- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 1487
Having regretted missing the chance to see Garrison Keillor's final Prairie Home Companion show in Galveston in 2016, it was great to find that the man himself would be doing a solo spot in Houston. The effects of Hurricane Harvey were still being felt, and the show was moved from Jones Hall (damaged in the flooding) to Cullen Performance Hall at University of Housotn.
Garrison Keillor (real name Gary Edward Keillor) is a unique individual, down to his trademark red shoes:
Keillor made his name hosting Prairie Home Companion from 1974 to 2016 (with a small hiatus from 1987-89). Prairie Home Companion is a traditional variety show broadcast by NPR, produced by local NPR station Minnesota Public Radio. Keillor created ficticious places in Minnesota (such as Lake Wobegon) and even fictitious sponsors for the show (such as Powdermilk Biscuits - "Heavens they're tasty, and expeditious"). The show continued after his retirement, with new host Chris Thile, an excellent mandolin player who has a spot on the current show where he takes song requests on Twitter and plays them, with the backing band with no rehersal.
Keillor's solo show was just as wacky as we expected: Two hours of songs (such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "America the Beautiful”) and his freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness stories, interspersed with limericks:
“There was a girl from Madras,
Who had a nice ass,
Not the kind that you think,
All round and pink,
But had two ears, a tail and ate grass.”
To give you an idea, here's Keillor doing one of his stories:
Shortly after his show in Houston, Minnesota Public Radio terminated its contract with Keillor because of "allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him". Because he owned much of the intellectual property of the show, it has since been renamed: It is now called Live From Here. We may never see him again in public, so I'm glad we had the opportunity to meet him (and his red shoes) in person, compare beer bellies, and get our books signed:
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 1172
Way back in 2008, we experienced our first hurricane, which was pretty devastating: over 100 dead in the US and $37.5 billion in damages, making it the sixth costliest in US history, at the time Katrina was the costliest, at $108 billion. Little did we know that when Hurricane Harvey was identified on August 13 (at that point, a tropical storm), we would have a new record holder. Hurricane Harvey ended up costing $125 billion and 90 lives were lost in the US alone.
Hurricane Harvey's impact was quite different from Hurricane Ike's. Ike made landfall in Galveston as a Category 2 storm (sustained winds of 110mph) and caused extensive wind damage, including widespread loss of electricity (http://sevenflagsovertexas.me/index.php/blog/item/38-astros-beat-braves-and-power-returns-all-in-one-night) and damage to buildings. The damage from the storm surge, from Galveston Bay all the way to downtown Houston was just as significant, if not worse. Here's the water line at T-Bone Tom's restaurant in Kemah:
Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Rockport as a Category 4 storm (sustained winds of 130mph) and then proceeeded to become a tropical storm again, moving very slowly over Texas, dropping huge volumes of rain everywhere. Over 50 inches of rain (or 33 trillion gallons) fell during the storm, setting a new record for the continental US. Once again Texas proves it likes to do everything bigger than the other states: The closest to this is Florida's record of 45 inches. Since a gallon of water weighs 8.34lbs, 275 trillion pounds of water fell, enough to push the earth's crust down by 2 centimeters.
Naturally, it takes quite a while for 33 trillion gallons of water to disperse. Scenes like this were common for days afterwards, with streets closed to anything other than watercraft:
The worst sights were still to come. Once people could move back into their homes, they had the task of assessing the damage due to flooding (approximately 126,000 homes suffered damage). Water levels of 4 feet were not uncommon, requiring a complete gutting of many homes generating piles of trash like this:
Across Texas there was 200 million cubic yards of debris, enough to fill 125 football stadiums.
People quickly found a use for all that extra water. Bank of America was watering their grass as soon as they could:
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 988
The Houston Dynamon has won the Major League Soccer (MLS) Cup twice and and been runners-up on two other occasions. Not a bad performance. Despite this, their 2017 salary bill was just over $5M. The University of Alabama's Football coach, Nick Sabin, makes more than an entire team of professionals.
The Dynamo was founded in 2005 and moved to their current ground, BBVA Compass Stadium, in 2012. The capacity of this stadium is just over 22,000. Bryant-Denny Stadium, home ground for the University of Alabama Football, holds just under 102,000.
Perhaps its not fair to compare college football with professional soccer? How about Sunderland AFC? Their ground, the Stadium of Light, holds 49,000. Their 2017 salary bill was estimated at $117M (£90M). Sunderland last won the FA Cup in 1973.
Interest in MLS is low compared with other sports. American Football (which involves engaging a foot with a ball less than 10% of the game) is very popular: over 110 million watched the 2017 Superbowl. By comparison, the equivalent MLS event (the MLS Cup), was watched by 1.1 million. MLS is very popular with Latinos, as we found when we visited BBVA Compass Stadium.
Our seats for the game against Dallas FC were very good, but the atmosphere was pretty dull. MLS is not quite the same as UK football. It is probably more akin to a Working Men's Club game on a Sunday afternoon, where everyone runs around the field together, chasing the ball.
At half-time, a visit to the beer stall resulted in a chance meeting with members of El Batallon (The Battalion), Latino supporters who base themselves in the north end of the stadium:
There's not much watching of the game when you are with El Batallon. The entire 90 minutes is spent singing and playing brass instruments:
The Sunderland contingent was able to teach El Batallon some new instrumentation for future games:
No-one can remember who won the game that night, but it was great fun!
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 1235
Back in the '70s Cleveland still had a bad reputation (amongst popular names for the City was "Mistake on the Lake"), as demonstrated by this splash page from Howard The Duck Volume 1, Number 1 (January 1976). Howard stands on the banks of the Cuyahoga River contemplating suicide (not because he is in Cleveland), and it doesn't look very nice. If Howard had been on the banks in June 1969 he would have seen the river on fire. It was so polluted that it was regularly burned to remove the pollutants, but on this occasion it was not deliberate. The Cuyahoga river fire gave rise to many famous songs, including Cuyahoga by REM, from their 1986 album "Lifes Rich Pageant" (and yes, there is no apostrophe in the album title).
"Let's put our heads together, start a new country up,
Underneath the river bed we burned the river down.
This is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang,
Take a picture here, take a souvenir
Cuyahoga
Cuyahoga, gone
Rewrite the book and rule the pages, saving face, secured in faith
Bury, burn the waste behind you"
The fire helped increase demands for action to combat such pollution and, a few years later, the US Clean Water Act was put into law.
The Cuyahoga flows into Lake Erie (the lake in "Mistake on the Lake"). Notable point of interest on the lakeshore is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum:
The museum contains memorabilia from various rock and roll artists and is also a marketing outlet for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Despite its name, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does not include all the artists you would expect to find there but does include some you might not. An artist is eligible for nomination 25 years after its first recording is released. However, Rush only made it there in 2013 and bands like Deep Purple are still not in there. In many cases, it takes so long for bands to get accepted that their members have either died (Led Zeppelin made it in 1995, fifteen years after John Bonham had died) or no longer speak to each other (Journey, Kiss, Eagles), leading to difficult decisions about who should attend the ceremony. The 2018 nominees included Judas Priest; they failed to clinch a place, but Nina Simone made it - Rock and Roll!!
Although neither Judas Priest or Deep Purple are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, some of their memorabilia is in the museum. I was looking forward to seeing what Rush memorabilia would be there, and after much searching (including through the disproportionately large John Mellencamp section) the only thing I could find were their albums on a juke box:
Along with quite a few good craft beer places and decent restaurants, they have a House of Blues in Cleveland, and I was fortunate enough to catch the magnificent UFO (supported by Saxon) playing there:
It is probably no surprise that UFO are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Anyway, it turns out Cleveland is not so bad after all. Things have definitely improved since Howard the Duck first arrived in the '70s. And no river fires now either.
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 1270
"I Am Jeremiah Dixon
I Am A Geordie Boy
A Glass Of Wine With You, Sir
And The Ladies I'll Enjoy
All Durham And Northumberland Is Measured Up By My Own Hand
It Was My Fate From Birth
To Make My Mark Upon The Earth..."
So begins Mark Knopfler's song "Sailing to Philadelphia", his version of the story of Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason, two Englishmen who traveled to the US to help settle a border dispute involving Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware in Colonial America.
The line that Mason and Dixon surveyed between 1763 and 1767 is still a demarcation line among four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (at the time, part of Virginia) and is now better known as the Mason-Dixon line (or, as shown in the sign above, The Mason and Dixon line). This shows the entire line:
This image is from WorldAtlas, which has a good short history of the project.
The sign in this photo is at mile 46, on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border on Route 45 near 18166 Susquehanna Trail, New Freedom, PA. The mile markers were made from stone carved in Portland, England and transported to the US. Marker 46 is in a farmer's field, and looks like this:
This photo is from the Hanover Area Historical Society. Their site has photos of all the area markers. in 2015 the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County unveiled a replacement Mile Stone, which looks like this:
Despite what Mark Knopfler says, Jeremiah Dixon was not really a Geordie. A Geordie comes from the banks of the River Tyne, and that's 36 miles away. Sunderland (a much better town than Newcastle) is only 31 miles away. Either way, I think Jeremiah Dixon would be proud of the food in the area he surveyed. This is a Primanti Brothers sandwich from York, PA:
The ingredients are grilled meat, an Italian dressing-based coleslaw, tomato slices, and French fries. Enough to keep a surveyor going for several years!
- Details
- Written by: Super User
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 1586
At 1,178 miles, Yonge Street is claimed by many to be the World's longest street. However, it is broken up at various stages along the way, and so is not officially recognized as such. Instead, it seems the world's longest street is in Pará, northern Brazil and is 311 miles long (although there doesn't seem to be a name for it!). While we are talking of road records, the shortest street in the world is Ebenezer Place in Wick, Scotland – 6 ft 9 in long!
Yonge Street is named after Sir George Yonge, a former British Secretary at War and expert on Roman roads, which is interesting because the Romans would be disappointed that Yonge Street is not as straight as many of their earlier accomplishments.
One place that Yonge Street passes through is Willowdale (the photo above apparently is Yonge Street in Willowdale), famous for being the home of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush. Recently, a park in Willowdale was named after Lee and Lifeson:
The Lee-Lifeson Art Park opening ceremony also featured Lee and Lifeson receiving the keys to the city of Toronto from Mayor John Tory:
(Image: Chris Suppa)
“There aren’t too many artists who can claim to have affected an entire genre of music, or any other kind of art, and we don’t have many that come right here from Toronto, but these are two...who fit into that category,” said Mayor Tory. Too right!!
At the ceremony, musician Jacob Moon performed his amazing version of Rush's 'Subdivisions' (this one is from his soundcheck):