Image of the Week for 05-20-13
Roadside Thistle
And this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with my prickly feelings towards Flickr and Yahoo today …
Image of the Week for 05-13-13 / Then and Now #16
In honor of my good friend Shay’s birthday today, I present the following two photos of Shay and his older sister Dawn, taken 36 years apart. On the left, taken by me in the winter of 1976/77, outside of the Model Lab School nursery/kindergarten wing, Richmond, KY. On the right, courtesy of DQW, taken in March of 2013 in San Francisco, CA. Other than one major difference on Shay’s part*, you can see that not much has changed between the two over time …
* I am, of course, referring to Shay’s height. What did you THINK I was referring to …?
Image of the Week for 05-06-13
I noticed something a little off regarding the words at the bottom of the screen during the annual singing of “My Old Kentucky Home” at the 139th Kentucky Derby, broadcast by NBC on May 4, 2013. I had always thought that the first line of the song was “The sun shines bright ON my old Kentucky home, ” not “in” … a quick Google search reveals both variations to be “correct” from reputable websites (here is an ancestry.com site that has “on my” while this brochure from the Kentucky State Capitol website has “in my”). However, it turns out that everyone might be wrong, because the Kentucky Derby website (among others) says that the true line is “The sun shines bright IN THE old Kentucky home.” And yes, I know all about the second line being changed as well, so we won’t go into that.
Maybe we’re all thinking about the Johnny Cash version, which uses “on my” in the first line.
Image of the Week for 04-29-13
Chef Salad, Cobb Salad … looks pretty much exactly the same to me.
(The Cobb Salad has bacon tucked in the lower lefthand corner while the Chef Salad has ham on the righthand side.
Everything else — turkey, lettuce, tomatoes, egg, cheese — identical.)
Image of the Week for 04-22-13
Even the snack foods are against me …
Korea 10.11.12: 63 Whacks
Thursday, October 11, 2012. Day Eleven in South Korea at the 63 Building, continued from here and here.
We started our visit to the 63 Building at the topmost floor, continued to the first two levels of the basement, and now we are ending our journey on the third basement level, at the 63 Wax Museum. I am not going to even begin to discuss the overall weirdness of the fact that one of the tallest buildings in Seoul, Korea has a wax museum and an aquarium in its basement as well as the world’s highest art gallery on its top floor, but instead I am just going to shut up (for the most part) and just let the pictures do the talking …
“American Tourists”
The first room of the museum features notable leaders from Korea and the United States …
Korean Presidents, all in a row: President Mu-Hyuk Rho, President Dae-Jung Kim, President Jung-Hee Park and wife Young-Soo.
Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama were the two representatives of the leaders from the United States.
The Lincoln display was set up with Lincoln sitting behind a desk, preparing to enjoy his afternoon tea, with an empty chair for visitors to share the moment.
The Obama display was a little odd, with the president standing with one hand in his pocket while the other one extended outwards at an odd angle, like he was about to grab someone on the shoulder. At the same time, an endless loop of one of his speeches played on the flatscreen monitor behind him. A little creepy. The worst part about the display was that the figure bore very little resemblance to the 44th president.
Now if the display was supposed to be the “Zombie President,” and his hand was outstretched while he was in the process of grabbing someone’s hand on his way to scooping out their delicious brains, oh yes, that would work …
I have to pause for a second and mention that a wax museum — with its interactive displays and somewhat lifelike renderings of historical figures and celebrities — has the strangely hypnotic effect of making its visitors WANT to pose with these figures and capture them on photographs for posterity. I guess it’s all part of the fun. I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to take any photos of myself interacting with these statues (although I quickly broke that promise with the Obama shot above), but I could feel the urge to do so rising as we continued through the museum …
The next room featured classical musicians.
In the same room were some old instruments in a glass case. I’m not sure WHY these were in a wax museum, but oh well …
I am equally uncertain as to why this Eric Clapton guitar was on display as well, unless it was some statement about “classical” music …
The Last Supper, rendered in wax. There’s probably something sacrilegious about this …
The next room featured artists:
Van Gogh. I’m not sure if visitors were supposed to take their photo in front of the blank canvas or if they were to paint something of their own so Van Gogh could look upon it with derision.
Extremely glossy and surprisingly realistic. Insert your own “wax figure” joke here …
Me and The King. That’s a pretty terrible Elvis impersonator. It would appear that I have succumbed to the pressure and finally decided to pose with one of the figures, but ACTUALLY (and this is 100% true) I was posing for this shot as a callback to THIS photo, from 1990 (shot in Hawaii):
So there.
More music memorabilia: An autographed Led Zeppelin guitar …
A complete set of McFarlane Toys’ Beatles figures/statues, but what makes this display piece so awesome is the complete set of autographs in the frame above it …
There was a special section of the museum devoted to Halloween, but it was rather lame and anemic and not very scary at all, although I would put some of the blame for that on the guy who was dressed up as a ghost and who was supposed to pop out from behind a curtain, but he instead chose this particular moment to take a bathroom break.
No, the Tiger Woods was not part of the Halloween section (although it’s bad enough to be scary) …
Probably my favorite section, featuring classic anime robots and super heroes. No question as to how “realistic” these wax figures are!
The last room of the museum was devoted to big giant teddy bears … because things just weren’t surreal enough …
And we’re out!
Overall, the 63 Building was an interesting place to visit. I wish there had been time to explore some of their massive shopping arcade and at least peek in on the allegedly largest buffet restaurant in Seoul … but if the wax museum were the only attraction there, we would not have visited.
Driving back over the Han River away from the 63 Building as the sun set …
Heading back into Seoul. Here are some more night driving shots:
Flickr set for the 63 Wax Museum, featuring many more shots than what I have presented here …
Image of the Week for 04-15-13
Night Rain
Image of the Week for 04-08-13
Cracked Crepe
The brief yet torrential thunderstorm on Easter Sunday knocked out more than the power (for us, 10 hours; for others, two days), it also knocked down a number of trees, including this Crepe Myrtle …
Then and Now #15: Three out of Five
Some members of the Model High School Band on September 29, 1984:
We had just returned to the school after marching in the Pigasus Parade in Lebanon, Kentucky on this last Saturday of September, 1984. Some of us were still in full uniform, some of us not, and the rest were somewhere in between. From left to right: Tanya, Josh, Shay, Kurt and Paul.
On April 5, 2012, in a room with three out of the five band members from the original photo present, I decided to re-enact the photo:
Left to right: Anne (standing in for Tanya), T.J. (standing in for Josh), Shay, Kurt and Paul. We didn’t have any heavy coats to use as props, and I’m pretty sure that Shay didn’t have a beer in his hand in 1984 (although I can’t say for sure what is underneath that uniform vest), and I think that Kurt probably would have dropped his pants in an attempt to increase the accuracy of the photo, but we hit it pretty close.
A Culinary Experiment: Maple Pizza
What is maple syrup usually poured on? Pancakes. With what meal are pancakes typically served? Breakfast. What other food items are usually served with breakfast? Bacon and sausage. It is not a stretch to associate maple syrup with a breakfast meat (Hormel and Jimmy Dean both offer a sausage link with maple flavor), in which the sweetness of the syrup combines with the saltiness of the meat to produce a unique harmonious savoriness. So it is with these concepts in mind that I attempted a Culinary Experiment at Peggy’s Homemade Pizza in Natchitoches, Louisiana, one of the best independently-owned pizza places that I have ever visited.
Peggy’s Homemade Pizza is somewhat unique in that it shares a space with another restaurant, The Breakfast Nook( which operates solely in the mornings). Consequently, there are a number of breakfast-specific condiments on the tables at all times, which is what inspired this particular culinary experiment. One of the pizza combos on Peggy’s menu is the “Pig Out,” which features Canadian Bacon, Breakfast Bacon and Pepperoni, the key ingredients for my experiment.
Here’s is the Pig Out Pizza, a “small” (four slices).
And here is the syrup being applied to the pizza. The only purpose in showing this step is to increase the weirdness factor.
And so, here is our Canadian Bacon-Breakfast Bacon-Pepperoni Pizza topped with maple syrup.
The result: As expected the sweetness of the syrup helped to mitigate the saltiness of the breakfast bacon, which was quite salty to begin with, resulting in a mild sweet-and-salty flavor combination that was further enhanced by the meatiness of the Canadian bacon and pepperoni. The unexpected result was that the sweetness of the syrup also mitigated the flavor of the mozzarella cheese while retaining its buttery creaminess, and so the layer of crust and cheese mixed with the syrup created a flavor combination that tasted remarkably like pancakes with butter and syrup.
I would deem this Culinary Experiment a success. While one would think that it is odd to pour maple syrup onto a pizza, the odd combination of the salt and sweet and savory was not bad at all. However, with the sugar calories from the syrup added to the high fat and sodium content of the pizza itself, this is not something that I will be doing on a regular basis.
