Coolest roadside attractions

Courtesy of guyism.com, Coolest roadside attractions | Cadillac Ranch | Largest ball of twine:

10. Martini Drinking Elephant – Fortville, Indiana
9. Bigfoot Discovery Museum – Felton, California
8. Jimmy Carter Peanut – Plains, Georgia
7. 7 POPS Diner – Arcadia, Oklahoma
6. Burt Reynolds and Friends Museum – Jupiter, Florida
5. W’eel Turtle Sculpture- Dunseith, North Dakota
4. UCM Museum – Abita Springs, Louisiana
3. World’s Largest Ball of Twine – Darwin, Minnesota
2. Gatorland – Orlando, Florida
1. Cadillac Ranch – Texas

I’m chuffed that #10 is the martini-drinking elephant from Fortville, Indiana, but that really makes me think this list is pretty off, especially since I’d consider Dinosaurland in Virginia, or The Big Blue Whale in Catoosa, Oklahoma or even The House on the Rock in Spring Green Wisconsin, to be much bigger and cooler roadside attractions than many they have on this list.

And there are a host of cool sites that I haven’t seen yet, like the Corn Palace in South Dakota, or South of the Border, in South Carolina that should probably make a list of “Coolest” roadside attractions.

Cute article, and some things to add to our travel list, but not definitive by any means.

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Quotable

Stephanie, on why she doesn’t want to see Titanic in 3-D:

I thought it was overhyped in the first place. And at the scene were the ship hits the iceberg, and the guy says “How long do we have?!” I looked at my watch and said “You have an hour and a half.”

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Well, Howdy

Hey, I finally got my site all moved over to my host and just as importantly, to my new content management system. The design is quite different, and not yet mine. I’ve done some customization of the theme, but I have a lot more work planned on that end. And there’s a lot of clean up of old posts to be done. But the worst of the move is over and I can ease into the rest as time goes by.

And even more important – I can post more often and the technical workings of the site are much more efficient and easy to update. I’m really excited about what I can do now.

It was worth the wait.

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Beast Glatisant Du Jour: An Atomic Bedside Alarm Clock

Questing BeastThe Beast Glatisant, or Questing Beast, was a mythological creature in King Arthur tales, with head and neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. Knights in the stories would take off hunting him when word came that he was terrorizing a village somewhere, and he was an allegorical symbol of either the dangers of lust or of Christ eaten alive by the 12 tribes of Israel; you can take your pick.

I thought of him the other day when I was trying to describe, on Facebook, something that I’m hunting for – A bedside alarm clock with some really specific features:

Bedside (not travel; i.e with cord, not batteries) alarm clock, atomic, with large am/pm display. I just want something really specific and can’t find it. This is one of those cases where I search forever for a specific combo of features, and I buy something just off of what I want, and 6 months later, what I really wanted comes out. Before you say ‘iPhone’ this is for an older family member with no computer. 🙂

I want the clock to be just like any bedside alarm clock that plugs in and lights up – but I want it to be an atomic alarm clock – self-setting. And I want the AM/PM display to be in actually letters and fairly large, so you can easily see whether it’s day or night.

Finding this specific combination of features is proving elusive. They make alarm clocks that aren’t self-setting; most atomic clocks aren’t meant to sit near your bed or have you slap the snooze button when you’re half awake.

While I was describing the odd hybrid device I wanted cobbled together the Questing Beast popped into my head (head and neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard…) And I realized I have this kind of quest fairly often.

A few years back, I was on the hunt for a very specific kind of wrist watch that I just couldn’t find: light-colored face, numbers not roman numerals, day and date display, and it also had to light up, but it couldn’t be a digital or sport watch. You’d think that wouldn’t be hard to find, but I spent 3 years looking for that exact combo. Most watches don’t actually have numbers on the face. Most watches with date display don’t light up. I finally found one from Timex. And soon after, that same combo became more available in stores. It just took time for it to come around.

Before that, I was hunting a summer bathroom. I wanted a light cotton bathrobe that wasn’t terry cloth or flannel, and that was actually long enough to cover my legs. They had short ones for women that I would look silly in. They have heavy flannel. But no simple, light cotton. Stephanie hunted in every store in the mall and finally ordered one she found online. The next year, they were in every store.

It seems like the year after we find that specific thing we want, it’s suddenly the new craze. We keep going after the same strange beast. It must really love us.

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Vivian Maier | Photographer

Vivian Maier | Vivian Maier Photographer.

Vivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer born in New York City. Although born in the U.S., it was in France that Maier spent most of her youth. Maier returned to the U.S. in 1951 where she took up work as a nanny and care-giver for the rest of her life. In her leisure however, Maier had begun to venture into the art of photography. Consistently taking photos over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave over 100,000 negatives, most of them shot in Chicago and New York City. Vivian would further indulge in her passionate devotion to documenting the world around her through homemade films, recordings and collections, assembling one of the most fascinating windows into American life in the second half of the twentieth century.

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Window Watchers in a City of Strangers

Window Watchers in a City of Strangers – NYTimes.com.

The ability to observe the private lives of strangers from the windows of our homes — and the knowledge that they can often watch us, as well — has long been a staple of city life, one that was immortalized in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film “Rear Window.” It has provided material for countless movies and books since then, most recently “The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York,” a book of drawings by Matteo Pericoli that asks well-known New Yorkers to describe what they see from their windows, and is the subject of “Out My Window NYC,” a new series of photographs by Gail Albert Halaban.

This often inadvertent voyeurism gives rise to relationships that can be deeply meaningful, although the people involved may never actually meet, said Ethel Sheffer, an urban planner and past president of the American Planning Association’s New York Metro Chapter. “One doesn’t always know their names, but it’s a connection of some sort and it becomes part of the fabric of your life,” Ms. Sheffer said. “The density and the closeness, even if it’s anonymous,” creates a sense of intimacy, she added, and “makes for an understanding that we’re all here” together.

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Tear down wall of denial so we can fix broken IPS

former IPS School Board President Kelly Bentley has some thoughts about how to fix IPS in this Indy Star editorial: Tear down wall of denial so we can fix broken IPS | Indianapolis Star | indystar.com.

Even recent good news about IPS is tempered by the reality that the numbers often aren’t as positive as they appear. The community rallied around a report last month that the district’s graduation rate, which a few years ago was well below 50 percent, climbed again last school year. Yet, a significant portion of that increase was achieved by a heightened reliance on academic waivers, which means many students really didn’t meet all the requirements for graduation but received diplomas anyway. Certainly, waivers are justified in some cases. But when more than 40 percent of graduates at Arlington High School receive waivers, as occurred last year, alarms should go off in the district headquarters and in the community.

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Episodic v. Serial – Complications Ensue

Episodic v. Serial – Complications Ensue:

So when we actually saw Rob Thomas (creator of VERONICA MARS) giving a talk at Banff, DMc asked him about his thoughts on episodic vs. serial.

Rob busted out a factoid I’d heard before, but which really hadn’t sunk in. When people say they watch a show, on average, they watch one out of four episodes.

One out of four.

It’s a shock, because when I watch a show, I really want to see every episode. I missed maybe one or two FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTs last season, and I was really unhappy about it. One out of four? So the average audience member is really not that involved in the season arcs even of a soap opera like FNL; they’re just going along for the episodic ride.

Rob said if he’d been able to do a fourth season of VM, he’d have made it entirely episodic. No serial story at all. That was a shock.

Wow, one of the better shows developed for episodic viewing, and the writer wouldn’t do it that way again. Also – who watched Friday Night Lights that way? Good god. That show was amazing for layers and building. Why would you watch it for an episode here or there?

Maybe many people watch TV that way, but I sure don’t. There’s got to be two camps on this – I wonder what the split is?

And could you write a show that works for both camps?

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The Waltimate

The Waltimate

Hamburger, onion, cheese, lettuce, bacon, peanut butter, jalepenos. From Red Lion Grog House in Fountain Square

This is my very favoritest burger ever. You’d think peanut butter and jalepenos would be terrible, but it’s DELICIOUS.

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