Don't Panic! Starman Roadster launched

Copied from BUSINESS INSIDER Feb. 6, 2018

SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket — the company's biggest yet — into space on Tuesday. It carried Elon Musk's own midnight-cherry red Tesla Roadster. Soon after the launch, Musk tweeted out a live feed of the car, and its driver — a dummy named Starman (after the David Bowie song) — with Earth in the background.

It's not the only pop culture reference in this car. Right in the middle of the car, on the center screen, are the words "Don't Panic." It's a reference to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the 1979 book that was first in a series by Douglas Adams about an accidental space traveler named Arthur Dent. In the story, the Guide itself has the words "Don't Panic" on its cover.

Musk, who first read "The Hitchhiker's Guide" as a teenager, has said that he loves the book. In a 2015 interview he said the spaceship from the book was his favorite from science fiction. "I'd have to say [my favorite] would be the one in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' that's powered by the improbability drive," Musk said.

Historic Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre 

Has New Owner 

 By Kelly Lapczynski

Staff Writer, Tullahoma News  

When the lights went down on the final show of Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre’s 50th season on Dec. 30, it was a bittersweet moment for retiring owners John and Janie Chaffin.  

The season-capping musical “Glad Tidings” was the last production the couple would produce in the historic professional theater — Nashville’s first — that opened its doors in 1967. 

But, thanks to a careful sale of the property, the season’s last production was not the theater’s last. In fact, to see that it would continue, the Chaffins delayed their retirement for years. 

Chaffin's Barn

The theater, known affectionately as “the Barn,” had been quietly for sale before it was publicly placed on the market in early 2014; but fearing that the Nashville icon would be destroyed by commercial developers, the Chaffins waited for a buyer who would keep the theater alive. They found that buyer in Nashville businesswoman Norma Luther, who bought the 2.77-acre property at 8204 Highway 100 for $2.09 million with the intention of continuing the theater’s legacy. 

Norma Luther

“Miss Norma is a godsend for us,” said John Chaffin at a retirement event held Monday night in the couple’s honor. “Janie and I tried for four years to sell this place – we wanted to retire four years ago – and everybody wanted to buy it, but they didn’t want to keep it. They wanted to put something else here.”

“We were about to give up,” he said. “And out of the clear blue this lady fell out of the sky the first of December and suddenly, 30 days later, she owned it. She is going to be a fabulous person for this theater. She’s going to keep it going. She’s going to make it what it needs to be and what we hope it stays.” 

A standing room only crowd of more than 300 professional actors, technicians and longtime patrons were on hand Monday to celebrate what Luther called “the legacy of John and Janie Chaffin over the last 50 years.” 

John and Janie Chaffin (center front) with Chaffin's Barn alumni and friends 

Nashville’s first professional theater

When it opened in 1967, the Barn Dinner Theater was part of a Roanoke, Virginia-based franchise.

Looking to expand into Nashville, franchise owner Howard Douglass Wolfe — the “father of dinner theater” — took an interest in a remote property in rural Bellevue that belonged to Manchester-born Asberry Warden “A.W.” Chaffin. 

But Chaffin, who then ran a commercial construction company in Nashville, had another idea. Rather than sell, the retired World War II Army captain chose to buy into the franchise and build the theater himself. 

A. W. "Big John" Chaffin

A.W.’s son John would oversee the construction job – the company’s last – and on March 29, 1967 the Barn would open to a sold-out house.

That night’s production of Muriel Resnick’s “Any Wednesday” introduced professional theater to Nashville. 

Franchise creator Howard Wolfe and wife, A.W. Chaffin and wife Edna Lou and John P. Chaffin and wife Shirley at the 1967 opening.

At the time, the now nationally-recognized Nashville Children’s Theatre was operating as an amateur company and it would be more than a decade before the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC, 1980) and its resident production company, Nashville Repertory Theatre (then called Tennessee Repertory Theatre, 1985) would expand the Nashville performing arts scene. 

To cast professional actors, then, Chaffin set up a New York office in the Ed Sullivan Building, where the productions were also staged.

Once a show was on its feet, the actors took it on the road, traveling from one Barn franchise theater to the next — from New York to Texas, there were 27 in all — to perform. 

Each theater, built to Wolfe’s design, had living quarters upstairs to accommodate the traveling actors, complete with a kitchen, showers and bedrooms which doubled as dressing rooms. In the dinner hours before each performance, cast members would mingle with the audience, serving as waiters. Then, a half hour before “curtain,” they would rush upstairs to prepare for the show. 

Despite the theatrical lingo, though, there is no curtain at the Barn. Instead, since 1967, actors have appeared on set as the patented “Magic Stage” descends, elevator-style, from its second floor home to the first floor audience. 

The First 50 Years

  

When the franchise operation fell apart just two years after Chaffin’s investment in it, the Barn Dinner Theatre was still Nashville’s only professional theater. So, in 1969, Chaffin and his wife, Edna Lou (“Puny”) moved the production company to Nashville and continued the tradition of casting and housing out-of-town actors in professional shows. 

During the Barn’s early years, actors would come fresh off Broadway or Off-Broadway performances to appear at the Barn. Even Hollywood actors would perform there, if not in front of a theater audience.

In a memorable scene from director Robert Altman’s influential 1975 film “Nashville,” actress Gwen Welles – as would-be singer Sueleen Gay – descends on Barn’s “Magic Stage” to perform for an all-male audience, only to find that the entertainment she was hired to provide had nothing to do with her voice. 

A captured image of Welles in Altman's "Nashville." 

Within a year of Altman’s visit, John Chaffin purchased the business from his father, allowing A.W. to retire in 1976. John’s production company, Professional Artists Productions, Inc. (PAPI) would continue to send actors on the road to dinner theaters throughout the southeast until, one by one, those theaters began to close. 

By 1979, the dinner theater circuit had all but dried up; so John and his then wife, Dianne, decided to sell the business to an investor, Highland Inns. 

Highland Inns, later known as Advantage Corporation, ran the theater for a short time before handing the reins to manager Ken Tanner in 1984. But the business Tanner inherited was troubled. Under Advantage, the Barn had become part of a package deal that included under-performing theaters on the circuit. Though the Barn itself was reportedly doing well, Tanner was forced to close the business in the summer of 1985. In 1986, John and Dianne would reclaim the theater and open it once more under the name that would signify their return: Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre. 

The Barn re-opened with the 1986 production of "The Odd Couple"

Over the next 30 years, fewer out-of-state actors would be hired to perform in Nashville. Instead, the Barn would become a sort of proving ground for regional talent, launching scores of actors to “Nashville favorite” status both at the Barn and at the handful of professional theaters that now call the city home. 

Though today’s actors rarely wait tables before their performance, many of Nashville’s favorite actors can still be found waiting tables at the Barn when they are between performance contracts.

Over the course of its 50 years, Chaffin’s Barn has delighted millions of theatergoers. Today, it has the distinction of being the second oldest dinner theater in the nation. Only its one-time franchise sister, the Barn Dinner Theatre in Greensboro, North Carolina, opened in 1964, is older. 

Both still make use of the patented “Magic Stage.” 

A Family Business

Former Nashville newspaper reporter Wendell Melvin, a longtime neighbor and friend of the family, noted Monday that the success of the theatre rested on John Chaffin’s endless talents. “He was involved in so many things that if we gave him titles, he’d have as many titles as a silent movie,” he said. 

It’s undoubtedly true. Not only has Chaffin, 73, been the Barn’s owner and financial operator, but over the years he could also be found filling myriad roles in service to the theatre and its restaurant. Depending on the day, Chaffin could be found in the scene shop building sets, behind a keyboard writing plays, in the theatre directing actors, in the kitchen preparing the evening meal or in the theatre’s tucked-away darkroom developing and printing the photos he took to promote each show. 

The 1974 cast of "Not Now, Darling" included Dianne Chaffin, right of center in fur

As the Barn’s resident handyman, Chaffin could also be found making last-minute electrical or plumbing repairs; but to the family of actors and staff that Chaffin jokingly called “dependents,” the favorite place to find him was in his second floor office, signing checks.

“The Barn has always, from its beginning, been a family,” said Chaffin. “We are quite close. They don’t mind asking for money.”

“This place is all about family,” agreed longtime patron Nelda Sturgeon. “It’s a very dear and special place to so many people.”

Sturgeon attended her first Barn show at age 13 as the daughter of the Barn’s first season ticket holder. Through 41 years, her father, Bob Lee, never missed a production at the Barn. After his death in 2008 at age 90, he was memorialized in the theatre’s lobby. 

“When my father passed, I could come back here and this is where we felt like he was,” said Sturgeon. “They kept his memory alive.”

Now, thanks to Luther, the Chaffin legacy will also be kept alive in the venerable theatre. Before inviting the Chaffins to speak, Luther presented the couple with a plaque that would forever honor them, marking the table where they would be granted lifetime seating at the theatre. 

“I’ve always said that I don’t think there’s anything you can enjoy for 50 years,” said John Chaffin after hundreds lifted their glasses in a unified toast to him. “But this has been one hell of a good ride.” 

A City Remembers

Presenting the Chaffins with a proclamation in their honor Monday, Nashville Metro Council member Sheri Weiner and former member Charlie Tygard announced, “The Chaffins have built a Nashville legend, as the backbone of professional and local theater in Nashville and Middle Tennessee.”

“During the past 50 years, over three million people have made the trek to the ‘big red barn’ in Bellevue, witnessing some of the best shows to be produced in Music City.”

The Barn’s legacy of “launching careers for actors who have gained critical and audience acclaim all over the country” was later evident as Luther shared a few of the more than 1,000 memories that had been posted online by renowned actors nationwide following the sale’s announcement, including well-wishes from two-time Tony Award winner Cherry Jones, who began her career at the Barn. 

In addition to the Barn’s long theatrical heritage, council members recognized the Chaffins’ substantial history of community involvement and “giving back.” 

Married in 2002, John and Janie Chaffin will celebrate their 15th anniversary in July. After a half century of making theatrical memories, Janie said in a letter to patrons, the couple now looks forward to “making new memories of our own.” 

Janie and John Chaffin

  

The Next 50 Years 

“I am honored and humbled and unbelievably grateful to have this opportunity to move forward to what I like to call ‘The Next 50 Years’,” said Luther at the event. “While the task of following in John and Janie’s shoes is a little daunting to say the least, I think you’ll have a lot of fun with what we’re planning in years to come.” 

Luther has announced plans to continue to operate the business under the name Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre and to retain its 18 payroll employees, its stable of devoted contract actors, and its Artistic Director Martha Wilkinson, a 28-year veteran of the company. 

Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre offers performances Thursday through Saturday each week, with at least one Sunday matinee per run. 

Tickets, which include parking, dinner and a show, are $60 per person. Group rates are available. 

The current production, Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” runs through February 12. 

For information about the 2017 season, visit http://www.dinnertheatre.com. 

For reservations, call 615-646-9977.

Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virgina Tech, Columbine

This is all I want to say about that:

Believing that Gun Control means that the government is going to come and take away all your guns and prevent you from ever having more is like believing that Birth Control means that the government is going to come and take away all your children and prevent you from ever having more. No dictionary in the world makes "control" and "eradication" synonymous.  Hunters in particular should understand this, as they claim to "control" deer populations, but they are never intent on eradicating the entire population.  (The taking of innocent life here is a separate issue.)

Believing that non-projectile weapons are just as dangerous as guns is exactly the kind of madness that makes the rest of us want those guns taken out of your hands. To kill with a knife, a box-cutter, a baseball bat, etc., you have to get within PHYSICAL PROXIMITY of the victim; you can't stand at a cowardly and protective distance. You HAVE to fight with your own body. You HAVE to give the opponent a chance to fight back. And while you do that you give others the chance to either overpower you or get very far away from you. There is no way in hell you'd actually KILL 26 people with your knife. I'm sorry. I don't buy it. Yes, you'd still be a crazy person in need of serious mental help, but your damage would be limited.

In fact, if you believe that you can stand at the average distance between a shooter and his victim, throw your knife -- disarming yourself, manage to hit and kill your victim, and then retrieve and throw your knife with fatal results 25 more times, you actually SHOULD be getting mental help.

Not that the health system is much help there, but that too is another issue.

No, when you want to do that kind of damage and wield the control of an indefensible weapon, the one you reach for is a gun. Pure and simple. You don't think there should be SOME control on that? The only other weapon I've heard mentioned this week which allows a killer the same degree of devastation (or more) with a comparable or better degree of personal safety is a bomb. Funny, I don't hear you telling us we have a right to tote those around.

And don't tell me that's because bombs aren't mentioned in the Second Amendment. Neither are semi-automatic weapons. And, friend, until you can show me specifically and to the letter that that gun you ARE toting is in service to a "well-regulated" anything, neither is yours.

There are a lot of things that need to change to stop these shootings. A lot of things. Better discovery of mental illness and better support from a less greedy health care system are high on that list. However, there also needs to be some discipline and understanding among gun owners and gun supporters that "control" is not a four-letter word.

.

Photo: Thursday Challenge

Theme this week: three.

This shot, taken in Memphis this February, came to mind for its doors, lamps, and balconies.  Three sets of three!

The Prison Church of Bernarda Alba

Currently, I am in rehearsal for Frederico Garcia Lorca's THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, a play completed not long before its author was executed by Fascists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.  It is a piece much revered in Spanish art and literature but not performed often by professional companies stateside. This production is a collaboration with a local arts college and, as such, many of the students have brought images to rehearsal to create a "Vision Board" which, in the end, represents their idea of Bernarda's house and their characters' lives in it.  This week, the professional cast has been invited to bring images as well. With the aid of Photoshop, I have compiled this image representing my vision of life in Bernarda's home.

Bernarda, twice a widow, controls her very Catholic home with the hand of a prison warden. In fact, in the wake of her second husband's death, her five daughters are meant to live the next eight years of their lives shut up in Bernarda's house mourning "as if the doors and windows have been sealed;" they will not be permitted to leave and "not a breath of air will get in this house from the street."

And so here I have superimposed a Catholic Church atop an American prison. It is not surprising to find a similarity in the architecture, as prisons have their roots in penitence -- hence "penitentiary." The crucifix adds a reminder of both the religious base in tradition and the painful sacrifice the daughters are asked to make.

*Christ on the Cross, by Francisco de Zurbarán 1627 atop an uncredited image of St. Dominic's Catholic Church in San Francisco and an unnamed prison.  Images found via Google Search.  Credit given when known. 

Heaven

Via ThinkGeek on Facebook: "Internet, we're surprised it took you more than 24 hours to make xkcd's "Heaven" Tetris into a playable game.

"It should not be this enjoyable. But oh, it is."

Heaven: Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine

For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls [Dec 2010]

Vicksburg to Tullahoma

More than a week after my arriving home, it occurs to me that if I don't update the final leg of the journey soon, I'll forget anything worth saying about it.  And so, finally, here is the account of the last day.

I awoke in Vicksburg and, after updating the blog, returned my final room key of the trip. Comparatively, the last day would be a short one, so I had time to spend tooling around historic Vicksburg, following the Scenic Drive signs.  A wall of murals along the river allowed Frankie this photo op:

Along the scenic drive, I happened upon a restaurant I'd seen advertised in the hotel and stopped.  You see, on this ride home I hadn't found many roadside attractions, and certainly none akin to the “Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere!” I'd found on my way through Groom, Texas on the drive west, so when presented with the opportunity to stop for lunch at a restaurant featured in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, I took it.  The Walnut Hills Restaurant serves "southern plantation cuisine" in a round-table-boarding-house fashion similar to that of Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg, TN, and though I'm not a fan of "southern food" as a rule, I find it hard to complain when it's done that well.

I took my seat at an a la carte table (an option not available at Bobo's to my knowledge) and was given my choice of the salads, meats, and veggies they were serving at the round table for a more reasonable one-traveler-alone, controlled portion price.  The cole slaw (my salad) may have been the best I've ever eaten.  The rest was pretty darned good as well.  And of course, when you eat plantation style, you drink tea.  I don't generally like tea, but even that was a pretty tasty and refreshing treat after a few hours photographing rats by murals in the morning sun.

After lunch, I completed the scenic circuit and continued home, through the rest of Mississippi, crossing Alabama, and into Tennessee.  These states did not offer much in the way of new exploration to me as they are so close to home as to have been visited many times, and the flora and fauna of the American South is relatively constant, so after lunch the day consisted mostly of driving through the rain which plagued all three states and limiting stops to rest areas and gas stations on the continuing search to complete the keychain-from-every-state collection I was creating for both myself and my goddaughter.

I arrived at home not late in the evening and was greeted almost immediately with company ready to welcome me back.  A lot had happened in the small town while I was gone and I would hear much about it in the coming days.  I would also be staying in the house which for the last several months has been under renovation and which has not yet been connected via cable or internet to the rest of the world.  And so this update would have to wait.

When I finished the drive west in 2006, I completed the posts of the trip with an audit or sorts -- a record of what was spent and what was learned along the way.  I do plan to share a similar audit of this experience, but that will be the next post.  This one, at least, got me home.

Abilene to Vicksburg

This morning in Vicksburg, Mississippi I have an earlier checkout than at other stops and slept later in the first truly comfortable bed of the trip.  Fortunately, there is not much to tell about yesterday's leg.

The predetermined route and the GPS were in agreement as I followed Interstate 20 east through the remainder of Texas and across Louisiana into Mississippi.  I'd had high hopes for my first visit to Louisiana, even knowing that the more famed portions were closer to the gulf than I'd be traveling.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  There were still hours to be driven getting out of Texas.

Now everybody knows that Texas is a rather large state, but it's the actual driving of it that does the convincing.  Using mile markers to best make my point, you can travel north to south across Tennessee in roughly 180 miles, with Chattanooga around exit 178.  The Louisiana panhandle, west to east, chimes in at a similar number, perhaps closer to 190 miles from border to border.  Texas, however, tops a whopping 640 miles from west to east.  In most of the country, you can (and today I will) cross through three states with that much wear on the tires.

But exiting Texas was no more thrilling than entering it and the only stop I made, apart from the requisite stops for gas, was for lunch at a BBQ and Fried Pie shop in Canton called Baker's Ribs.  Because when you're in Texas, that's what you eat.  Ribs.  And they were pretty darned good.

It seemed a lifetime before the Louisiana state line appeared and the sign marking it was one of the last things I saw for the next three hours.  Interstate 20 through the panhandle is difficult to describe because for a short while the road which carves through thick, lush greenery is rather pretty but as the hours drag on and the view does not open up or change, it does become monotonous.  A mountain, a lake, or a billboard for some THING would have been welcome. (I did, by the way, pay my dollar to solve the mystery of the desert in Arizona, answering the question of "The Thing"). In fact, I had to hunt to find the convenience store or gas station which would sell me the requisite souvenir key chain before I left the state.  Sadly, that stop, when found, was no exciting backdrop for Frank Sinatrat, who failed to find a photo op in the day.

Shortly after sundown I reached Vicksburg, barely across the state line in Mississippi.  Though I had no particular plans to spend time in the city before hitting the road again, I do have the time to spare as the drive home to my own bed tonight should be roughly 7 hours, give or take.   And, darn it, Frankie needs a photo!

Lake Havasu to Abilene

My report from Las Cruces, New Mexico was not forgotten but rather prevented by a lack of internet connection.  In the four years since my trek west, I've made several improvements for an easier drive east, but no improvement has been made to the laptop I'm carrying with me; and while four years may be insignificant to the life span of attractions along the road, it is not insignificant to the life of a computer.  A Dell machine of my particular vintage, I was told, notoriously wouldn't communicate with the hotel's system.  And so, no report was made.  Which leaves me with quite a bit of catch-up to play this morning from my hotel in Abilene!

On Thursday morning in Lake Havasu City, I visited the London Bridge -- shipped to Arizona stone by stone in 1971 -- and the English Village surrounding it.  At a relatively early hour (by which the temperature had already reached 110), all the shops in the village were still closed tight, but  no matter.  It was the bridge I was there to see.

From there, I also visited an interesting yet also closed-tight set of shops farther from the lake, called Shambles Village.  Modeled after The Shambles in York, it has a quirky and distinctive architecture.

After my tour of Lake Havasu City, I drove east toward my Las Cruces destination.  On the way, I stopped for lunch in Phoenix at Giuseppe's on 28th.

I should mention here that on my trip west I made a point to stop at selected Roadfood restaurants.  Though selections along the Mother Road were not exactly plentiful, they were certainly more abundant than those along the more southerly route I have chosen for my return.  And so for this route I also examined the travels of Food Network's Guy Fieri. Giuseppe's had been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. 

For the sake of brevity (still more to cover here before check-out), I'll say that the small Italian restaurant set into an Arizona strip mall was a nice lunch find.  And the portions were conveniently generous, as finding dinner later in the day would prove more difficult.

The drive through Phoenix and the search for Giuseppe's had slowed my travel, and the 9-hour drive stretched out with additional stops to fill one tank or empty another.  As a result, I arrived in Las Cruces after they had rolled up the roads.  As Las Cruces boasted one of the few interesting Roadfood suggestions en route, I was disappointed to find Nopalito closed before the clock struck 10pm.   Still full from lunch and ready to sleep, however, I picked up a burger from a national chain and called it a night.

On Friday morning I awoke in Las Cruces, New Mexico with plans to visit White Sands National Monument.  In fact, I'd opted for this rather southerly route through the Mojave Desert in the midst of July expressly with that purpose in mind.  And so that's what I did.  An hour's drive onward toward Alamogordo led me through the White Sands Missile Range and into the park.

I haven't mentioned him yet, but those of you familiar with the first cross-country trek have probably wondered whether Frank Sinatrat was taking this adventure with me as well.  Well, folks.  Yes he is.

I thoroughly enjoyed my stop at White Sands.  With the constraints of the road trip determining the hour of my arrival, however, I was visiting the park with the sun directly overhead.  One day, I would love to go back for pictures with morning or afternoon shadows.  However, I was quite pleased with this shot of Frankie -- one of my favorites of him.

With sand on my tires and in my shoes, I left White Sands with the practical aim of getting to Abilene before midnight.  The drive from Alamogordo should have been only a little more than 7 hours (a shorter day of driving planned to give me time at the park), but I'd learned how easily an extra hour to could accumulate in pit stops and time zone changes, so I forged ahead. 

Now, if you look at the map above, you'll see the route I PLANNED to take to Abilene.  All interstate: I-10 to I-20.  This is not the way I actually went.

You see, this time around I have a tool I did not have on the drive west: a GPS.  This proves to be a mixed blessing.  It's a wonderful helper when finding restaurants, gas stations, and hotels... however, it has a mind of its own when it comes to finding a route lush with them.  Leaving from Alamogordo rather than Las Cruces, it abandoned a backtracking to the interstate and instead found every back-road state highway imaginable through New Mexico and into Texas.  Often I found myself driving for hours through farm country with fear that I'd run out of gas before the next stop.  It was only a few miles short of Abilene that it met up with the interstate again, and the state roads had taken me farther through New Mexico than planned, through the Lincoln National Forest and north of El Paso where I'd expected to stop for lunch.  When I finally found a lonely gas station, I filled up and bought a sandwich, not knowing when the next stop would come.  Good thing, too.  For the next several hours I drove through fields of windmills and oil drills with a rather crude (ahem) odor filling the car.

Here's the route I ended up taking:

I arrived at the Abilene hotel relatively early but very ready to stop, find an internet connection, and relax.  I decided that with two more days on the road ahead, I would be happy to simply order a pizza for the night and, happily, my room key had the number for Domino's emblazoned across it.  I ordered dinner, fired up the computer, and turned on the telly.  I may be back in the Central Time zone and a little more than halfway home, but there's still a lot of driving ahead.  The break was more than welcome.

Today I'll finish the drive across Texas and, for the first time on this journey, I'll cross a complete state without stopping for the night as the route takes me through the northern panhandle of Louisiana.  Though I won't be viewing the typical tourist attractions near the gulf, I will be enjoying my first foray into that particular state.  

There is more to tell, but it will have to come another time.  I leave you with a photo of my entry into New Mexico, which followed a spectacular lightning display across rainy mountains on all sides -- in front of me, behind me, to my left, and to my right -- but all too distant to impede my driving.  More on that in another post, I hope.

Take Off Your Hobo Shoes Redux

For the last several months, my car and I have been living separately.  An early return to Tennessee for the Christmas holiday generated continuous work in the following months.  Three plays and one home renovation later, I finally returned to San Francisco.  To retrieve my car.

In 2006, I drove from Nashville to San Diego in a 4-day, 3-night adventure across I-40 and Route 66.  The return, with a day's drive south to catch the easterly road, will be one day longer.  And this time, I'm doing things differently.

In 2006, I simply drove.  When I was tired, I stopped.  Whether that meant 12 hours on the road or 8, I stopped where I needed to stop.  Or, at least, that was the plan.  But on two of those three nights on the road, I had to drive beyond my stopping point as I found hotel rooms were booked.  In Oklahoma City, firefighters from nearby states filled the beds as they fought wildfires and in Phoenix there was some speedway event I still haven't identified but which sent me out of my way to Gila Bend.  So this time, I booked ahead.

This means a more structured route and a timetable, which has its ups and downs.  I won't be driving extra hours to find a hotel room, but I can't stop earlier if I'm not up to a 9-hour drive on any day, and my dilly-dallying between hotels will have to be minimal.

On the first leg of the journey -- San Francisco to Lake Havasu City -- this was no problem.  But one forgets when one opts for 9-hours on the road how a 9-hour drive turns to 10 or 11 hours with stops for food and fuel.  The drive across the Mojave Desert was long and hot (topping at 115 degrees) with little to see.  Driving east, the best views were often in my rear view as the sun set over the mountains, but the desert roads offer little in the way of friendly areas to pull off the highway for a photo op.  I imagine I'll make up for the lack of photos on the first leg of the journey very early today.

Last night I found Lake Havasu City before sundown and enjoyed a lovely view of it before finding the Black Bear Diner for dinner.  I ordered what should have been a delicious dinner: a Tri-Tip platter that came with veggies and mash, but some aggressive spice in both the meat seasoning and its gravy prevents my praising the dish.  After dinner, I checked in to the Hampton Inn on London Bridge Road, which is indicative of my first stop this morning, after I go down to scrounge up some hotel breakfast.   According to my Guest Services booklet, the London Bridge was "dismantled stone by stone and transported from England to America at a cost of 7.5 million dollars" in 1971. And the quaint menu at the diner last night also suggests there's an English village below the bridge.  The internet verifies that a "mock English village, modeled after the famous Shambles of York, surrounds London Bridge."

Frank Sinatrat has joined me on this trip, as he did on the drive west several years ago.  There are sure to be photo ops at the bridge -- and tonight, when I stop in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I'll remember to bring in a cord to upload them!

My Twit Face

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, Blogger to wonder whether the proliferation of online social networking would eventually kill his blog; but I have to admit that I miss the time when I believed I had more to share about an idea or experience than would fit into a mere 140 characters.  As it turns out... I don't really.

Perhaps I should expound.

Or... perhaps not.

Missing Month Well Stored

Once again I've managed a full month without posting. Why? Because I am no longer in San Francisco but rather home again in God's country where I've been making a valiant yet fruitless attempt to consolidate the contents of two storage units.

My first storage unit came during my college years. When I moved from my own apartment into a shared abode with the boyfriend of the time, not all of my furniture could make the move and still leave room for his. And so it began. The storage saga. In the fifteen or so years since the unit was first rented, the contents held in storage have varied widely.

For the first few years after college I moved often. First to a small apartment, then to a small house, and finally to a spacious 3-bedroom house with a converted garage. As I increased my living space with each move, my need for a storage unit decreased -- but it also coincided with the time of my brother's greatest need. He and his then wife were also moving frequently, small children in tow. The virtually empty unit began to fill again.

In time, I took a second job in Nashville. After a couple years of spending 4 hours of every day driving to and from work, I moved from the large house to a smaller duplex near the interstate and my things began to return to storage. This time joining whatever my brother had left behind.

Through a rushed move in the midst of 90-hour work week (coupled with a 24-hour per week commute), I watched as the storage unit began to take on a sinister disorganization which only got worse a year later when I traded in that small duplex near the interstate for an apartment in Nashville by way of another rushed move.

Though I'd finally killed the commute, my storage unit had become rather full and terribly messy. Furniture bought for the changing needs of each home -- a guest room here, a converted garage there -- now filled my storage. But on top, underneath, and beside that furniture, piles of miscellany had spread kudzu-like through the unit, tendrils everywhere. A box of knick-knacks sat on a fridge; Christmas decorations covered an oven; toys from my youth were heaped on a dining table; school books and notebooks lurked underneath.

When the time came to leave Tennessee entirely, there was no question that a second unit would be needed to store the contents of a working home: couches and chairs, beds and nightstands, bookshelves and books, desks and computers, dishes and pans. That second unit, not filled hurriedly, is blessedly organized. But the first...

Well, I've spent a month here converting THIS:

to THIS:

It may not be done yet, but it's getting there!

Finally.

Tuesday Noon Siren

Kiddies! Now you can play the Tuesday Noon Siren home game.

Get your clicking fingers ready. The Tuesday Noon Siren is only minutes away.

In San Francisco, you can hear it in STEREO!

Just click here at 12:00.

TRAUMA is no Jack Kennedy

I'll leave the rather accurate review of NBC's Trauma, set in San Francisco, to the guys who get paid for it over at SF Gate. To sum up, it's a pretty city shown well as the backdrop for a formulaic show in an over-saturated genre.  Nothing new here, folks, except the scenery.  And to be honest, that's the only reason I tuned in in the first place.  Because unlike what must be millions of Americans who keep this genre afloat, I am not a fan of the Surgical Soap Operas.

I am a fan, however, of San Francisco views, and the series opened with two beautiful shots of the bridges -- first the snobby, touristy Golden Gate and then the REAL one, which became the (almost) center of what one might call a plot when a tanker exploded more near than on the Bay Bridge.

Big money went into effects and the cast, of course, has that uniformly attractive sheen.  But the plot lines are thin and the dialogue may be where the series will live up to its name.  It's painful.

In one particularly "original" scene, the obligatory loose cannon character, "Rabbit," takes his Fastback Whatever (it was a night shot, so whether it was more good-guy Mustang or bad-guy Charger will be determined by people who either have a better eye or who are willing to watch that episode again) on an airborne cruise of a San Francisco hill not only making a less-than-subtle reference to a scene in Bullit, but also asking his passenger (and his audience) to put two and two together as he recreates the famous scene.  "Have you seen Bullit?" he asks, just before the jump.

Our response to that question is a groan.  Whether we've seen the whole movie or not, we've seen that scene.  And calling it out is like saying "ooh, look at me, I'm going to recreate it for you!"  Like no one has done that before.  Yeah.  We get it.  In fact, our emotional response almost parallels the response of his passenger, which SHOULD be a good thing.  Maybe, finally, we'll relate to someone.  Then, after the car lands, she opens her mouth.

"Yeah, I saw Bullit.  I love Bullit.  I love Steve McQueen.  I got news for ya, buddy.  You ain't Steve McQueen."

And off we groan again.

"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy: I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy."  

By the end of the episode, I had already written off the series.  It's not like there's a dearth of pretty pictures of San Francisco; one doesn't have to watch TRAUMA to see it.  In fact, it's prettier in The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.  But when the promo for next week's episode came on, I knew I'd be a glutton for punishment and tune in again.  Not because some clever plot point caught my attention -- Good God, no! -- but because I'd seen the scene being shot along the Embarcadero in July.

So while the show backed into a second chance in my living room, I'm not sure that will be true in living rooms anywhere else across the country.  Sorry NBC, but this one may just be joining ER in the "great waiting room in the sky."

Censored!

This cracks me up.

I was looking for information on a certain highway flea market in Middle Tennessee which might come in handy for dumping a few things after the Great Storage Cleanout of Ought Nine when I came across a guide to "anything that has anything to do with antiques," including flea markets. Okey-doke. I'll bite.

Sure enough, the Highway 55 flea market was listed, but so were a number of others which I knew nothing about.  So, I scrolled through.

Among the listings, I found this:  The Swee*censored*er Fleas Unlimited Mall.

The Swee*censored*er Fleas Unlimited Mall?  What would the word possibly be?  Sweet-f*cker?  Nah.  You'd expect an uncensored "T" for that one.  So what ... oh wait.  A clue!

The *Censored* Mall is on Highway 68.  In -- what's this?  Swee*censored*er, Tennessee.

Swee*censored*er, Tennessee?  Oh my.

LOL.

Sweetwater.

They censored the *twat.*

Whew!  Thank you Antiques Guide.  I'd never have noticed that was in there.  Now, I'll never visit that filthy place again!

Oh wait.  I never did.

;)

AT&T Park

 Giants v. Cubs, September 26th
Final score: 6-2 Cubs

Cruise Ships Everywhere!

It's not every morning that you wake up to find a Libra class cruise ship lurking at the end of the street, peering through your windows as you make your morning coffee.  And yet, with the Norwegian Star docked at Pier 30/32, that's exactly what I woke to find this morning.

And it's not alone.

Inspired by the floating bow, I fired up my long-ignored car for a little tool down the Embarcadero.  Sure, I could have taken the metro (also pictured above), but once every couple of months you want to be sure that the expensive knick-knack in the garage still works; and since Critical Mass cyclists will take over the roads tomorrow and I'll be leaving town soon after that for an extended visit South, today seemed as good a time as any to give it a whirl.

So.

The Norwegian Star is moored at Pier 30/32, yes, and her sister ship, the Norwegian Pearl is moored just a little further up the bay.  What brings The Star here, I do not know, but The Pearl is finishing up a 5-day Pacific Coastal cruise en route to LA, where it will pick up passengers for a Panama Canal run on the 26th.  The Star will also depart LA on the 26th, en route to the Mexican Riviera. 

Further still down the bay, near Pier 39, is the Golden Princess, belonging to another cruise line altogether.  And it's not alone, either.  On the other side of town, near Pier 48, its sister ship, the Sea Princess, seems to be taking lifeboats out for a spin....

...  while spinning in its own right.

Presumably, these are sea trials marking the end of the ship's refurbishment in dry-dock on Pier 70 since mid-month.

Ah... back on the water again!

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

I came to this post in a rather round-about way.   Tooling around the internet the other day I came across a video someone had made of the Death Star over San Francisco.  The video ends with shot of a couple of parrots in a tree near Coit Tower.  For some odd reason, this rang a bell with me.

Coit Tower is on Telegraph Hill, so I did a quick Google search for the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill.  As it happened, I hit on the exact title of a book, and a documentary filmed in the area in 2005.  As I found out more about the documentary, it became less remarkable that I'd pulled the title from thin air.  I'd seen it, long before I ever expected to visit -- much less live in -- San Francisco. 

In the documentary, a man named Mark Bittner became enamored of the flock of wild birds on Telegraph Hill and took to spending time with them, naming and feeding them.  He spent 6 years with the birds, until life intervened.  You can find out more about Mark and the parrots online and at your local bookstore.  But I wanted to see the parrots for myself, and as luck would have it, the trip would be a double win, as I had also wanted to climb the Filbert Steps, which are not only in the heart of Telegraph Hill, but which also lead directly to Coit Tower.

First let me say that the Filbert Step are daunting.  Filbert Street transitions from a normal, everyday hilly San Francisco roadway to one of the steepest navigable streets in the Western Hemisphere (31.5% grade) consisting of roughly 400 steps (Yelpers disagree on an exact number, but a happy medium of 384 has been reported by a runner who claims to keep focused on the "burn" by counting them.  If she can run those steps, I'm taking her word for the number).

Before you ever see a parrot, you hear them.  On my trek up to Coit Tower and back down, I found that where you are most likely to see them as well as hear them is somewhere around the middle of the steps.  And it was there that I stopped and tried to capture a few snapshots.  It's amazing how those buggars can disappear in a tree of leaves roughly the same color as their plumes.  When they take flight, there are roughly 200 of the birds in the air, but when they enter the garden trees along the residential street, they all but disappear.  Some runners (Yelpers who failed to diligently count the steps) say that they've yet to see one.

Top left side * Click to enlarge

Such was not my problem.  I probably could have reached out and touched one -- or fed him if that was still allowed (it's not) -- but for hours of playing Where's Waldo with my snaps, I'm still not sure I ever caught that particular bird on film.  (Or on dig'.  Whatever the kids are calling it these days.) I did however, catch a snap of a few parrots sitting on the telephone wire, with the sun behind them.

 As I stood at the midway point of the steps, hoping for a better shot to come my way before I headed back down, a couple of gentlemen rose the steps, discussing the very thing which held our interest. The Wild Parrots of... well, hear for yourself. (60 seconds)

It seems that the parrots are laughing and taunting the fellows.  "Not the spot?  Of course we're here!  RIGHT here!"  As the fellows move on, you can hear their feet on the wooden steps.

So Star Wars wasn't the right movie to trigger this venture; but if the Death Star isn't hovering over San Francisco, The Birds definitely are. Cue Hitchcock theme.