what about the plastic animals?

Delicioso Coco Helado

There's a Delicioso Coco Helado cart every couple of blocks in my neighborhood.  On hot days there are usually two carts in front of my building.  The carts have four or six flavors.  Coconut, mango, cherry and rainbow seem to be the most popular.  I get coconut or mango, or for a rare treat I'll go for a tamarindo, but I was in a pineapple-lemon mood today.

Prices went up this year.  A small cup is now 75 cents!  Yesterday I had a small raspberry sorbet from Grom.  It was about the same size but cost $5.14 with tax.  That's 6.85 times more expensive than Delicioso Coco Helado.  The Grom sorbet was certainly not 6.85 times more flavorful. 

More importantly, the Delicioso Coco Helado frozen treat is scooped into a Dixie cup.  If you ever want to discretely bring out social class distinctions amongst a group of people, serve frozen desserts like this in Dixie cups. Make sure there are no spoons.  The reactions and adaptations people have are fascinating to observe.

Speaking of class, I was saddened to hear that the Weekly World News was ending their print edition.   I used to read it often and enjoyed articles about a space alien endorsing Bill Clinton for president, an Ohio teacher with a third eye on the back of her head, and of course Bat Boy.  Comedy genius!  Last week's issue was pretty unfunny. The articles were so jokey as to be lame.  The preposterous premises were written as jokes rather than straight and therefore possibly believable.  It was as if they weren't even trying.  The tabloid will continue to exist online, but it is not the same as reading in public about twelve U.S. Senators being revealed as space aliens and having someone say "Joe, I can't believe you're reading that".

Princess Katie and Racer Steve

Princess Katie and Racer Steve were rocking out for the pre-school set at Union Square Saturday morning.

Marion's Monument of Mystery

There was no particular reason for me to stay the night in Marion other than it was a large enough town to have motels and it was on the way between Dublin and my next destination.  The area attractions guide was heavy on monuments.  One monument listed was the mysterious 5200 pound revolving ball.  The light circle was at the bottom of the ball a century ago, and has moved ever so slowly since. 

Across the street from the cemetery was a non-standard Pizza Hut.  Sure, it was just for delivery and take-out but still...

Warren G. Harding Memorial

Marion, Ohio was the hometown of Warren G. Harding, until recently considered the worst president in U.S. history.  The memorial itself is quite impressive.  President and Mrs. Harding buried there.  Harding's mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips, who was given a trip to Japan, a payment of $50,000 and monthly payments thereafter to get her out of the country before the 1920 elections, is buried elsewhere.  Another Marion woman, Nan Britton, who was thirty years younger than Harding, claimed that he fathered her child, possibly in a coat closet off the Oval Office.  Harding was elected president with 60% of the vote, largely because he supported women's suffrage as a senator and was popular with women in their first opportunity to vote for president.

Reflect the Sky

Mirror on the sidewalk reflecting the sky and building.

Magnetic Springs

I don't have anything to say about Magnetic Springs.  This truck and building caught my eye as I drove through town so I took a picture.

Fort Lee: Home of the Cliffhanger

Theda Bara Way, (Main and Linwood, Fort Lee, NJ)

Looking south from the edge of the palisades

Fort Lee was the home of the movie industry before someone realized you could make movies in southern California without contending with clouds, rain, snow and cold.  In 1907 Thomas Edison filmed Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, which starred D. W. Griffith, on the Palisades.  Theda Bara, a silent film star known for playing a vamp and wearing risqué outfits, made a number of movies in Fort Lee.  The corner of Linwood and Main, which was the early home of Fox, is named after Bara.  In addition to Fox, the Biograph studio and a precursor to Universal began in Fort Lee.  The silent film serial, The Perils of Pauline, was often filmed on the palisades.  Pauline was filmed hanging on a cliff in at least one episode, hence the origin of the term cliffhanger.

The Field of Corn

On a cold February night in 1998 I was flipping through the channels in my hot hotel room in Philadelphia when I came across a strange and funny movie. 

A few months earlier I had been in San Francisco, where I stayed at the Hotel Triton, a trendy boutique hotel that served free wine every evening.  Based on my good experience there, I booked a room at what seemed to be another trendy boutique hotel in Philadelphia.  It was more dilapidated than trendy.

On the first night of my stay there was no heat in my room.  The night manager, a college student, didn't have access to the heat so nothing could be done until the next morning.  He gave me a blanket.  Back in my room I unfolded the blanket to see that it was threadbare.  It was late so I threw all the towels and my extra clothes on the bed and slept in jeans and a sweater.

The next day I leave for the conference in the morning and return in the evening.  When I get back the manager tells me the heat problem is fixed.  Sure enough, instead of being in the mid-50s the room was in the upper-80s.  I figured it would be easiest to regulate the heat by opening and closing the window.

Another unique feature of the room was the bathroom, specifically the toilet area.  The toilet was in a narrow, wedge-shaped alcove in the bathroom.   It was so narrow that there was no elbow or turning room.  To use it (apologies in advance to sensitive readers) I had to drop my pants and back up to the seat.  My shoulders nearly touched the adjacent walls.  There was no way even a moderately large person could have fit in that space.

One good thing about this hotel was a large selection of cable channels.   One channel was from Drexel University and it mainly showed obscure movies.  One movie, My New Advisor, was about a graduate student driving across rural Ohio with his advisor and the advisor's crazy teenage daughter.  That's the short definition, there's lots of characters crossing rural Ohio, lots of old cars and twangy guitar music.  Jim Bihari wrote, directed, filmed, edited, and produced the movie for about $20K.  It's quite funny and absurd and unavailable on DVD.  You can find a good portion of the film on YouTube but not the final scenes.  One climactic scene is filmed at the Field of Corn.

Sam and Eulalia Frantz farmed this land from 1935 to 1963.  By the mid-70s Dublin had changed from a farm village to a town of corporate parks (the building at the end of yesterday's video is a Nationwide Insurance back office) and suburban housing.  Three acres of the Frantz farm is now a park with 109 giant corn cobs, cast from three different real cobs, by Malcolm Cochran to ostensibly celebrate Dublin's history as a farming community.  Running around the cobs and reading the plaques about corn growing in Ohio, I got the impression Cochran other message, one not proudly trumpeted by the town of Dublin, was a reminder that suburban sprawl is responsible for the loss of family farms and farming communities.  Take a look from above and tell me that doesn't remind you of a cemetery.

Running Through the Field of Corn

Running through the Field of Corn, Dublin, Ohio.

A larger version, without YouTube's crappy compression,  is available (12.8 MB .avi file).

A Trip to Fort Lee

Palisades from the George Washington Bridge.  The park on the water is where the carnival scene in the movie Big takes place.

George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee Historical Park

Tasty cheese fries and chili dog at Hiram's.  The dog is deep fried in the north Jersey fashion.

Hideous McMansion under construction in Fort Lee.

Another Sunday, another 20 mile bike ride.  This time it was an indirect ride to Fort Lee, New Jersey.  Indirect because it went up around the northern tip of Manhattan before heading across the George Washington Bridge into suburbia. 

Cycling across the bridge is fun.  Taking photos while on the bridge is not recommended.  What you don't notice while riding is that the bridge bounces, a lot, as trucks drive across it.

Back to Ohio:  12 second video of a cow at Young's Jersey Dairy.