15 Friday Jul 2011
Posted in Art, Nature, Photography, Postaweek2011, Travel
When this picture was pushed down my blog by later posts…I changed the date to bring it back up to the top of the blog.
I love this picture.
Fuckin Seahorses, forever
14 Thursday Jul 2011
Posted in Art, Photography, Postaweek2011, Travel, Writing
I swear to you, as God is my witness, I WILL live in a palatial estate the likes of these one day. I’ll probably live there with an MC Hammer style entourage, but whatever, it’ll still be palatial.
Welcome to my mahogany smoking chamber, friends. Please, remove your shoes, hand them to any number of the staff and they will be sure to shine them for you while we eat, sitting on their bent, tired backs. Aah, I love the good life.
Seriously, I want this house. There are some bigger homes in Newport, but I think I could survive with The Elms. It feels like walking into a French Palace, without the French. Score? I don’t know. Depends on the Frenchman.
This home actually inspired a novel I will one day write. I might actually call it the Elms, though probably not. I find that too declarative. And besides, I don’t want them to feel obliged to sell my epic romantic tale in their gift shop. That would be weird for me.
Why?
It just would.
The interior of the home is gorgeous as I said, but after touring through the upper apartments, a step through a side doorway and suddenly you’re accosted with the working man’s quarters. Literally, there was a sewing room, followed by a corridor of white tile. It was the floor, ceiling, walls – white tiles, hundreds of thousands of tiny white squares along every inch. I found it strange.
Still I enjoyed the small china cabinet that was larger than my bedroom with a walk in safe.
That was pretty stellar.
Then the tour recording informed me (yes, my tour was given by a set of headphones. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s me meander at my own breakneck speed) that the tile hallways were made that way in order for the ‘help’ to have the ability to ‘hose them down.’ It was considered more sanitary.
Oh the things that will happen in that hallway in my novel. You needn’t know now, but someday not long from now, perhaps you will read a book that includes said hallway, and said things I allude to will happen. Suddenly you’ll think, “I feel like I knew this, though not really quite this, was coming.”
Perhaps you’ll feel joy. Or perhaps just confusion as to why the hell and where the hell you heard anything about the damn hallway in the first place and “I don’t bloody well care! Why can’t I just read the damn book?”
Sorry about that.
Thank you for reading my book though.
Anyway, moving on.
Waking up to a ceiling like this?
It’s my fate. I know it is.
This was either a bedroom or an office or a parlor, or even a breakfast nook, I have no idea, the gold filigree was too distracting for me to pay attention to the damn headphones.
Oddly enough, despite a tendency I’ve had since the dawn of my time, I did not, in fact, ask any of the guides whether the ‘palace’ was haunted. That’s normally the first thing I do. I guess I’ll have to find that out the next time I visit, eh?
Be that weirdo.
The Elms wasn’t the only one of the mansions we visited that day. Though the Newport Mansion Conglomerate offers a three house ticket for cheaper than the price of three separate entries, we only had time to visit two of the homes. As I was told before heading down by avid Newport fans, I had to visit “Breakers.”
So, I did.
But on my way, I found this bad larry.
It looked as abandoned as any French Chateau in Rhode Island can look. I wondered what was going on within its walls, given the two stray cars that were parked near the building. As a part of the initial greeting we received whilst buying our tickets, we were informed that the mansions were ‘acquired’ by the conglomerate for a fucking song.
No I’m serious. These are worth nigh on one hundred million or more I would think. The Mansion Tourist Group bought them from the families for one million. Maybe even less. I can’t quite remember.
This notion exasperates me.
Honey, if this Chateau is going to sell to anyone for that low a price, I’ll fucking come up with that money. I swear on all that is holy that I would find a way!
Though, let’s be clear. There are sneaky loopholes in place for the families that sold them. For example, in “The Breakers” there is a skylight on the second floor looking up at the sky. Or so one would think, but in fact it is a glass floor installed so the rich could feel the joy and airy feel of a skylight. The skylight was actually located in the floor of the cramped and miserable servants’ quarters hallways. Often times, they said, one could look up and see the servants walking across the skylight (there was one at “The Elms” as well). I found that amazing, and as before in “The Elms” I wanted to explore the servants area – be inspired by the rooms in which my characters might have slept.
Yet this part of the house was not on the menu.
Why, you ask?
Now we come back to that loophole I was telling you about.
Apparently the families still, technically, own the houses – in some manner of speaking. The third floor servants’ quarters have been turned into family apartments for the still hoity toity.
Bastards!
And just on a side note, when I belched a second ago, it tasted like sushi. I love me some sushi, but I think I can do without the after taste.
Moving on.
The reason they named Breakers – well, the Breakers – is because it is perched on a cliff over looking the water. You can hear the waves crashing from anywhere on the property. It is stunningly beautiful.
I’ve visited a similarly gorgeous expanse of the Gilded Age in Essex, Massachusetts. The Crane Estate is very grand in its expanse as well, yet it sits alone on a gorgeous rolling hillside, not amongst equally astounding monoliths such as these.
I’ve never been inside that house. Perhaps I should remedy that.
Maybe they’ll have servants quarters I can bloody well visit! The fire needs fodder, damn it!
Anyway, to close out the post, I will add a few shots to appease the eye and bid you adieu.
It’s a vase, people. Get with the program.
Hidden driveway so that guests wouldn’t see something so appalling as deliveries being made. How thoughtful…
Insert child-riding-a-goat joke, here.
06 Wednesday Jul 2011
Posted in Art, Photography, Postaweek2011, Travel, Writing
Dear Lord, thank you for the bounty of what I have come to know as Amusement Park crack. Yes, I speak of the Walt Disney World Parks in Orlando, Florida. If you have come to read my blogs in the past (here and Sleep Before Waking) you’ve most likely passed or scrolled by yet another preaching of praise through pictures by yours truly. I honestly, can’t get enough of Disney World. Having a six year old daughter only compounded that. Still, I hereby express some – not all, but some – of the reason why the place calls to me on a yearly basis.
This picture was taken in the Boardwalk area of the park. This area of the parks is where the Epcot Resorts are located and the parking is free and walking around is free. It’s modeled after a 1920′s Jersey Boardwalk style of place and it is complete with dance halls, jazz music, street performers, and if you’re lucky enough to stay in any of these resorts, it sports some of the nicest pools ever. You can snag frozen drinks, get photo booth shots done, gawk at the mime with seething hate and blind fixation. But more importantly – if you missed it the first time – you can do it all for Free! Where else in Disney can you say that (other than Downtown Disney, which though I want to say doesn’t count, it does. It’s fun to walk around there, too.)
Another spectacular reason to visit the Boardwalk is that one can park here early, walk through the Boardwalk area and enter Epcot Center through their World Showcase entrance. That’s right, don’t tell anyone, but if you don’t mind the walk, you can save the $11 – $14 parking fee that it takes to freaking get close to the parks.
Score!
As you can see above, (and in the Boardwalk link) the World Showcase is yet another reason why Disney effing rules. You don’t actually have to be cultured to eat Falafel! The “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” has everything you could need to feel world traveled, as well as fireworks and light up clapping hats. On top of those selling points, they also have the most soothing and hypnotic ambient music playing through the park. I swear to God, it’s Aural hypnosis. If I could get the soundtrack to Epcot and just play it every night while I sleep, I’d probably solve the world energy crisis in the wake of the music’s brain growth side effects.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for more awesome free shit to do, we have the Animal Kingdom Lodge. No I’m not saying go stay there (though if you have RCI you can trade a timeshare to stay there, I recently learned. Wicked.), but I am saying go park there for free and walk around the resort.
Why you ask?
I see you still doubt me.
Because it’s a freakin zoo!
No, literally. They have Giraffes and Zebra and Gazelle on the property and the animals can be seen at all hours of the day and night if they are feeling so inclined. Yes, sometimes they meander to areas that make them less visible to the passerby, but still – free zoo equals free damn zoo, if you ask me.
Beyond the awesome of potentially seeing animals and most certainly being accosted by puffy throated lizards, the architecture is stellar.
This tends to be the case with most of the main resorts. Their atriums, lobbies and main thorough fairs make for a good dose of ogling to anyone who has an eye for “Holy crap, that’s cool!” type shit. I personally have to have such an eye as a requirement for the photography so I like to think myself pretty keen in that department.
Maybe I’m easily impressed. We’ll never know.
Another pinnacle of Animal Kingdomy goodness is Animal Kingdom itself.
Now, I’m going to be honest here – Animal Kingdom is the closest to a Vietnamese prison as most of us are ever going to get. The place is hot as hell, the walkways are cramped and often completely overcrowded, and people are extremely intelligent. So much so that the act of ramming a child’s stroller into your shins as a means of gentle greeting is not only acceptable, it’s suggested!
Still, if you can get past the crowds and the resulting crowd attitude – and if you promise me you won’t go in the summer – it’s one of the more visually stunning places in all of Disney World.
Though there are furry creatures galore in this park (and I’m not just talking about the dude with his chest hair bared at eye level standing less than a centimeter away from you in line for Everest), I personally find the space itself to be the one of the best. If you have the patience to wait for the crowds to filter out (or NOT go in the summer, as I said), you can find yourself standing in places like this, alone.
It’s beyond calming to the spirit.
Worth it.
