Happy Halloween! :)

NYC's High Line

Take A Walk On The Wild Side

Follow the links below to some really beautiful images!
Take A Walk On The High Line

Did you ever go to Chelsea in Manhattan and question to yourself why an old, rusting elevated railroad line existed in this area?

"The High Line" Film

"The High Line", a 6-minute documentary film, offers an excellent overview of High Line, its history, the movement to save it, and designs for its reuse. Directed and produced by John Zieman.

Friends of the High Line

Actor Edward Norton and Friends of the High Line Co-Founder Joshua David walk on the High Line and discuss the project's history and future. Produced as part of GOOD Magazine's debut issue.

Edward Norton on the Charlie Rose Show

A 2003 interview with actor Edward Norton discussing his involvement with Friends of the High Line. Mr. Norton became a supporter in 2001 when he read Adam Gopnick’s article in The New Yorker.

May 21, 2001
New York Journal
A Walk on the High Line [ABSTRACT]
NEW YORK JOURNAL about an abandoned, elevated New York Central Railroad track on the lower West Side that activists are hoping to turn into a park… The archeology of Manhattan is reversed: the past is not buried in the ground but held up in the air, on the upper floors…
by Adam Gopnik

High Line Supporters

Construction Update: View construction photos from the first section of the High Line (Gansevoort to 20th Streets) to open in 2008. Construction on this section began in April 2006 and is currently on-schedule and on-budget.

Walking the High Line: Photographs by Joel Sternfeld. Introduction by Adam Gopnik.In photographs that span four seasons, Sternfeld captures the unique beauty of the spontaneous natural landscape that has gradually seeded itself atop the High Line's elevated tracks since the trains stopped running. This book is currently out of print but copies are available on Amazon.com.

Caution: Do Not Trespass

The High Line is currently owned by the City of New York.

I am not recommending that one climbs up on top of the viaduct to take a walk along the right-of-way. From what I hear, the New York City Police Department doesn't take a liking to these actions, and it could possibly get a person arrested for trespassing.

It is not (yet) open to the public.

Post Script:

There are two competing groups that have different agendas for determining the fate of the High Line. Friends of the High Line would like to see the High Line remain intact. The Chelsea Property Owners group, which represents businesses in the area, would like to see the line demolished. Recently the Chelsea Property Owners, a group of property owners demanding demolition of the High Line since 1989, acknowledged that it might drop its opposition to saving the 70-year-old structure. The Bloomberg administration has been suggesting to owners of property under the High Line that their development rights could be transferred to other sites. In the past Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wanted to see the High Line razed. Each concern has their own reasons as to why they take their positions.

The Friends of the High Line are working with the Rails-to-Trails program in order to secure the High Line with a Rails-to-Trails designation. The Chelsea Property Owners would like to use the ROW (right-of-way) and air rights over the line for commercial and residential development. The long gone (good-writens) Mayor Giuliani wanted the line taken down because he felt it was an eyesore to the community. He also felt that if the line were to be taken down, continued economic development in the area would result, stimulated by extra property that would be gained by razing the line.

On November 16, 2005 the Bloomberg administration released the following announcement:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES CITY ACQUIRES HIGH LINE

FROM CSX TRANSPORTATION

Trail Use Agreement Signed Permitting Recreational Uses on the Elevated Rail Structure;

Transformation into Public Open Space to Begin in 2006

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced that the City of New York acquired title to the High Line elevated rail viaduct from CSX Transportation, Inc. this month. CSX donated the High Line to the City, and the transfer of ownership clears the way for the structure's transformation into a public open space to begin in 2006. Open space on the High Line will run from Gansevoort Street in Manhattan's Meatpacking District through West Chelsea to the Hudson Yards. In addition, the City and CSX signed a Trail Use Agreement, permitting the rail structure to be used by the public as a recreational amenity. The first section of the High Line is projected to open to the public in 2008. Read More Here...

...

High Line Reuse Picks Up Steam

Under previous administrations, the city had sided with property owners who saw the rusting steel structure just west of 10th Ave., last used for freight in 1980, as a blight on the neighborhood. Indeed, in one of its last official acts in 2001, the Giuliani administration signed an agreement joining the property owners’ move to demolish the High Line.

“Back in 1989 city officials said the High Line had to come down. What has changed in 14 years?” asked Roger Nober, S.T.B. chairperson. Read More Here...

...

Precedent in Paris:

During the early 1990s, the city of Paris successfully converted a similar elevated rail viaduct near the Bastille opera house into a three-mile pedestrian walkway called the Promenade Plantée. It crosses the entire 12th arrondissement from the Place de la Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes at the eastern edge of Paris. For more images, visit the Promenade Plantée Gallery.

Go ahead: Find Me Guilty!!!

"One day...

even a last day...

--is worth more than a thousand days of a lifeless future".

more: DELERIUM Silence

Look here for more DELERIUM...

SILENCE
By Delerium

Give me release
Witness me
I am outside
Give me peace

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe
That I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

Passion chokes the flower
Till she cries no more
Possessing all the beauty
Hungry still for more

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe
That I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

In this white wave
I am sinking
In this silence
In this white wave
In this silence
I believe

I can't help this longing
Comfort me
I can't hold it all in
If you won't let me

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe
That I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

In this white wave
I am sinking
In this silence
In this white wave
In this silence
I believe
:)

Art Wolfe's Travels To The Edge

Click on the links above, to explore the world of Art Wolfe.

Nikon D300 On Order!!!

I have this camera on order from my local camera shop. It should be in stock by November! Look here at KenRockwell.com for a very good overview. Look here at NikonUSA.com for more info. Oh ya, and here is the lens I'll be using which is also reviewed here at Ken's site.

Briscola

Briscola The Classic Italian Card Game

Briscola is a very famous Italian card game. Briscola is a classic Italian card game. Briscola is very popular in Italy, Portugal, and Spain; but can be enjoyed by anyone with a deck of cards. Briscola is a multi-player game for two to six players.

The original game of Briscola is played using an Italian deck containing 40 cards of four different suits; cups, coins, batons, and swords. But Briscola can be played with a normal deck of card by removing three cards from each suit. The deck contains the ace through seven, plus the jack, queen, and king. The eight, nine, and ten of each suit have been removed. The ranking of cards for any given suit from highest to lowest is ace, three, king, queen, jack, seven, six, five, four, two. However, only certain cards have point values, the remaining cards have no value.

Card Points: Ace 11; Three 10; King 4; Queen 3; Jack 2, the remaining cards have no value.

Learn more about Briscloa here: http://www.pagat.com/aceten/briscola.html

You can find a downloadable game here:

http://www.tucows.com/preview/303901

And here:

http://pages.zid.com/~orfeo/bmm/bmm.html

You can play online here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~bdimasi/extra/briscola/briscola.htm

That's here. That's home. That's us.

Visit CarlSagan.com

Our mission is to awaken the broadest possible public to the wonders of nature as revealed by science.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on the mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel, on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity--in all this vastness--there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else--at least in the near future--to which are species could migrate. Visit...yes. Settle...not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling, and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Four Eyed Monsters .com

Visit FourEyedMonsters.com

Watch Section 2<<~>>Watch Section 3
See the story of the film created in Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8

Join a Revolution. Make Movies. Go Broke.

NY Times Article

Mr. Crumley and Ms. Buice spoke about their 14-month ordeal making "Four Eyed Monsters," which dramatizes how they met online, and in which they co-star. The movie was well received at its Slamdance Film Festival premiere in January and screened at 16 other festivals. But like so many independent labors of love, it has yet to attract a theatrical distributor.

"If the result was going to be this," Mr. Crumley mused, "a film with no distributor, no way for anyone to ever get a chance to see it beyond those who saw it at a few festivals, would I have done it? That's a tough question to answer." Ms. Buice added: "The answer is, 'no,' it's not O.K. for our film to have been mildly successful on the festival circuit. But otherwise, it was just a jaunt into the abyss and now we have financial hell to pay."

The first-time filmmakers used their $10,000 in savings to begin production and borrowed $55,000 on seven credit cards to complete the film. Ms. Buice's parents have contributed $20,000 more for film festival travel and living expenses.

Coming Soon: The Canon 40D

It's about time for a NEW camera!

Teacher's Nightmare: Ogling Video on YouTube--Internet Videos Such as 'Hot for Teacher' Clip Raise Privacy Concerns

Former elementary school teacher Keri McIntyre discovered someone had taped her and posted the video online without her consent. (ABC News)

The scene was a fifth grade graduation ceremony in Charlotte, N.C., and the star of the amateur video was not exactly the student body, but a teacher's body.

"The video was three and a half minutes of me. It would go to my face, to my butt, to my face," said former elementary school teacher Keri McIntyre. "And then he had his fun zooming in to my butt."

Chocolate Rain

WARNING! WARNING!

-Warning Will Robinson-

YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO GET THIS SONG OUT OF YOUR HEAD!!!
-YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED-

If you click on the above link you will see the following message.

-This video has been removed due to terms of use violation-

That's because it is linked to a video clip of VH1's, 'Best Week Ever' on Google's, YouTube.

This is the ongoing battle of content and privacy rights. I guess VH1 would rather have people come to their own website to view what they produced.

You can find it on VH1's Web site but good luck...Look here for Best Week Ever on VSPOT; then look for week of August 6th. If you wanted to send a link for a specific video, to a friend, you will have to give VH1 your email address, and your friend's email address.

You will also be swamped with junk mail!!!

They hide the links pretty good.

You could, once you download the video clips, save, and play them on your computer, using your own player.

When you play a file in Windows, it is stored in \Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files. You can save and rename the file keeping the .flv extension. YouTube uses .swf file extensions that can be changed to .flv. Here is a simple standalone cross platform player called Wimpy Desktop FLV Player (FREE).

For Mac or Windows you could use Firefox with an extension like DownloadHelper.

For Mac there are other convoluted ways to locate the .flv file. You could purchace a Safari plug-in called FLVR, or use a standalone utility like Tubesock.

Or you could also use the activity trick: If you go to the activity window in Safari it will show the various parts of the website and the largest file is usually the video file. Also usually in .flv format though sometimes in others. Simply double click the .flv line and it will begin downloading through Safari. You can then convert the movie with Isquint or QuickTime Pro with the Perian plug-in. Or just view it using VLC.

Here are some other free players.

-Download SMPlayer (Win) Here-

-Download VLC Media Player (Mac/Win) Here-

-More on converting .flv Files (Win) - (Mac)-

Chocolate Rain

Original

:

Parody

:

Simpsons

:

Jimmy Kimmel

:

John Mayer

:

Chocolate Rain Lyrics

:

Chocolate Rain - Some stay dry and others feel the pain

Chocolate Rain - A baby born will die before the sin

Chocolate Rain - The school books say it can't be here again

Chocolate Rain - The prisons make you wonder where it went

Chocolate Rain - Build a tent and say the world is dry

Chocolate Rain - Zoom the camera out and see the lie

Chocolate Rain - Forecast to be falling yesterday

Chocolate Rain - Only in the past is what they say

Chocolate Rain - Raised your neighborhood insurance rates

Chocolate Rain - Makes us happy livin' in a gate
Chocolate Rain - Made me cross the street the other day

Chocolate Rain - Made you turn your head the other way

: (Chorus)

Chocolate Rain - History quickly crashing through your veins

Chocolate Rain - Using you to fall back down again [Repeat]

:

Chocolate Rain - Seldom mentioned on the radio

Chocolate Rain - Its the fear your leaders call control

Chocolate Rain - Worse than swearing worse than calling names

Chocolate Rain - Say it publicly and you're insane
Chocolate Rain - No one wants to hear about it now

Chocolate Rain - Wish real hard it goes away somehow

Chocolate Rain - Makes the best of friends begin to fight

Chocolate Rain - But did they know each other in the light?

Chocolate Rain - Every February washed away

Chocolate Rain - Stays behind as colors celebrate

Chocolate Rain - The same crime has a higher price to pay

Chocolate Rain - The judge and jury swear it's not the face

: (Chorus)

Chocolate Rain - History quickly crashing through your veins
Chocolate Rain - Using you to fall back down again [Repeat]

:

Chocolate Rain - Dirty secrets of economy

Chocolate Rain - Turns that body into GDP

Chocolate Rain - The bell curve blames the baby's DNA

Chocolate Rain - But test scores are how much the parents make

Chocolate Rain - Flippin' cars in France the other night

Chocolate Rain - Cleans the sewers out beneath Mumbai

Chocolate Rain - Across the world and back its all the same

Chocolate Rain - Angels cry and shake their heads in shame
Chocolate Rain - Lifts the ark of paradise in sin

Chocolate Rain - Which part do you think you're livin' in?
Chocolate Rain - More than marchin' more than passing law

Chocolate Rain - Remake how we got to where we are

: (Chorus)
Chocolate Rain - History quickly crashing through your veins
Chocolate Rain - Using you to fall back down again [Repeat]

Battle at Kruger - Over 13 Million Views

Views: 13,809,815 and counting...
Very amazing video--shaky cam and all.

What Goes Up...

Unintended Consequences

Ouch!!!

We All Hear The Call of High Places

Go here for a look at some unbelievable base jumping!!!

SILENCE
By Delerium

Give me release
Witness me
I am outside
Give me peace

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe
That I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

Passion chokes the flower
Till she cries no more
Possessing all the beauty
Hungry still for more

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe
That I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

In this white wave
I am sinking
In this silence
In this white wave
In this silence
I believe

I can't help this longing
Comfort me
I can't hold it all in
If you won't let me

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe
That I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

In this white wave
I am sinking
In this silence
In this white wave
In this silence
I believe
:)

The Simpsons Quotes

Homer: Here's to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life's problems.

Homer: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

Homer: You don't like your job, you don't strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.

Bart: I am through with working. Working is for chumps.
Homer: Son, I'm proud of you! I was twice your age when I figured that out.

Lost Boy - In Search of Nick Drake

Ok...this is probably the last post on Nick Drake. I just thought I should post this audio file for those that are interested in hearing more on Nick's life.



Nick Drake is the quintessential cult hero, and you can hear again why as Radio 2 presents another chance to hear 2004's acclaimed documentary, presented by Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt.

Pitt was approached by Radio 2...after the network learned he was a huge Nick Drake fan. Pitt says: "I was introduced to Nick Drake's music...and am a huge admirer of his records. "When Radio 2 approached me to get involved in this project, I was delighted to be asked and pleased that I was able to fit it into my schedule.

This documentary looks to explore Drake's life through the words of those who knew him - collaborators such as producer Joe Boyd and arranger Robert Kirby, his family (including his sister, actress Gabrielle Drake) and his friends. -BBC Radio 2

Download: Lost Boy - In Search of Nick Drake - Size: 25.9 MB

Enjoy :)

Nick Drake Documentary - A Skin Too Few

First broadcast in 2000, this movie documents the 26 short years of Nick's life (1948-1974). Focusing on his brilliant music, as well as the talented musical and technical people who helped shape his sound, in London, during the late 60's & early 70's, as well as his sister Gabrielle, and haunting audio segments of both his late parents. Unfortunately, Nick was not of his time, and was never really appreciated during his oh so short time here. But his 3 albums, Five Leaves Left, Bryter Later and Pink Moon, continue to indoctrinate new fans day after day, being moved by the songs that were written almost 40 years ago. Amazing !!! This is an entirely different documentary from A Stranger Among Us.

This documentary has been uploaded onto YouTube and is in five parts approximately 10 minutes each.

Nick Drake Documentary - A Skin Too Few - Part 1

Nick Drake Documentary - A Skin Too Few - Part 2

Nick Drake Documentary - A Skin Too Few - Part 3

Nick Drake Documentary - A Skin Too Few - Part 4

Nick Drake Documentary - A Skin Too Few - Part 5

Bonus audio file: This is a mp3 audio file of the same show as above, all five parts.
Download: A Skin Too Few - Size: 20.8 MB

Enjoy :)

Nick Drake Documentary - A Stranger Among Us

First broadcast in 1999, this documentary looks at Nick Drake's life through the memories of his family and friends. This is an entirely different documentary from A Skin Too Few.

This documentary has been uploaded onto YouTube and is in four parts approximately 10 minutes each.

Nick Drake - A Stranger Among Us Documentary Part One

Nick Drake - A Stranger Among Us Documentary Part Two

Nick Drake - A Stranger Among Us Documentary Part Three

Nick Drake - A Stranger Among Us Documentary Part Four

Bonus audio file: This is a mp3 audio file of the same show as above, all four parts.
Download: A Stranger Among Us - Size: 17.6 MB

Enjoy :)