Robot Claw – Page 458 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Slow Train To Frogland

August 7, 2013

Today, there was almost 10 hours of this:

That’s me on a train to Canada, since Jim and I left today for our trip. The journey was mostly uneventful, but given the duration much more comfortable than a flight would have been. Our car was almost empty, and adjacent to the snack car, which served delicacies like…

…microwaved hot dogs, which were far, far better than they had any right to be.

I read this entire book on the trip:

And it was extremely entertaining and very nostalgic. Props to AW for giving it to me.

We spent many hours traveling along lake Champlain, home of the famous lake monster Champ. Happily, I saw him out the window! Alas my reaction time was a bit slow and therefore the photo I snapped of him is less than perfect:

About 2.5 hours of our trip were spent with customs and border control. Everyone was disembarked at the US border so they could search the train (and afterwards us) with a dog. This took over an hour. Then we crept over the border (on the train) until just inside Canada where there was another ~1 hour customs stop.

And eventually… this:

I quickly noticed almost all signage is 100% French! Also, much like another relic of British colonialism I know well, in Canada everything seems to close early, so since we arrived after 8:30 pm everything was done for the day!

Which meant no real dinner, except for:

Which taste – to me – like Vegemite! In a chip, this is an awful thing.

Our hotel is swanky…

With a good view…

And a lovely French filly at the front desk gave me some toy money to play with for the next several days!

BTW, blame my brother for the ‘street photography’ filters 🙂

Anyway it’s late and we’re tired. Got a full day planned for tomorrow. Stay tuned 😉

The Secret Caverns

August 3, 2013

Today, we went here:

It’s a natural limestone cave located adjacent to another (much more famous) attraction called Howe Caverns. We’d been to Howe a couple of times over the years, and it was time to visit the quirky neighbour!

As you can tell from the sign, the emphasis is on quirkiness. Here’s the main building:

The interior is full of ancient souvenirs, bizarro attractions and weird ‘hippy’ paintings. For instance, this is a mummy found in the cave:

And the accompanying story of the mummy:

Even the bathrooms are unusual:

The caves were opened in 1930 by an engineer who used to work at Howe caverns and wanted a cave of his own. Initially, tourists descended the more than 100 feet to the bottom by rope (!), but now they have stairs.

Here’s the above ground entrance:

Which covers stairs leading down:

The cave is wet and cold (50F) and runs in a more or less straight line for about 200 meters. Initially, the path is narrow and a bit like a tunnel:

But quickly becomes more natural including obstructions:

And a lot of water:

Until it ends at the star attraction, a 100 foot underground waterfall:

The flow rate is high, and the river continues out of the cave along a passage that would be navigable (but is closed off) that – after another fall – apparently runs out of a mountain into a large creek.

There are rumours the waterfall itself is ‘assisted’ by a pump, but our guide denied this 🙂

Note the hippy lighting on the falls. It played tricks on the eye, as you can see since I look tubby in the photo above 😉

Back on the surface, after punishment for some crime I’m sure I committed:

I had to spend a moment on another attraction in the gift house. That would be the one on the right:

Omg, Sky Shark! I used to be able to beat this on one man, but here I was only able to double the existing high score, which I soon learned had been set by an employee and was considered unbeatable 🙂

All in all, a great place to visit. If any of you are in Albany again, I may have to take you!

Again with the New Romantic Era!

August 2, 2013

A couple of weeks ago I tweeted something about wanting to listen to Nik Kershaw. This was no random tweet – I had had an urge for a while. Various bits and pieces of his songs had been going through my mind and I suddenly wanted to listen to him again. I had nothing on CD (although I do have the vinyl album for Human Racing), so I succumbed to my urge and purchased this:

The Essential Nik Kershaw it is called, but it may as well be titled All The Good Songs From His First Two Albums With None Of The Bad! They are all here: Wouldn’t It Be Good, I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, The Riddle, Human Racing etc. I hadn’t listened to much of this stuff in a generation (most of these songs are from ’84) and I had forgotten just how good it was:

Having loved him back in the mid 1980’s, I assume I must have given in to the ‘Nik Kershaw is super uncool’ vibe and turned my back on him for too many years. Needless to say, this CD is highly recommended.

But wait!

In that very same order, I added two other CD’s. For many, many years there were two bands that I supposed I should have always been a bigger fan of but for various reasons had not been. Given I am already half dead, I figured it was time to remedy this oversight, and therefore the following two collections were also added to the cart:

Maybe I thought O.M.D. were a bit limp-wristed back in the day. In reality, I was probably too influenced by the marketing in such magazines as Smash Hits, and the fact that pretty-boy duo’s were a dime and dozen and besides whats-the-difference-between-OMD-and-Go-West-anyway? Or maybe it was the vocal on Locomotion that put me off? Who knows, and I certainly cannot remember why I just ignored them. Which means I probably never listened to this song:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph was I wrong! OMD was a band heavily influenced by Kraftwerk, with an experimental sound and a cutting-edge command of electronic music. Although their biggest hits (If You Leave, Forever Live And Die) didn’t come until 1986, they were producing amazing songs back in 1979 while touring with the likes of Ultravox and Gary Numan. I never knew this and am so glad I have now rediscovered them. As with the above two, this album is packed to the gills with amazing music that needs to be heard. Very highly recommended.

And then we get to Ultravox… I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that Ultravox was an amazing, influential, and very important band. They arguably created the new wave of electronic music, and led the way for countless other bands to follow. In the early to mid 1980s they had a few massive hits, including Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, Reap The Wild Wind, One Small Day and one of the very best singles ever released, Vienna. I loved all these songs; I loved the band. I even loved Fade To Grey (a single Midge Ure put out under a different band name, Visage). And yet I never for some reason owned an Ultravox album.

I’m very pleased that this has now changed, because this one is a tour-de-force of one great song after another. Consider this masterpiece:

How did I miss this back when I was 13 and massively into Mode, Kraftwerk and Gary Numan? My highest possible recommendation.