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.
Breaking news: Carrie Prejean, the advocate for opposite marriage, has lost her crown. She wouldn't do appearances for the Miss California people in violation of her contract. This time, The Donald is on board, Your Fired!!
We last saw Dr. Dean on the Rachel Maddow show looking a little stiff:
I mentioned at the time that he should loosen his collar a bit. I'm certain that I had nothing to do with it but it looks like someone mentioned it to him and he is now sporting a loose collar.
Yay Dr. Dean!! Now let's talk about framing. Brown suit with brown books and frontal assault lighting? Adds ten years, makes you look tired. Go with the blue background, that works with the silvery hair.
Sometimes progress is made in baby steps. Love ya bunches!
I'll admit it. Even I, a man who spikes an 11 on the manly scale of absolute gender, learned a few tricks from this book. The tips on how to pick the perfect cigar and alligator wrestling are worth the price of the book alone.
That said, I did find a few flaws. The section on how to fight off a bear seemed to be missing something. I tried it down at The Castro, and well, I'm not admitting the bears got the best of me, but I'm telling you a step was left out somewhere.
And you really should warn people what happens when the bear achieves dominance. I mean, my God! It's horrible, and OK, yes, also disturbingly enjoyable. That's the worst part--that feeling of happy satisfaction. That, and the lack of after-action smokes. The author should list cigarettes as one of the things you need when you prepare to fight a bear.
The book also needs a chapter on how to deny your essence to women. You know they take it so they can weaken you. They want to make you feel lethargic and unable to defend yourself when they begin their post-sex taunting. It's just like with the bears.
Recommend the General's review so that it appears on top among all of the others :)
I just noticed this. Apparently it's legal to execute children in Texas. I had no idea! First, I was looking at the strange news, also from Texas, of a couple who executed a seven year old boy and shot up his parents and five year old sister because the parents pulled over on the road to let the kids pee. Believe it or not, that's not the bad part of this post. The shotgun toting, stars and bars waving couple are in jail with no way of affording their bail. Their fate will be decided by a Texas jury.
Here's the bad part. Last September, a Texas jury acquitted a man for executing a child. The thirteen year old boy had broken into the man's trailer with three friends to steal some Twinkies from the man's refrigerator. The man saw the break in, got a 16 gauge shotgun and made the kids get on their knees, still inside of the trailer. While the kids were on their knees, the man beat the children with the shotgun and then shot the thirteen year old in the back. He made the three remaining children carry the body outside.
Texas has something called a Castle law that allows you to murder anyone that you want to as long as they are on your property and as long as it's night time. At least here in New York, I don't have to worry about being executed for peeing on the side of the road.
Charlie Crist's favorite place, The Florida Capitol Building.
It's true, Charlie Crist, the totally not Gay Republican Governor of Florida is going to run for the US Senate seat that Mel Martinez is vacating.
See? He's wearing a wedding ring because he got married last year. To a female woman!!
He has a primary challenger though. A young Cuban wingnut named Marco Rubio, who is very well spoken and photogenic. Rubio's first web ad against Crist shows Obama and Crist in a very close embrace:
I'm grabbing a nice buttery bag of popcorn. This should be fun to watch. The primary isn't until August of next year.
I have a message for Dr. Howard Dean. Please add another inch to your collar size. Love you bunches but you look like a stiff mannequin. Loosen the shirt!!
Byron York of the Washington Examiner seems to believe that Barack Obama appears to be more popular than he really is because he has extra high approval ratings from African-Americans. I'm not making this up:
On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.
You see, because Obama has higher support among people who are not pale in skin tone, his approval rating isn't really as high as it polls. Perhaps if we only count each person of color as three-fifths of a person then we'll get a better indication of what Byrom York believes should be Barack Obama's actual approval rating.
No, sorry, if you're going to look at "numbers behind the numbers" you have to cover both sides: if you make a gross generalization, saying that blacks only support Obama because he's black, you must also accept as a valid argument that whites only oppose Obama for the same reason. There are a lot of racist whites in America, afterall. So do these two biases cancel each other out? Who knows what the actual numbers are, but to marginalize the opinions of one race, but not the other is pretty racist.
Twenty-One horses were poisoned to death before a Polo match in Florida. I'll be watching this one. What possible motive could anyone have to murder 21 horses? That's one sick person who I hope they catch, try and then put in jail forever.
If you thought that you had fourth amendment rights under the constitution of the United States of America then think again. On Tuesday, Steven Anderson was driving from San Diego to Phoenix. He explains here what happens when you attempt to exercise your fourth amendment rights.
When pondering the future of energy, I've always thought that there is a gigantic nuclear fusion furnace for us humans to tap into and it's a mere seven light minutes from our front doors. The Sun!! There are windmills in Atlantic City capturing the power of the wind and converting it to electricity but what is it based on? Wind! What makes wind? Temperature differentials. What makes temperature differentials? The Sun!! Then there's biodiesel made from the oils of plants and animals ( which eat plants ). What is a major component of plant growth? The Sun!! There's even a plan to harness the power of the ocean's tides to generate electricity. At least that's mostly the Moon but it seems to me that the most promising place to get the most efficient energy production is by going directly to the source of all of the Earth's energy. The Sun!! You don't have to wait for the plant to grow or the wind to blow. It's time to cut out the middleman.
It looks like PG&E has come to the same conclusion. They are planning to use a satellite to capture solar energy, convert it to radio waves, broadcast it down to a facility on the ground in California and then use that energy to move electrons around the power grid. Still not as efficient as I would like but probably more doable with the limits of today's technology. More important, it's a start. It'll be a learning experience so that we can eventually move to that point where we can use Solar Energy to manufacture the liquid energy that automobiles need or the rocket fuel that will put more solar power stations into orbit. Eventually, solar power will become a viable and self sustaining source of energy.
Five weeks ago I had laparoscopic surgery to fix my ventral hernia. Now I'm all better. I haven't had any pain for a couple of weeks. So except for the really bad first night or two, I got through it pretty well. I stopped wearing my mirdle after the second week even though I was supposed to wear it at night for another two weeks. But the pool of fluid that the mirdle is supposed to help prevent from forming never formed. The only thing that's still visible is 4 tiny and gristly surgical scars and half a shaved belly. No, I will not include a picture of that!
Joel and Victoria Osteen were interviewed on Larry King. I don't watch CNN but I do occasionally look at the website to see if they have anything different than MSNBC's website. While viewing the CNN website, I saw a curious headline: Osteens: 'God's best is a male and female'. So I read the interview. First, they believe that God's word is tractable. It's a living word and it is subject to interpretation so new Bibles need to be written:.
King: The "Hope for Today Bible." This is a new Bible [from you]. How is this different from other Bibles?
Joel Osteen: It's a living translation of the Bible, which is an easy version to read. And then it's got our notes besides certain passages. And it's just to help people maybe to understand the Bible a little bit easier.
and following directly after, this is the complete passage about teh gay
King: Do you think that eventually many more states are going to allow same-sex marriage?
Joel Osteen: You know, I don't know where it's all going ... I'd love to see it stay between a male and a female, not knocking anybody else.
King: Supposing there were more states that had it. What would be the harm?
Victoria Osteen: We really want to see marriage between a man and a woman. There [are] going to be people who get together and have relationships and have what they call their families. But I just think marriage should be sanctified by the church. It should be between a man and a woman.
King: Should a gay couple be allowed to adopt?
Joel Osteen: I think that, again, it's best for a male and a female. I'm not saying that gay people aren't good people. ...
King: Or good parents.
Joel Osteen: Yeah, exactly. But again, I like to shoot for God's best, and that is a father and a mother in the home. It doesn't always happen. I know a lot of people raised by single parents. And you know what? We bless them and pray for them as well. But I think God's best is a male and female.
Perhaps the Osteens can include in their next Biblical revision an allegory about Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum. If you're not familiar with the story of Joel and Hedda, it's about God's best. They adopted a girl and named her Elizabeth Steinberg. They called her Lisa. Back on November 2, 1987, the police got a call about a "child not breathing".
As the cops and EMS workers entered the apartment and before they could react to anything else, a man came out of another darkened room. He was carrying a naked child in his arms by the armpits. The child was a little girl, unconscious, bruised and blue. The man said that she had just eaten something and vomited. He told the police he didn’t know what happened to her except that she passed out. Then he said that she had been vomiting since the night before. Cops saw additional bruising and welts on the little girl’s back. She was filthy. Her feet were coal-black and it appeared she hadn’t been bathed in a long, long time.
In the back of the room, cops saw the dim figure of a baby. When they investigated further, they saw that the infant was lying on the floor and tied to a playpen with a length of rope around his waist. His clothes were soaked with urine and his body was covered with dirt. The female that answered the door was wandering around the apartment, hiding behind doors and rubbing her hands together. Her face had cuts and bruises around her eyes and nose. Her lip was split. Later, when she was examined at Bellevue Hospital, doctors found she had several broken ribs, a fractured jaw, a broken nose and severely ulcerated legs. She claimed all her injuries were the result of a fall.
Just to be fair, the Osteens think that some Gay people make good parents but given the choice between a couple named Christian and Michael and a couple named Joel and Hedda, the Osteens would give little Lisa to Joel and Hedda because Joel and Hedda are God's best.
A guy named Richard Poplawski in Pittsburgh murdered three police officers. One of his concerns was that President Obama was going to take his guns away.
Edward Perkovic said Poplawski, his best friend, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said Poplawski feared that President Barack Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."
Maybe some people shouldn't have guns. I'm just sayin'!
Ah Broadway! I spotted this on the New York Times web site. It's a couple of theatre reviews.
Wizard of Oz is okay if you haven't seen the movie, otherwise it's the movie thrown onto the stage except for The Jitterbug which is very entertaining and the only breath of freshness in the 2 1/2 hour production.
Hair is the youth musical of the season. Full of raw energy, recommended.
I love technology. Scientists have invented a laser that listens for the beating wings of a mosquito. It then turns its laser turret onto the target and fires, ZAP! no more mosquito. I need one of these on a hat before springtime kicks in full gear.
That was so nice. My fellow board members of Jacob's Light Foundation sent me a get well soon fruit basket. It's so purdy that I don't want to open it but it looks so yummy that I MUST!
You know what goes well with Get Well Soon Fruit? Vicodin!!
I had my umbilical hernia laparoscopically fixed on Thursday. It was supposed to be outpatient laparoscopic surgery. I ended up staying the night because I couldn't walk from the pain. It's getting better now but I still can't cough yet. Here's a picture of me in the hospital room with a belly full of carbon dioxide gas and a hand full of IV contraption.
I have to wear a mirdle for 2 weeks 24/7 and then at night only for another two weeks. Now I'm on hillbilly heroin and sleeping a lot but at least I'm home.
Carousel of Progress at least had some charm. Figment was just terrible. I nominate Imagination with Figment ( the one with Eric Idle, not the original which was slightly less lame ) as lamest of the lame Disney experiences. After leaving this ride, I had Substitutiary Locomotion from Bedknobs and Broomsticks running through my head for a week.
I was looking up music titles of songs that you've heard in cartoons. One that you know and love is called Powerhouse by the Raymond Scott Quintette ( actually a sextet ). The song has two distinct themes, Powerhouse A which is frenetic and Powerhouse B which is staccato. The entire piece by the Raymond Scott Quintette, starts with Powerhouse A then B and closes with A.
In 1993, an entire episode of the Animaniacs cartoon was crafted around the piece in glorious black and white color:
When I heard this, I picked it up right away without any help. I used to ride the Subway from Penn Station to Broadway/Nassau/Fulton Street. When I took the A train in the morning, I heard nothing but the clatter of the train. When I took the 2 or the 3 back in the evening, there it was; unmistakable.
There's - A - Place ( for us. Somewhere a place for us ).
Just the first three notes. When the 2 or 3 train leaves each station, it plays "Somewhere" from West Side Story.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who noticed. In the link is an audio recording of the sound the Subway makes and in the article is a full explanation. It all sounds very technical but I think it's a tribute to Lenny.
ISLIP TERRACE, N.Y. (AP) -- A New York man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat and his son has been arrested.
Suffolk County Police say Ainsley Murray was found dead in the bedroom of his Islip Terrace home at about 7:45 a.m. Thursday.
The victim's 33-year-old son, Norman Murray, has been arrested on a second-degree murder charge. Police say the two had argued over cleaning the house.
Norman Murray is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday. State courts were closed Thursday in New York for Lincoln's Birthday.
It was not immediately known whether Murray had retained an attorney.
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