Most model railroad sets go for recreating some imagined past, but this guy puts more reality in realistic by building scale urban blight with model commuter trains and subways winding their way through scale model graffiti-marked slums.
by Chris Barrus
Most model railroad sets go for recreating some imagined past, but this guy puts more reality in realistic by building scale urban blight with model commuter trains and subways winding their way through scale model graffiti-marked slums.
Transfer links to a giant collection of photos from Dubai which give you an idea of the scale of Palm and World megaprojects. Several thousand years from now when the aliens finally get it together enough to show up, they’re really going to be confused by the remains of this place.
Bedazzled solves a mystery that’s been bugging me for over ten years now and as I should have guessed, Al Kooper is involved.
Eons ago, I got an unmarked tape of recording studio outtakes and ephemera. Most of it was identifiable: the Buddy Rich bus tapes, Murray Wilson vs. Brian, Roky Erickson rolling heads down a staircase on Bay Area radio – all stuff that’s been making the rounds on the Celebrities At Their Worst collections and on the net.
One clip I couldn’t recognize though… It’s a couple of band members arguing with each other and their producer over the line “one good turn deserves another.” The band powers their way through a death spiral of anger, denial, acceptance and back before inevitably exploding in “fucking go to hell!” It’s a great recording… You know things aren’t going to work out and you know there’s an oncoming train wreck but no one, except maybe the producer who wisely kept the tape rolling, is aware of it.
I always thought it was some 60s-era band like Paul Revere & The Raiders or something, but it’s actually an 80s band called St. Regis that Kooper was attempting to produce. Not surprisingly, it never came out. Kooper’s only quote: “Fraternal twins that could teach Liam & Noel a thing or two.”
More wit and wisdom from Kooper in his Guide to the Music Biz
MetaFilter links to the Concrete Ships site and the commenters all fall in to discuss the concrete battleship, concrete submarines and the, well, underwhelming remains of the S.S. Atlantus.
Folks, if you want to get some dead concrete ship action going, then get on over to Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, CA and check out what’s left of the S.S. Palo Alto. I had been meaning to send the link to the wreck in to one of the Google sightseeing sites so here you go…
The much elusive Giant Squid has finally been photographed in the wild off the coast of Japan’s Ogasawara Islands.
Five things overheard while watching last week’s DARPA’s Minotaur launch from Vandenberg from Long Beach (all quotes verbatim from actual Long Beach residents):
1. “Look at that contrail, it was totally out of control!”
2. “It looks like a spaceship blew up!”
3. “Yeah, it was something launched from the desert”
4. “Did something crash?”
5. “As soon as it dumped that jet, it hit the rocket and just took off out of there!”
The launch contrail as seen from Mt. Wilson’s Towercam.
Over the weekend, I saw an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine moves into a janitor’s closet so she could be within the delivery area of a favored Chinese restaurant.
I’m nowhere near the delivery zone of a Sam Woo, but if there’s one dish of theirs that sums up everything I like about Sam Woo it’s their beef chow fun with black bean sauce. Instead of the typical Asian spicing, the sauce has a dense smoky taste to it – reminding me more of a Caribbean or South American dish. I can’t get enough of it and it’s perfect for rainy weather (and the drive to get there).
File this under “one of those Charles Fort stories where the drought-stricken town prays for rain and gets a flood which destroys the town.”
A couple days ago I was thinking that it had been way too long since I’d been in a decent thunderstorm but it was just one of those idle thoughts. Until… I pulled into a gas station and just got out of the car when my entire field of vision goes WHITE with the sound of all the 12 gauge shotguns in the world going off.
After a couple moments of some serious WTF, I gathered my senses together to notice two things: the odd sizzling sound fluorescent lights make when they’re overloaded and burn out, and a couple of guys standing next to a CalTrans truck in front were laughing and pointing at a smoking telephone pole directly across the street.
“Careful what you wish for” and all that rot…
From Greg’s blog…
Dad’s long fight with cancer has come to an end. He passed away last night in peace. The room was filled with the kind of wonderful quiet he always loved. Dad was surrounded by loved ones who whispered beautiful things to him when all he had could do was listen. I held him and told him what a brave man, beautiful person and wonderful father he has been.
Dad asked me to carry out his final wishes. One of them is that there will be a grand wake. We will all mourn his passing. But Dad wanted us to celebrate all the beauty there is in life.
I remember when I was four or so years old and figuring out how maps worked I was fascinated with great circle routes and globe topology even if I didn’t quite know what topology was. At some point, I attempted to dig a hole to China but I knew that if I dug straight-down I wasn’t going to make it to Shanghai, but somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Anyway, when I build that unstable backyard nuclear reactor out of lowest-bidder parts I’m happy to have a Google Maps mash-up that shows me where on the Earth it’s going to pop-out.