are freaking scary sometimes, dude. Oh, keep this one on the down-low for now, but Chick doesn't like Queers much, neither... or maybe he's afraid of them? Hard to tell. Wonder why a straight guy is afraid of a couple of other guys holding hands?
Gulp! Gay Hippies! Or perhaps the implication is that all hippies are Jerry Garcia lookalike commie fags... not sure. All I know is, it's no big deal, it's all a joke to me! Proposition Hate? Nah... Proposition GREAT!
Another one of my favorites is an interesting piece of cartoon art titled Last Rites. It's theme is essentially how wrong Catholics are about God and his rules, and it starts off with, you know, an ordinary everyday non-Christian couple driving a car.
They accidentally run over a good Catholic man who dies and goes in front of God for judgment, who then informs the poor Catholic man that he's been doing it wrong and will therefore burn in Hell for all eternity. The Catholic man complains to God and says that he went to church, and did everything the Priests told him he had to do to go to Heaven, that this isn't fair! How was he to know that there was a better way? Well, says God, Chick Tracts would have straightened you out!
Apparently, Chick Tracts are so awesome that now even God is using them to witness to us and to save our souls. Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson are out, Chick is in. I hope everybody got that memo.
This is the first in a series of my new favorite comic strip. Go here to read all of the Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear online. It's done by David Rees, who also does Get Your War On, which is especially hilarious and painful to read. (GoDrex turned me on to GYWO; thanks again for like the hundredth time)
“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years” - Thomas Wolfe
I live about one hour to the west of NYC, and I haven't been there in like fifteen years. I've still never even been up to see the Statue of Liberty except one time when I was too young to remember; apparently my Pop Pop, who used to work in the City, took me there once. It's one of those traveling oddities. Germans that I knew from Bavaria had never been to Italy, which is only a few hours away by train, yet had been to the Statue of Liberty. I've been to Venice, Baghdad, and Moscow even, but it's been fifteen years since I spent any time in the greatest city in the world. I'd seen online that one of my favorite bands was playing the final show on their tour there on Saturday night, so Miss Luongo and I drove over there yesterday to have a perfect New York day.
Miss Luongo doesn't particularly enjoy concerts, so in order to bribe her into attending one with me, I had to promise that we'd see a Broadway show which is one of her favorite things to do in the City. We hit TKTS which sells discounted day-of-show tickets, and scored a sweet deal on Equus. I'd never seen it before, but it's one of Miss Luongo's favorite plays and she credits it with being an important force in her decision to become a writer. And, to top it all off, the cast consisted of Daniel Radcliff (Harry Potter), Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon Dursley), and Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager)! I really enjoyed it. It's a very 70's sort of sexual psychodrama, but it holds up and I think having British leads really helped make it work. If you've ever seen it or heard about it, you know that the role of the boy calls for some nudity, so yes, we got to see Harry Potter's penis. But other than that tense moment it was quite enjoyable and it's nice to see a child actor grow up into a good actor and not yet another screwed up tabloid case. I was able to sneak a blurry picture of the set before the show got started, which I was reprimanded for. Sometimes getting in trouble for pictures is worth it, but on this one I'll have to say, eh. Those silver things are the horse heads which were donned by actors portraying some scary-ass horses during the show.
After the play we hit Little Italy for the street festival of San Genaro and got some awsome Italian food and Pinkberry, which is some sort of Asian frozen yogurt and awesome. Then we hit the Angelika, an independent movie theater and saw some wacky Woody Allen movie about love and it's myriad disappointments. And threesomes. Vicki Christina Barcelona. Go see it. Or not. Afterwards it was time to hit the concert at the Zipper Factory on 37th and 9th.
It was Dean & Britta again, and Spectrum opened for them. Spectrum is a band formed by Sonic Boom, singer from another legendary band that I love, Spacemen 3. My friend Scott turned me on to them a ways back and he used to say that they don't play their instruments better than anyone. This was definitely the case last night... Sonic Boom does this sort of trance-rock thing and he opened with a Spacemen 3 bit called 'Transparent Radiation' which made me very happy. Then he did a bunch of loud sonic-y things which weren't really songs and got progressively weirder until the final number which prompted Miss Luongo to uncork her ears long enough to tell me angrily that she thought he was basically saying "screw you" to the audience because nobody was even playing instruments by this point, he was just utilizing foot pedals and amps to produce massive amounts of feedback. Again, Spacemen 3 used to do this better than anybody, and Sonic Boom was in top form. I guess you have to know what you're getting into here otherwise it pretty much is just noise, but I really enjoyed it.
Dean & Britta were of course awesome. I don't need to go into how awesome they are all over again... I saw them in DC not too long ago and you can go read that one again if you want to know how awesome they still are. I did grab a copy of Dean
Wareham's book after the show and had him autograph it. My friend Steph had originally wanted to join us to go see the show, but she had already read Dean's book and said that it sort of disappointed her to see what one of her favorite musicians was really like. She still might have gone, but she'd have had to take off work and her heart wasn't in it. I can't wait to read it. It sounds like it's going to be honest.
I got a nice shot of Britta grinning at me. We had the best seats! It was a terraced u-shaped theater going up, and the seats were all old discarded minivan seats. A very nice and comfortable way to enjoy New York shoegazer Rock.
And here they are, singing 'You Turn My Head Around' again. I love taking pictures of them during that song.
Here's four shots of their shoes that I cobbled together.
So yes, it was a perfect New York day. A broadway show, an Italian streetfest, a Woody Allen film, and quintessential New York shoegazer icons. Some things are just worth saving up for. We didn't make it to the Statue of Liberty, but that's really ok. I'll make it there one day and then I'll be like, "Huh. I wonder what the people who declared that this gift of friendship to us from the French should symbolize Liberty and Freedom would think of how far we've come from those heady days of hope."
"Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think." -Ambrose Bierce
Ahhhhh... The smell of Texas hick in the morning. I'm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for work this week. There is nothing cool about this trip. No pictures, no wry observations. Except for the smelly Texan hick I got stuck in the elevator with this morning, and there ain't nothin' wry about that. The smell is quite similar to Pennsylvanian hick, actually. You'd think, you know, different States, different hicks, different smells. But hick pretty much smells the same all over I guess. The one exciting thing I did was take a drive down to Waco, Texas. There really wasn't much there though. I got a coffee. Turned around came back.
So I spent the little free time I've had this week at the movie theater just a few blocks up from where I'm staying. I saw The Dark Knight. Twice. I think it's the best superhero movie yet. In fact, it might be a work of film art. Heath Ledger of course was amazing, but even more amazingly, he didn't entirely steal the show. (Though his performance should make Jack Nicholson feel ashamed of his inadequacy as an actor) Everything in the movie was absolutely perfect. The worst that can be said about it is that some of the action was so busy and parts of the plot so byzantine, that if you weren't paying attention, you may have to watch it a second time. But what I really love about it is that it is an ensemble piece... Batman didn't get any more screen time than anyone else, and the most pivotal role in the movie didn't really even belong to him, and it was still exciting as hell. (I'd say the most pivotal role was Aaron Eckhart's, whom I was glad to see in such a good role. Been a fan of his since In The Company Of Men.) Christopher Nolan gave all of his characters an important piece of the story, and allowed all of them a chance to play themselves out. It's the first superhero movie I've seen that can correctly have the adjective "epic" be applied to it.
Anyway, sorry. I know that nobody comes here to read pop film reviews. I'm just indulging myself in a gush. And, you know, I've got nothing else to talk about, yet my habits dictate that after being away on a work trip, I must post about it. So, movies I saw in Arlington, Texas is my theme. Hancock. Stupid. REALLY stupid. It started off fairly intriguing. But it was like the screenwriter or director or whoever had had a neat idea for a superhero movie, got partway through the script, but then realized that he didn't have an actual creative bone in his body nor had he ever actually read a comic book, and pulled something stupid out of his butt and plopped it in the theater. X-Files. Yeah. Not actually a bad movie... if Mulder and Scully were supposed to be characters in a mature adult romantic detective novel. It was more Moonlighting, the later years, than X-Files. And really, after waiting like 10 years after the end of the series to make a movie, you'd think that X-Files fans would deserve some answers, or at least more plot development on the Alien theme. But, nope. Chris Carter doesn't think so. Wanker.
MILD SPOILER ALERTS THIS PARAGRAPH: But the most disturbing thing about all three of these movies was the children. None of these movies were appropriate for very young children. There were 4 year olds, infants even, that parents had brought to the theater. Severed arms, Hancock shoves a guy's head up another man's butt, horrifically scarred man holds a young boy hostage... all kinds of potentially scarring moments on a young person's psyche. Plus, young kids are noisy and it's just rude to the other moviegoers. I mean, what are parents thinking? This kind of stuff can scare the crap out of kids in their dreams for years. I speak from experience... I inadvertently saw a Monty Python sketch one time on TV when I was very young which gave me the screaming willies for years. Monty Python. Imagine what seeing a psychopathic clown put someone's eye out with a pencil would've done. There was a preview for a horror movie... there were some pretty horrific images loud and proud on the screen. Blood, disfigurement, bizarre imagery... you know the kind of thing pop horror fans are into these days. There was a very young boy nearby, staring in horrified awe, and his father was laughing his ass off. Laughing at mutilation. What the F*** is wrong with people?
Ok ok... sometimes scaring the crap out of children is funny, but still. Not always.
So on my most recent work iteration, I was sent to Chicago for a week in order to proctor two one-hour-long exams to three students. Which, if you do the math, left me with a city load of free time. I mean, not to preen or anything, but I really love my job sometimes. Chicago is a totally fun city. I was there once before, many years ago on a stopover on my way to Alaska by Greyhound bus. I had a friend that lived there, and I spent a night or two checking out the city with him. The main thing I remember was him taking me to see The Second City show. It's a comedy theater based in Old Town in Chicago where Saturday Night Live does much of their recruiting. The alumni list of the Second City main stage is intimidating.
Anyway, I of course bought tickets to revisit The Second City revue while on this trip, and when I was in the theater, waiting for the show to start, I saw a picture on the wall of the troupe from 1996, the year I'd been there before:
That's right! I saw Tina Fey when she was still just a pup! Pretty cool. But I have no recollection of the performance, really, except that I do vividly remember her pal there from 30 Rock, Scott Adsit (far right), because that hair really stuck out in my memory and he was really funny. He did some sort of a yodeling mountain man sketch that had me peeing my pants. Apparently I also saw Rachel Dratch and Kevin Dorff. I could be wrong about all this, because my memory of 12 years ago is probably faulty given the fact that none of the molecules that were in my brain then exist anymore, your body completely changing out it's physical composition every 7 years. It's science. But that picture said they were the 1996 troupe, so I'm going with it. The troupe I saw there last week was really funny also. I mean, I'm older now and a bit jaded when it comes to SNL type of comedy (The name of the revue is 'No Country For Old White Men', typical SNL parody fare. Though in all fairness, the show itself pretty much had nothing to do with the movie parodied in the title.); Nobody is ever going to be funnier than The Kids In The Hall. But they were really good, and I've got their picture and names down in case any of them become the next Tina Fey or Scott Adsit. My picks for future success are Amber Ruffin and Brad Morris. Joe Canale may make a great straight man comedian. (Who, if you put the accents on different syllables in his name, reads Joke Anal(e)... possibly a funny stage name? Or a fortunate accident at birth? Hmm.) They were all good, so who knows, but that's what I'd bet on in the OTB bar of comedy stardom.
The other thing I spent a lot of time doing, on Julie's suggestion, was touring Frank Lloyd Wright houses. He'd spent quite a few years in the Chicago area, and it has the highest concentration of FLW architecture anywhere. In fact his first important structure is in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It was his home and studio for around 6 years, I think. He also designed the Oak Park Unitarian Temple, and a student of his designed the Oak Park post office, the prettiest post office you ever did see. I wasn't allowed to take photos inside of any of the houses, which is really sad because the insides of FLW structures are usually what really matters. As an illustration of what I mean, I was allowed to get photos inside the Unity Temple, so here's an outside photo, and then a couple inside photos:
Right? Honestly, probably one of the most awe-inspiring church-type thingies I've ever stood in. I've stood in the mother of all churches, the Vatican's St. Peter's Basilica, and as pretty as it was, it inspired as much scorn and cynicism as anything else. (Of course I was drinking absinthe in the Vatican, so my impressions may have been untrustworthy.) FLW found his inspiration in simple lines set in complicated and beautiful ways. He relied on design and creativity, rather than wealthy materials and grand scales (though he wasn't against wealth, necessarily) to make his mark. His houses were amazing, also. In addition to the one in Oak Park, I visited the Robie House in Hyde Park, on the University of Chicago's campus. It's considered to be a masterpiece, but I can't show you why... here are some so-so interior shots I found on the web. And here's a window on the Robie House:
Let's see what else, what else... Oh, I did the Chicago City Pass. It included 5 big things: The Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, and a choice between a ride up to the Hancock observatory or to the skydeck on the Sears Tower. I used the city pass to go up the Sears Tower, because you can go up to the restaurant/bar on the 95th floor of the Hancock building for free, which I did. Here's a shot of how I look in the thermal spectrum! They had a heat sensing camera in the Science museum, located in the Hyde Park area.
Hmmm, I guess I'm devolving this into a photo journal. Well, pictures are better than words. Here's Lake Michigan.
And here's a shot of the city from the Hancock building. The spider is on the outside of the window... apparently the wind picks spiders up off the ground and blows them around the sky all the time, and sometimes they land one hundred stories up and make the best of a bad situation. That's the Sears Tower tall on the left.
This is a weird public art statue that reminds me of the nice fairy version of a Silent Hill monster.
I was walking down the busy Chicago shopping street known as Miracle Mile, when I noticed Phil Donahue being interviewed through a street level window on a radio studio! My mom used to love his show when I was a kid. I sat there grinning like an idiot, snapping photos, until Phil noticed me. I waved. He waved back. Then I realized it was possible that they were also filming the show as they sometimes do, because other people were rushing past as though they didn't want to be seen, and I bolted. I'm hoping to God that my idiot mug didn't show up on some Chicago TV segment. Ugh. But what I heard of the interview was really good. He was talking about how much the news and other media has turned into a circus... he said that even though he now has like 500 channels on his TV, the bowflex is on every one of them. Wish I could've stuck around for more; he's still pretty sharp, that guy. Phil is on the left, and my idiot mug is reflected in the window on the far right.
I guess that's mostly it. I can't think of any other crazy Chicago stuff I did. But you know, there is so much to do in Chicago, and so much good food, it's not surprising if it turns out that I've forgotten something... I kept very busy all week. Chicago is a city I would love to live in; I doubt I'd ever get bored there. It also has a really good vibe. It's a very clean city, it's got this total art deco thing going on in its design, it's on one of the Great Lakes, and there is a ton of park area, adding lots of fresh and green to that whole clean vibe thing. I'll leave this post with a night shot of the city, taken from the Sears Tower.
I took my new motorcycle on its inaugural ride up to the Catskills for an overnighter this week. I'd never realized how close the Catskills are to the Poconos, and when I was looking over a map to try and figure out what would make a good ride, I noticed that you can pretty much take route 209 straight up to Woodstock! So that's what I did. Very nice ride. In Woodstock, which is not where the titular festival was held as it turns out, (That would be in Bethel, NY) I found the Yellow Submarine: Some hippie had turned an old church into an Art Studio dedicated to Love art. All hearts and bright colors and whatnot. Folk art. Damn dirty hippies.
The Catskills are really pretty, but it's a pain in the butt to stop the bike, get off, and dig out my camera every time I want to take a picture, so I tended not to. Besides, pictures of hills and nature and what all are usually not nearly as interesting in photo form as they are when you're there looking at it, so really you're grateful that I'm sparing you, I know. But here's one of my motorcycle in front of an interesting tree stump.
There is a town named Tannersville in the north of the Catskills State Park area, and I found a Swiss chalet there to spend the night in! It's run by an old German dude named Robert who was a ski / snowboard instructor for the US Olympic team. His nickname is the Red Baron, and he wears one of those pointy WWI era German helmets to the races. Anyway, I think he only called it a Swiss Chalet due to marketing reasons; it felt much more German than Swiss. He was also the cook there, which you have to appreciate. He made some awesome German food, Schnitzel with apples and brandy, and he served Dinkel Acker! One of my favorite German dark beers. The hotel was otherwise empty, it being the off season in the Catskills, and the room I stayed in reminded me in many ways of some of the German guest houses I've stayed in... Big blocky wooden furniture, hard beds and clean sheets, an old poster ad from the 70s for Interlaken on the wall; even the smell of the soap and the shower heads reminded me of Germany! It felt like home.
Next morning I took a longer route back by driving North a bit more and hooking on to route 10, which was really beautiful, until it took me to route 97 south, which is apparently a famous biker road in the area as it follows the Delaware river all the way down to Port Jervis, the last town in NY before crossing over the river into PA. Very pretty.
Have I said yet that I love my new toy? Whee! But it's all rainy out today, so it does have it's limitations. Guess I'll clean the house and go to the gym. Sigh.
[EDIT: Thought I'd add a scan of a postcard I'd picked up at the Coral Castle of what the place looked like in the 1940's.]
Man, what a week. This two week trip to Seattle and then Fort Lauderdale is finally over! I mean Seattle was fun, no doubt, but this place. Ugh. All there is to do around here is to go to the beach. BO-ring. I'm sitting in the airport right now, very much looking forward to getting out of here... I just got here after spending my third morning in a row laying around the beach, swimming and collecting shells and whatnot. Ugh, who needs it?
There is one cool thing in the area though; The Coral Castle. It's south of here about an hour in the town of Homestead. Some wackjob named Edward Leedskalnin built it for his lost love. The Billy Idol song, Sweet Sixteen, is totally based on his story, and the video was shot there. The thing about the coral castle is that nobody saw him build it, and he built it by himself. It's one of those weird mystery kinds of things. Some people think he rediscovered the secrets of the Egyptian construction guys, although apparently it's not really a secret anymore how they built the pyramids. I can't verify that, it's just something I heard. I'd go into more detail, but you know, the wikipedia page on it that I linked to up there probably tells it better than I could. I'll just show you my pictures from my little day trip down there, how does that sound, dearie? [Granny voice]
This is Ed. And Ed's bed.
This is a nice overview of the Castle... as you can sort of see, it's not really a proper castle, more of a coral wall enclosing a courtyard filled with fanciful tables, chairs, and statues made of coral.
Ed's peni... I mean, obelisk.
Ed's repentance corner. Ed never married, but he built the castle in the hopes that one day he would, and this, repentance corner, is where he planned to punish his kid when he got out of hand. See the two slots in the wall? Notice the rounded hole at the top? The left slot was for his non-existent kid. He could stick the kid's head through the rounded hole and slide his head down, keeping it in place with a wooden board. Then the plan was for Ed to sit on the little stone bench to the right of the slots and lecture him for an hour. The slightly taller slot on the right was in case his wife "got sassy"... it's really no wonder he never got a mate.
Ed's 9-ton coral gate and well. He designed the gate so that a child could open it... apparently, for those who are into architecture, Ed was pretty ingenious.
Left to Right: The crown, the planets (Mars, Saturn, and um, two moons for some reason) which are over his throne. Ed believed in life on Mars. Despite his weird scary-ass desire to punish people that didn't yet exist, Ed was my kinda guy. And then the 9-ton gate again.
Ed's lizard. Colorful little dude, huh? There were a ton of these awesome looking little reptiles running around the place.
A 1959 movie, The Wild Women of Wongo, was filmed in the Coral Castle. I totally added this to my Netflix queue. It's about an island of beautiful women and ugly men who discover another nearby island of beautiful men and ugly women. I'm not really sure how it all turns out, but something tells me that the hotties are all going to get together and work it out in the end. Ah, Hollywood.
The above is an image of the product of my last 5 Blacksmithing classes. I think it's supposed to be a fireplace caddy, you know, to hang the little ash shovel, fire poker, and bellows on. But I don't have a fireplace, so it's going to be a coat hook, although Andrew, the guy that's teaching me Blacksmithing, said something about our next task may be making the shovel, poker, and bellows. I still won't have a fireplace, though.
I'm really enjoying the class. Andrew is an enthusiastic teacher, and it's strangely centering to pour all of your concentration into the task of smashing a hammer down onto a red hot piece of metal in just the right fashion to get the shape you're looking for. And when you're finished, you have a heavy metallic object to show for all your work. Very satisfying. This is a blurry shot of Andrew demonstrating a technique.
The dark side of Andrew's enthusiasm is that he gets very excited about every little aspect of the trade... which isn't a bad thing in and of itself: He obviously is one of the lucky few who loves what he does for a living... loves it A LOT. Last night I was subjected to a twenty minute lecture on the manufacture, usefulness, and maintenance of metal filing tools. A little later I was subjected to a similar lecture on the pros and cons of different types of waxes, such as paraffin or linseed oil, and which combination makes a better finish for your metal product. Useful information, no doubt, but we only have three hours per week to beat on metal, which is what I signed up for. Maybe if I get to continue the classes past the 8 week curriculum, I'll find that information more useful.
The lighter side of his enthusiasm of course, is that it's infectious. I would really like to continue taking lessons. Once a week is just about perfect for it, too. It gives your arm a chance to rest up (we did some cold metal work last night, which means beating on UNheated metal in order to get some nice decorative dents on the edges and to perform mild corrections.... much more strenuous than beating on softer hot metal. OW my arm and back!) and your mind a chance to mull over what you learned... and then of course to forget it so that you spend the first half hour of every class trying to remember how you did that neat little curve last week. I actually learn this type of physical activity/skill better that way though, I think.
As much as I'd like to continue taking the classes, I may have to actually miss the last couple, unfortunately. I got that call this morning from my new job, and they want me to start tomorrow! I will probably be in town training for a week or two, not really sure about that yet, so I should be able to get at least one more Blacksmith class in, but at some point I think they're going to send me to Texas (Urgh. URGHH!!) to do my first camp set-up thingie. I'm really looking forward to this job. At least, I'm looking forward to the parts where I'm not in Texas. There were a lot of redneck Texans in the Interzone. I really learned to dislike them. I'm sure they're not all that stereotype, but even one is too many. Anyway, obviously I'll be posting on the subject at some point.
This dude had an ear grafted on to his arm in the name of art. Ear. On his arm.
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