I barely remember this song but I also remember that I used to request it on WRNW radio when it first came out. It's called The Friends of Mr. Cairo and it's a collaboration by Jon Anderson of Yes and Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou who goes by the stage name Vangelis. Vangelis is probably best known for the soundtrack of the movie Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner. Also well known was his album Heaven and Hell which was selected by Carl Sagan's producers to be the background music for Cosmos. Come to think of it, maybe it's Jon Anderson who needs the career recap more here.
I think my expectations were too high going in. The highlight for me was the strong start with Eleanor Rigby and later on, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD). Although visually exciting, LSD was a letdown conceptually. They should have gone full Acid trip with that. I was disappointed with the While My Guitar Gentle Weeps segment of the show. The song has a big finish which was dropped. I then lost interest after that.
Love isn't a bad show but Ka, Mystere and O are all much better.
One of the things I noticed when I first walked off of the plane last night was the air. There is water in the air here on Long Island. It's moist. I think I like moist.
The solution is simple. Pull all of the census workers from the flyover states. Make certain that no census worker risks their life by venturing into an area where they might be the target of conservative hate. Then in Congress, in 2012, each of the flyover states will then be reapportioned one and only one congressman in the House of Representatives per the census taken in 2010. You don't count if you can't be counted.
Rachel Maddow interviews conservatives when they agree to appear on her show. Today she got a good one, Frank Schaeffer who wrote "Crazy For God". The interview starts at about 6 minutes in but the whole clip is a h00t to watch.
"Fifth column of insanity" "Can Christianity be rescued from Christians" "I think 'Beyond Crazy' is a better explanation" "These people are standing on a hilltop waiting for 'The End'" "We have a village idiot in this country, it's called fundamentalist Christianity" "A village can not reorganize village life to suit the village idiot"
It's coming right for us, a full-on Nor'easter. Tomorrow, umbrellii will be useless. Quite a contrast to the lovely weather that we had eight years ago.
Keith Olbermann makes a funny at Glenn Beck's expense. Keith used to just point out the stupid, now he's openly mocking it. He's having too much fun :)
Or one can hunt around for a better perspective before snapping a photo, this is from the start of the street upon which the tower stands and after which it is named:
It's hard to believe that the Silver Hark has been on the disabled list for over half a year now. This weekend finally saw it get back on the road. The reason for its gimpiness was that the bracket that holds on the alternator snapped in half. Fortunately that happened as I was pulling the car out of the garage one day. It would have been a disaster if that had happened on the road far from the house. The problem with the alternator bracket stems from the fact that the car had a generator originally and the replacement alternator needed a new bracket to fit it to the car.
There is a part from GM that fits the studs but it doesn't hold the alternator far enough forward to clear the belt from the radiator hoses. The person who owned the car before me, jury rigged a piece of metal to hold the alternator on. He didn't do a very good job. First off, the bracket should be an F bracket. The alternator is attached to the two bits of metal that stick out ( think of the letter F, the alternator would be attached between the two jutting stems by a long bolt ). Well, he took a shortcut. Instead of an F bracket, he made sort of a Gamma bracket ( Γ ). That eventually snapped in half and that's where we were until yesterday.
I purchase the F bracket from GM thinking that it would fit. It fit the studs on the header just fine but as I mentioned earlier, when you attach the alternator, it's too short to clear the hoses and it didn't align with the pulley at all. After calling around and asking everyone in town if they knew a machine shop that would make something up for me, I had started to give up hope and was planning on training myself to do metal shop work. Then early last week, a friend of David's said that he could make something like an F bracket if we gave him the measurements. We gave him the part from GM and told him that we needed this piece to be exactly one inch longer. He came through. It was perfect:
While the alternator was out of the car, I took the opportunity to take out the leaky radiator and have it recored. Now it's all better too.
Unsupported concrete bothers me. I looked up at the new Beekman Tower and noticed that the SouthEast corners of the top floors are not supported by anything. They're just sort of floating there. Now I'm certain that it's all engineered with the highest quality concrete that the City of New York has to offer from nothing but the most upright of contractors, but don't sign me up for one of those SE corner apartments.
I snapped a shot in the morning on the way into work at 8:25 and a shot as I was leaving at 4:05 and put the major difference in an inset. It just occurred to me that the window washing rigs for this building, once completed, are going to be fabulous!
I took these two pictures a week apart. The mysterious "they" added three stories to this new tower of mystery in the meantime. Some of the "they" are kinda hot but mostly not. One of these days, I'll actually care enough to find out what this building is intended to be.
Photoblogging today. Here's a steamy picture looking Northward of the South end of Mott Street in Chinatown. It was about 85 degrees and very, VERY humid. I walked to Wo Hop ( on the left ) to get some Chicken Mei Fun. At Wo Hop, the experienced patron knows to go to the downstairs restaurant at 17 Mott Street, not the upstairs one at 15 Mott Street. The place was packed. When ordering take-out, they make you wait outside in the very, did I mention VERY humid weather. Click on the image for hugeness.
Carrie Prejean. Yes, you thought you had heard the last of her but she has signed a book deal with the right wing lunatic publishing house, Regnery a.k.a. Books-No-One-Buys-Except-Some-Asshat-Named-Richard-Mellon-Scaife, Inc. It would be less embarrassing for all involved if Mr. Mellon-Scaife just gave a buttload of cash to the dethroned Miss California instead of funneling it through a fake publisher. One pleasant side effect will be getting to see the hilarious outtakes from Miss Opposite Marriage's book. I assume that she'll have at the very least an editor if not an outright ghost writer. But the quality of writing from that side of the political spectrum is usually pretty sad. The new screed will be out by Christmas. I look forward to a good laugh.
And here is Fulton Street today. I'm actually standing on the place that hole is in the photo above. It's all put back together with a new water main planted firmly beneath. I think we may see it reopen before the end of the month.
It's been 7.836 years since some Saudis hijacked some planes and flew hem into the World Trade Center, towers one and two. I took this picture today of the progress that's been made since that time. You'll see that there is exactly one new building on the right. That's the new Seven World Trade Center. It's very glassy. The previous one was four stories smaller but a bit larger in square footage due to its larger footprint. The new Seven doesn't cut across Greenwich Street like the old one did.
Just for comparison, here's a picture of a building going up just 4 blocks away to the East next to Pace University. This project started around the same time I started my job back in August of 2007. Not quite two years later, it's looking quite a bit further long than anything at the actual Tower One and Two site. Although I must say that in their haste, they may have made some of the building parts melt.
Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson couldn't get me to post but this one....
Billy Mays the guy with the dyed black everything who yelled at you from the TeeVee set, died at the age of 50 today. Who's going to yell at me late into the night from now on?
There are two hotels that I will categorically never return to. The first is the Pymatuning Fishing Lodge which is somewhere near Linesville, PA and second, The Imperial Palace in Las Vegas, NV. I've stayed at Harrah's properties before. I like them. Paris, Caesar's Palace, Harrah's Marina, Caesar's Atlantic City, even The Flamingo are all places I would stay at again. But The Imperial Palace, not so much.
Before booking a room at the IP, I went by what I knew from my previous visits to the Auto Collections at the IP. It seemed like a brightly lit, clean and friendly place. The front of the hotel has a narrow access to Las Vegas Boulevard ( The Strip ) which is used primarily for a passenger drop off and taxi stand. The pedestrian "entrance" on The Strip is a bar with an escalator going above the passenger drop off area and into the Sports Book. So the hotel itself expands to either side behind The Strip. The theme of the hotel is Japan-ish with lots of eastern looking symbols in neon decorating the ceiling of the passenger drop off area.
Having visited Las Vegas before, I knew that the best way to get to any strip hotel is to approach from any road other than The Strip. So upon leaving the McCarran Rental Car Center, we headed up Paradise, under the airport, up to Flamingo, to Audrie and straight into the Parking Garage at the Imperial Palace. I had never been in the Imperial Palace Self Park structure before. It's narrow with lots of columns right at key intersections. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that they have a lot of fender benders in there. Once parked, we found our way to the front desk which is as close to The Strip as they could put it within the main hotel building so it was a schlep through the casino with bags in tow to get to registration. Not a bad location if you're being dropped off but do most hotel guests take taxis to the hotel? I think it would be better to place the registration desk in the back.
Once registered, it was time to go up the see the room. The hotel elevators are located in two places. One set of three is in the middle of the casino and the main set of four plus two elevators is behind the casino, more toward the self-parking garage. In total, the hotel has nine publicly accessible elevators to the rooms. The front three don't go to all of the floors. This is a huge problem and a deal breaker for the Imperial Palace. The elevators tend to break down as well. There were many annoyed guests waiting to get to and from their rooms.
I had a King Suite with "Luv Tub". The room itself was clean and comfortable but stark. It could have used a little color and maybe a crown molding. The bed board for the bed which is screwed into the wall was not centered with the fabric frame above the bed which gave the impression of carelessness. The room didn't have soap, shampoo or cups and glasses but after a call to housekeeping, that was resolved quickly. The "Luv Tub" is in the bedroom making it possible to fall out of the comfortable bed and walk over to the tub for a soak. The tub is huge. It would take several hours and half of Lake Mead to fill it. It would take several more days to drain it. The drains run a bit slow. The toilet is separated from the bedroom, contained in its own box-like room. The living area of the suite has a wet bar but if you wanted to serve a drink, you have to supply everything except the water. No cups, no 'fridge, just a sink and a table top. There is a narrow balcony but the views from my room weren't worth a visit to see. The balcony is too narrow to place a chair and sit out on comfortably. Overall, the furniture matched. When you sit on a chair or couch, it initially feels hard until whatever air is inside deflates out, then it's more comfortable. I've been is worse rooms but not with Harrah's.
When my brother stayed at Bally's in Las Vegas, I got to see the rooms there. The hallways leading to the rooms at Bally's still smell like the MGM fire of 1981. The rooms aren't much better. There was damaged furniture in the room at Bally's. That was odd to see. I didn't find any of that at the Imperial Palace so I could say that in my rather limited experience, the IP is the second worst room that Harrah's has to offer. It makes you feel cold in 100 degree heat.
Maybe I'm in a bad mood because Lady Fortuna has shown me a very cold shoulder the last two days but if you're staying at a hotel, one of the things that you shouldn't take away from your stay is how much time your spent waiting for an elevator. Oh my FSM!! There is one elevator on the fritz at the Imperial Palace and it's causing havoc. I'll post a full rant when I get back but I think it's safe to say that I won't be returning to the Imperial Palace.
I just got the RoboNOM call that I had written about last month. NOM is the National Organization of Marriage and they're in heavy Robocalling and push polling mode in New York. Although I was caught without my speakerphone and microphone in place !!AGAIN!! I did act like a right wing nutcase and answered all of their questions as if I were Jerry Falwell resurrected from the dead. It was a lot less fun than I thought it would be.
If you answer all of their questions in the affirmative, you are given the phone number of your New York State senator. In my case, it's Brian X. Foley of Long Island, 631-360-3356. I'm certain that they don't give you his number unless you answer the previous questions in the "proper" way.
They also ask if you would like to help contribute to NOM, I said Yes.
Then they ask if it's OK for a NOMmite to call you for a donation. I said Yes.
Ten minutes later, I get a phone call. Actually it was about three sentences into writing this diary ago. The person on the other end of the phone called herself Shirley and obviously was a heavy smoker. I didn't admonish her for smoking.
She gave me the NOM spiel asked me if I could contribute $75 or $100 today. I told her that I didn't understand. If she wanted to defend traditional marriage, why was concentrating so much effort of keeping people who want to enter into the institution of marriage from joining it? She told me that it's what they believe. I asked her why she wasn't expending as much energy on outlawing divorce.
She thanked me for my time, gave me the address of the MON headquarters which is in NEW JERSEY, spewed forth the URL for the NOMites website and then hung up.
At the very least, I got a number to call my NYS Senator and wasted some of their time.
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