"Suspension" Coming Soon for Your Kindle and Other Gadgets

In this new electronic age, captured in this photo of my brother with his new Kindle and my one-year-old niece with her Blackberry, I have the pleasure to inform you that Suspension will soon be released electronically.  I will keep you posted. 

 

Little Bytes Video: Meat, Meat, Meat

Here's another of the videos from our walk across Forty-Sixth Street.  Ever wonder WHY New York became a city of steakhouses?

Time Warner=The Savior

With all the recent hullabaloo between Time Warner and Fox, it's hard to believe that there was a time when my fellow residents in Brooklyn likened Time Warner to a

This comes from a building newsletter slipped under the door of the apartment I was sharing with friends after college.  I performed this feature as a dramatic monologue every Christmas for years and came across it this weekend while cleaning drawers.

You should know that in 1995 this building's tenants were going through a power struggle between the co-op residents and the man who lived in the penthouse and controlled all of the rentals. 

Because I don't want to type SIC eighteen times and because the style is part of its charm, I'm going to type it exactly as printed, with all its misspellings, eccentric capitalization and haphazard punctuation. 

Let me tell you a Christmas story--HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CABLE--

Once upon a time, a mean and ugly GRINCH who lived high up on top of a tall building, and who thought he was king of all he surveyed, sat on his throne and wondered what mean trick he could play on all the people who lived in that building, how he could spoil their fun and frustrate their children.

When the MIGHTY Warner came around and said, "I am, after all these years of waiting, bringing you the gift of entertainment beyond your wildest dreams".  The GRINCH SAID 'Ha Ha, this is a good way to punish my underlings for their disloyalty.  And he sent the MIGHTY Warner away, telling him that he did not want his wonderful gift and would not have it in HIS building.

Luckily for the GRINCH'S miserable underlings, a lowly serf met the MIGHTY WARNER who told him how the GRINCH had refused his gift.  the lowly serf was very angry, 'how dare the GRINCH spoil our fun' he said.  "Who does he think he is?" Who you think he is?

So the lowly serf set out to find the Mighty Warner, he travelled through the dark forrest and into the distant city, where he found the Mighty Warner in his Mighty Office.  "Mighty Warner," he cried, "even though the GRINCH does not want your gift of Cable, why should his miserable underlings be deprived, just because he is spiteful and mean?"  The Mighty Warner replied" you are absolutely right.  You shall have my gift, and maybe I can even get it to you in tine for Christmas".

Madison Avenue...or Perhaps Crockett

Here's one of the videos from our walk across Forty-Sixth Street which we recently uploaded on YouTube.  This one has a few of my favorite jokes:  bubbles, Pringles and especially my post-it note approval of street names.

The Second Drama of the "Miracle on the Hudson"

Here's a great time-lapse video of the challenging salvage of the US Air jet in the icy waters last January.

Posted on Kontain.com - [Flight 1549] from David Martin on Vimeo.

Little Bytes Recommends: A Musical Journey in the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In these sad times full of the fear-mongering preachers of hate, take an hour to be inspired by a program that includes not only Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial but moving performance of the song King mentioned as he lay dying and which was performed at a rally in Memphis that night.

A Beautiful Symphony of Brotherhood: A Musical Journey in the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Listen today at 3pm on 93.9FM or listen online:

From the WNYC site:

Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up listening to and singing church songs, and saw gospel and folk music as natural tools to further the civil rights movement. In this hour-long special from WNYC, host Terrance McKnight interweaves musical examples with Dr. King's own speeches and sermons to illustrate the powerful place that music held in his work--and examines how the musical community responded to and participated in Dr. King's cause.

Tour Guide Blooper: When Ya Gotta Go, Ya Gotta Go

Several New York City guides recently got to swapping embarrassing stories from 2009 and quickly turned to the topic of bathroom emergencies.  Back in October, one of my elderly tourists lost a very important race at Grand Central, which forced a mad dash on the part of her tour guide to seek out a store that sold women's pants, socks and underwear, but that was not the story that won the hearts and minds. 

Wilbur, which is definitely not his real name, told us that he was in the midst of giving a tour on a coach when he felt his bowels begin to tremble.  He knew he didn't have enough time to improvise a stop and rush for a Starbucks, so he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to have take a pause here to handle something."  He had the driver pull over--he didn't want his tourists to pass anything by while he was away from the mike--and he made his way up the aisle to the lavatory in the rear of the bus.  It was there that he sat, with his tourists sitting on the other side of the thin plastic door.

It gets worse.

"It was explosive," Wilbur admitted.  "Truly, horrible, very audible." 

It gets worse.

"There was no toilet paper."  Gingerly, Wilbur pulled his pants up and returned to the front of the bus where he took the microphone--it gets worse--and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I was wondering if anyone had any tissues I could borrow."

Little Byte of the Week: Tenth Avenue, The Concrete Jungle

Here's a Little Byte we recently uploaded on YouTube from our Walk across Forty-Sixth Street.  The beautiful photos were taken for us by Colin Winterbottom.

The Evolution of the Revson Fountain

John Seabrook wrote a great article about the new Revson Fountain in last week's New Yorker.  This video on their blog shows the sad decline of the original Revson Fountain...from its starring role in The Producers (I never saw that fountain doing ANYTHING like this) to its sad little cameo in Sweet Home Alabama.  Make sure you see the most recent performance at the end of the video--as part of the massive renovation of Lincoln Center, the fountain was redesigned by WET (Water Entertainment Technologies) Design, the leader in liquid architecture.  Their work includes the Fountains of Bellagio in Vegas and the Dubai Fountain, which opened in May and is the world's largest fountain and features blasts up to fifty stories high!  In New York, their work can be seen at the Brooklyn Museum and Columbus Circle.

 

Overheard on the Subway...Nashville

Two twenty-something males on the Uptown C.

Twenty-something 1:  I'm going to Nashville for a church conference.  It's only three or four days, but I'm going to stay for six.

Twenty-something 2:  What are you going to do in Nashville for a week?

Twenty-something 1:  I'm going to Graceland for one.

Twenty-something 2:  Graceland is in Memphis.

Twenty-something 1:  OH, NO!!

The World's Tallest Building: Dubai, 1; Manhattan, 10

This week, the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai, UAE.  At 2,717 feet, the Burj Khalifa is almost a thousand feet higher than the projected 1 World Trade Center.  Astonishingly tall, the Burj Khalifa is approximately the same height as the former Twin Towers stacked on top of each other.

All right, Dubai:  you have one.  Nine more to go.

Manhattan still holds the record for the number of skyscrapers (10) that once claimed TALLEST HABITABLE BUILDING IN THE WORLD:  the American Surety Building (tallest from 1895-1899); the Park Row Building (1899-1901); the Singer Building (1908-1909), the Metropolitan Life Tower (1909-1913), the Woolworth Building (1913-1929), 40 Wall Street (for a single day in 1929), the Chrysler Building (1929-1931), the Empire State Building (which held the record the longest from 1931-1972) and the Twin Towers (1972-1974). 

In fact, with the exception of the years 1901-1908 when the Philadelphia City Hall held the record, New York was home to the world's tallest building from 1895 until 1974.

TRIVIA:  What are the three buildings OR cities that held the record between New York and Dubai?

New York City Reclaims First Place after 20 Years

The 2009 numbers are in and while the number of visitors to New York City decreased for the first time since the terrorism-related dip in 2001-2002, the number did not decrease by the 10% projected earlier in the year.

During the financialy bleak 2009, 45.25 million people still visited the Big Apple--and spent $28 billion--making it the most visited city in the United States.

Even with the decrease from the previous year, 2009 was the third best year in the city's history--only 2007 and 2008 brought in more tourism.

A couple trivia questions for your Wednesday morning:

A)  What city lost its #1 status this year?  (Hint:  Its rodents are even larger than those in New York.)

B)  8.6 million international visitors came to New York, twice as many as any other American city.  What city had the second highest number of international tourists?

Answers after the jump.

Photos from New Year's Eve in Times Square

 

More photos after the jump.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! KISS YOUR LOVED ONES!

(My niece and parents.)