Faux Reel

Long Beach, California has some beautiful bike paths and jogging areas, beaches and incredible cultural establishments. The California State University Long Beach is also there which lend kind of a progressive college town feel to the overall atmosphere. It’s also extremely close to Los Angeles, which makes for an easy and consistent blending of cultures and social outlooks. Meanwhile, the university also provides some of the major entertainment and quality cultural presentations of the city. This is always a great benefit to any city that has a major university in its borders. Tourists frequently look into the offerings of the university while they’re staying in one of the Long Beach hotels.

University sports are a frequent popular aspect of many city and or surrounding region interest and support. Men’s and Women’s basketball are popular with the students of the university and also the residents of Long Beach. Generally tourists arrive in a city with a preexisting favorite sports team, and while they may attend a sporting event at the particular city or university they are unlikely to become fans of that particular team. That job rests with the residents and students of Long Beach. Of course Long Beach offers a great deal more sports than basketball and the various programs are some of the best quality available.

The Ski and Snowboard Club, Roller Hockey, Paintball, Baseball, Kung Fu, and Cricket are just a few of the many diverse sporting activities offered at the university. This small example from the larger list also demonstrates the spectrum of interest level and embracement of non-traditional collegiate sports. This is becoming more common with universities across the nation and sports and activities such as Paintball are able to gain a wider audience and appreciation level. There is also a varying degree of competitiveness with some of the sports and the reasons that specific students join them. Sometimes a sporting club or group simply offers a great way to get exercise and socialize with other students. Other times they are entirely completive and future career establishment based. Regardless of your interest, if visiting the city of Long Beach there should be a sporting event to attend and enjoy.

The Burnham Tavern is located in Machias, Maine and is one of the many historical sites located in any of the towns and cities of the state.  This tavern was built during 1770, and was the meeting point for the local and regional patriots during the times of the American Revolution. Today there aer exhibits that illustrate the history of the region during the 1700′s through the 1800′s.  The furniture is the furniture of a time when the United States was in its infancy as a nation, and the design is a great example of the technology and style of the time period.  And just as the tavern does on the whole, many of the individual pieces have their own unique stories and histories.

Many great hotels in the town reflect this same sensibility and give one the feeling that they may be stepping back in time.  The time of the Tavern’s early days, marked a time when the people of the country were put into difficult situations, often times forced to sell goods and services to the British troops, of which the American soldiers were at war.  If they did comply with this, they faced the wrath of the British commander, Lieutenant Moore and faced a live of poverty and starvation.  However if they did comply they were seen as traitors.

Originally called the Tap Room, the tavern was owned by Job Burnham.  This is where the American settlers would gather to have discussions and debates, over the actions that should be taken against the British troops and against Commander.  This establishment is now on the list of the U.S. Department of the Interior as a National Historic Site.  It is open to the public, to the history buffs who are not only interested in the history of Machias, but in the history of the birth and the development of the entire country of the United States.

When you decide to spend some time in Oklahoma you are headed for some serious Indian territory. There are more Native American Indians living in this state than any other state in America. They have built quite a community after there ancestors were lead here on the trail of tears. There are so many museums placed all over the state and I am sure there is one near any of the Oklahoma hotels found here. If your in Oklahoma City you and head over to the Center of the American Indian for a great collection of Indian art and history.

The Cherokee Indians have some history to share in Tahlequah OK. Visitors can see this history of their tribe at the Cherokee Heritage Center which includes the Cherokee National Museum, the Tsa-La-Gi Ancient Village and Adams Corner Rural Village. The Chickasaw Tribe was also relocated here long ago and they have their history found in a few places one of which is at the Chickasaw Musuem and Cultural Center in Ada OK. The Choctaw National Historical Museum has a collection of artifacts, paintings and many photographs of the Choctaw people. Every where one travels there is a story to be told from so many different Indian tribes. There are around 500 different Indian Tribes through out Oklahoma. It would take years to learn the history and personality of each tribe.

They all do well in the state of Oklahoma. They have band together across the country to offer Casino games to all who want to indulge. Mostly they offer slots, video poker, craps and more and more are hosting blackjack and poker. So if you find yourself in a larger city like Oklahoma City or Tulsa you will be close to the action at the larger casinos. There are, of course, many smaller casinos found in the smaller towns.

I have an older Ford Bronco, a little over ten years old. Recently, my city decided that in order to keep the air cleaner it is now requiring all cars to partake in emissions testing and follow very strict guidelines. Something about this made me a little uneasy, probably because I haven’t had a lot of work done on my vehicle in the past year or so because money has been tight. It hasn’t broken down or anything, but I was sure it wasn’t in tip top shape.

I finally took it in to do the emissions test, and I failed the NOX portion of my test by over 200 parts per million. This seemed like a huge deal to me because I didn’t think that my truck was in that bad of shape. I figured if there was a way to fix this I could do it on the cheap by looking at the Ford Bronco repair manual, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of that thing. I felt pretty useless reading through all the technical jargon and not knowing what any of it meant. This is why I should have taken Auto Repair in high-school, then I wouldn’t have such a problem.

I ended up taking it to a great mechanic friend of mine who took one look at it and the test results and looked worried. After a little bit of time he diagnosed it with having a partially plugged exhaust passage. He said that this passage feeds the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valve. This was the whole cause of my problems and all he had to do was clean it out. It was really simple and even showed me how to do it, although he said that I shouldn’t have to do it again for a long time. He later told me that his worry was that he thought for a little while he was going to have to replace the valve. I’m really glad he didn’t have to and he just had to clean it. Now I can get my truck tested and not have to worry about failing the test again.

When taking a family vacation, I usually find it best to show my kids where we are going on our United States Map, so that they have some idea what we are doing, whether we are near water, or in the mountains. I also like to find some great family tips for activities in the area so I have something I can tell them about what we can do there, because with my kids the first thing they want to know is what cool attractions are waiting for them when they get there.

Last time we took our family vacation in Florida it was to visit my parents in Fort Lauderdale, and we knew we weren’t going to have too much free time. Usually my parents come up here, so my kids had never been to Fort Lauderdale, all they knew about Florida was Orlando and the Endless Disney Parks. It turns out that’s all I knew too and gave up looking at my Florida map and finally gave in and bought a map of the city. My parents really wanted to take us on the Spirit of Fort Lauderdale, which I was not opposed to, but worried that the kids might get a little bored. My mom assured me that it is a great activity for the kids and they have lots of stuff for them to do. She also suggested that I take the kids to Bonnet House Museum and Gardens because my youngest girl, age 7, is really interested in art, and they have some beautiful art exhibits as well as a beautiful area. To make my two boys happy we went on a swamp tour, which I was not expecting to enjoy as much as I did. I was expecting the smell to be unbearable, but the fresh air was great and the kids loved it.

The best part of the trip was when mom told me she was kidnapping the boys for the night and we were to go out on the town and have an adult night out. We had a lot of things planned, but we threw the whole plan away when we got to Ocean 101. We had a wonderful meal and ended up just walking along the beach for a few hours instead. It was great to have some quality time just the two of us for a while. When we got home the kids had tired mom and dad out and all of them were asleep on the floor together with a movie still playing. It was one of those moments where you really love your family.

Baltimore is a place with a rather illustrious history.  It’s one of the oldest cities in the country, and in many ways, it’s got some of the primary heartbeats.  Some of the famous residents, like Frederick Douglass, have inspired countless lives, and will do so for many generations to come.  It’s easy to see why it’s a popular travel spot, with excellent accommodations and plenty of opportunities to sightsee, and catch up on history.  The contemporary local scene is also extremely lively, with a thriving arts community that is always creating and reinventing popular forms of entertainment.

One of its more famous daughters these days is Anna Deveare Smith, whose work also inspires generations, and is also very likely to do so for some time to come.  She’s most widely known for her work on the tv shows West Wing, the Practice, and Nurse Betty.  However, theatre-goers and theatrical practitioners recognize her for her contributions to the form of live performance.  She is a true pioneer, developing a new kind of theatre that is extremely powerful, engaging, and radically entertaining all at the same time.

She still makes new works of live performance, with Let Me Down Easy currently running all over the U.S.  This show takes on health care, the body, and even death.  Her work always deals with extraordinarily bold and large themes.  It is also very topical and relevant, dealing with Yankel Rosenbaum and Rodney King, for example, and the work is astute enough that it remains relevant even ten years later.  For her performances, she interviews subjects for her research, then she performs them.  Her work then is to represent identities, but these are living breathing people, sometimes celebrities, and sometimes they can be sitting right next to you.

Growing up, I always heard about entertainers yearning to play Carnegie Hall in New York City.  All the variety shows and talk shows made it seem like the pinnacle of success, just like the song lyric that claims if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, and so on.  But what exactly is this Hall?  Who was Carnegie?  With a little bit of research, it’s easy to find out:

Andrew Carnegie was Scottish-American and an industrialist, bridging the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.  He came to the United States with his parents when he was a kid and his first job was messenger boy.  He moved up the ranks of the telegraph company, but found his fortune when he built Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Steel Company, later merging to become the Federal Steel Company.  He became a philanthropist after that, funding a number of institutions with his name on it: the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, as well as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.  In all this funding, part of it went to establish and build Carnegie Hall.

The main hall at Carnegie, now known as the Isaac Stern Auditorium/Ronald O. Perelman Stage, opened in 1891, nearly a hundred and twenty years ago.  It’s been the site of concerts, lectures, jazz events, and more.  The stage was originally designed by an architect cellist named William Burnett Tuthill; renovations occurred in 1986, and the Hall holds as many as two thousand eight hundred and four people.  It’s famed for its acoustics where the hall becomes an instrument in and of its, enlarging whatever the performer does.

There are two other halls in Carnegie Hall, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall and the Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall.  The former seats 268 people and is used for chamber music, recitals, discussions, master classes, and so on.  Originally, the hall was known as the Chamber Music Hall.  The latter hall seats around 599 people.  Originally, in 1895, the Hall was rented out to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and used as a theater for decades, until it was turned into a cinema in the 1960s.  At the end of the last century, in 1997,  work began to turn it into a space that could be used for a variety of purposes.

It’s clear why Carnegie Hall is so renowned.  I can’t hope to play there, but perhaps one day I can be a patron and see some of the work performed.  I can imagine an ideal situation of coming to one of the boutique hotels one can find in New York and spending a few nights at concerts and theaters.  It seems the elegance of the boutique hotel experience and the Carnegie Hall might be a great match.

Miami freeways are much more complicated than other freeway systems we’ve come across during our tour of the United States. Miami’s freeways are inescapable, they’re everywhere. We made it on one of the hundreds of causeways that will take you from Miami over to some of the beaches. The Miami beach goes for miles to the north, but South Beach seemed to be a more popular spot for everyone, young, old, rich or poor. As we went over the causeway, we could see hundreds of plush, extravagant homes accompanied by boats that will take them from island to island.

Each island has its own dedicated causeway and a security guard, basically, each island is its own gate community. Then there were all the cruise ships in port on the other side, we counted 5 in total. Then it started pouring down rain, and I’m not talking light rain, it was torrential and there was thunder and lighting, which we were right in the middle of. We could barely see where we were driving and the traffic came to a standstill, which we were thankful for. We got off the causeway, but we were still in South Beach, but all the traffic lights stopped working and most of the intersections were flooded. We saw all kinds of people wading through the water that came up to their knees. There was one car stuck right in the middle of one intersection, all flooded out. We did our best to avoid the deepest parts of water. Many of the people were dressed up to go clubbing for the night, but were saturated to the bone.

We finally made it to our luxury hotel in Miami, and it was a lucky thing too, another down pour began right as we handed our keys to the valet.  We basically dropped off our bags and headed back out. We were totally stressing if we’d make it to the concert in time. We had to drive about 2 hours in torrential rain, which slowed traffic down considerably. About 30 minutes into our drive, we literally could not see anything in front of us, it was raining that hard. We’ve both never been in rain like this before and traffic began to pass us by, but we didn’t care, we couldn’t see the road!

I don’t know how we managed it, but we got to the concert in enough time, the rain had let up, our seats were great, right in the front row. We couldn’t have been more thrilled to see Counting Crows, it’s been a while since we’ve seen them, but it was worth driving through a hurricane.

The luxurious NY hotels are just the beginning of the glitz and glamor of the big apple. You have so many to choose from and many of them are famous like the Ritz-Carlton or the Gramercy Park Hotel. One of the classics if the Waldorf Towers which is the home of the Waldorf salad. How about the many films you have seen the actors standing outside The Plaza hotel. Yes the hotels are really amazing and just the gate way to many incredible adventures to be had in New York City.

If I could I would see a Broadway show every night. It would take you over a month to see a show in each of the 40 professional theatres in the Theatre District of New York. May people come to New York just to see some Broadway shows. That and to have a slice of cheesecake afterwords in Times Square. Between 2008 and 2009 there were about 943.3 million dollars worth of tickets sold in the season. The history of the theatre here does not really begin until 1750. Which for us is a long time ago. There were two actor managers named Walter Murray and Thomas Kean that started a theatre company on Nassau Street. Of course putting on performances of Shakespeare and Operas. This would start hundreds of years of all sorts of interesting history. So many people and styles of performances have been put out most nights at one theatre or another. It all just grew and grew.

A few of the greats would be Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, West Side Story, Show Boat and Oklahoma. Today you can catch some of these shows still going as well as some new one like Mama Mia and Wicked. So if your coming to New York for a show you may want to get a book on the topic because there is a lot of rich history involved and you won’t want to miss it.