Archive for February, 2010

Hiphop in Malta

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Of course there’s a hiphop scene in Malta, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been in the world in the past few years.  Wherever there are young people, there is youth culture, and this is still one of the driving forces of that culture all around the globe.  But where at one time there may have been a concentration on the music coming from the U.S., now almost every place has its own styles and trends.  The relatively inexpensive means of producing your own music these days, with software that is widely available and pretty easy to use, has made it much more possible for a kid in a small town to make their own records.

The sounds from every place are very distinctive, and hiphop in Malta will necessarily have local flavor that speaks to this particular place.  Malta is a place with a very rich tourist scene, where there are plenty of good restaurants and luxury hotels.  Malta is well- suited, then, to be a hub of world culture, because so many people pass through here.  This means that contemporary trends in the world of music stop by here to do some trading.  On the best days, it is an equal exchange, where Maltese musicians can learn some new styles and rhythms, and the visitors get to take some of the local flavor with them.  In Malta, this flavor has roots in Northern Africa and Southern Italy, among others.

No Bling Show is spectacularly positions to demonstrate all the diverse roots, and brings them together in a package that’s fresh and very real.  There is an attempt to speak to the ongoing conversations in global hiphop culture, but there is also every attempt to maintain a fiercely local identity, and this comes through in the language and the themes.  They use the music to communicate possibilities for change, offering systematic critiques of the system in general, and are working to create a critical mass in the culture here that can speak to alternatives to excess.

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New York Window

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Well it is sad when you get suck somewhere you have never been but don’t have time to enjoy even a piece of it. The New York airport is now closed because of weather and you won’t be able to get to your destination until the next flight in the morning. You grab what ever food you can from the McDonalds that is trying to roll down the gated door and close up shop. You are doomed to sit in an empty terminal and sleep on the floor, that is, if the cleaners don’t come around with a vacuum. Or does it have to be that way? Maybe not. There are some great airport hotels in New York www.newyorkairporthotel.com and we have there number. You can check into one of these hotels and get a great meal either in the restaurant or sent up to the room. Soak in a nice and hot bubble bath and read a book or watch a movie on TV. They have all the amenities you might need for a quick nights stay even with a fitness room to get the stiff out of your legs.

However, it is all best enjoyed if you don’t think about what you are missing in the big city. Those amazing views from the Empire State Building or a carriage ride in Central Park. Don’t fuss yourself over the Broadway hit you are missing or that cocktail in the elegant bars around town. It would be such a hassle to go there at such a late hour first you would have to figure out were you would want to go and then catch a cab. You need to be rested up for another trip through security in the morning. That takes all the patience you can muster these days. Well you may not be able to make it to Junior’s for some of that famous cheesecake but I bet they have something almost as good that can be delivered to your room.

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Common Engine Troubles for an Early 90s Jeep Comanche

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Before you buy a vehicle you should take a few notes on what are some of the common problems with that type of vehicle. In this case I am looking at am early 90′s Jeep Comanche and the problems associated with a large engine. The first thing you need to know is that older Comanches such as one from 1990 to not have a check engine light. This means that the other problems I describe may have to be diagnosed by their symptoms instead of being given a heads up. The valve cover gasket, oil pan gasket and timing cover commonly will develop leaks. This can be a big problem and very expensive. If you are looking at an older Jeep Comanche you may want to steer clear of it if it might need any of these repairs soon. When these get old they also sometimes develop ignition wire failures that could lead to backfiring or a rough start up. If this is happening it is a pretty easy fix and can be done on the cheap if you are handy in the garage and have a Jeep Comanche repair manual. If you don’t have a Jeep Comanche repair manual find a repair manual similar to it. Since this is a larger engine, do not try to use any small engine repair manuals .

Some models from the early 90′s such as the 91 or 92 are also susceptible to failures in the rear main oil seal if the car sits in dirty or dusty conditions. This can be prevented by regularly washing the car, and making sure to clean the underside as well. If you don’t do this, dust and dirt will collect on the oil seal. As the car moves, this will cause abrasion, wearing through the surface of the seal. Usually regular maintenance and keeping this area clean is a hassle, so a plug has been made and is available from MOPAR which can be installed at any time to fix this problem.

The last thing to know is that the head gasket in these early models will bust. This can mean the death of your engine if not taken care of right away. It is easy to take care of this and all you need to do is get it to a mechanic right away. If you are worried about this happening there is a newer head gasket that can be installed.

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Key Largo’s Endings

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Anyone coming to visit Key Largo these days will no doubt be struck by the sense of timelessness here.  There are places that seem to be right out of films, or the best memories of places never visited before.  The picturesque scenery is enough to make the eyes delight and the mind immediately soften and relax.  This is a place where people go to rejuvenate the body and the mind.  Because of this, Key Largo hotels are rather famous for their remarkable ability to offer the right amount of hospitality at just the right time.

That the place has a kind of mythic quality is something that everyone notices.  Even the locals never get over it, and it seems like a kind of paradise on earth, with some pretty furious storms.  It’s very difficult to spend any amount of time here before you’re thrust into a daydream where you start to feel like you’re in a colorized version of the film that takes the name of the place, and of course, we all think about Bogey and Bacall.  It’s perhaps a bit of a cliche to say they don’t make actors like that any more, but it’s also true that being here helps you think it’s all possible again.
That film marks a definite golden age in Hollywood cinema, and something that will have to be reckoned with in the popular imaginary for many more generations to come.  These things sometimes happen by happy luck, and sometimes they’re well deserved.  In this case, it was more hard work than luck that was involved.  The film was based on a play by Pennsylvania playwright Maxwell Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize winner.    When they made the film, it was during the infamous blacklist, and both Bogey and Bacall were staunch supporters of the first amendment.  Perhaps they weren’t as staunch about the rights of the writer, because Anderson’s ending was changed, and an ending to a Hemingway script for a different film altogether, was used.  Still, immortality it immortality.

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There is Still Speak Easy in New York

Friday, February 19th, 2010

My husband and I went to see two Broadway plays in 2 days! We saw ‘Wicked’ and an Arthur Millers’ ‘A View from the Bridge’ starring Scarlett Johannson and Liev Schreiber.  The hotel where we were staying was a brisk walk away from Broadway, and we were so glad we found it, it’s a really cool hotel.

In making the most of New York City, we have deemed this year our ‘Year of Great Restaurants and cool bars’, and what a better city to embrace our New Years resolution. Manhattan is bursting at the seems with great venues and it’s because the competition in New York makes everyone outshine the next. New York restaurants week began our resolution with night-time tirades. We picked a selection of super high-end venues. We ate like royalty for the entire week. One place was to the restaurant called Nobu, it was absolutely phenomenal. I had the eggplant special, which came with shrimp, scallops, spices and a miso soup, and my husband had artic charr with inaniwa with a crispy baby salad. For dessert we shared the warm bittersweet chocolate soup! Oh, and if you go, which we highly recommend, try the spiced pear martini’s, so good!

Afterwards we hit a little know cocktail bar in the West Village called ‘Employees Only‘, the neon sign ‘psychic’ is used to detract the riff-raff, all the while, those in the know slip past tarot cards and crystal balls. It’s straight from the 1920′s speakeasies. The host took our coats before we could blink. The cocktails were a classic piece of art, we just wished the prices stayed the same as back in the 20′s; very expensive. No matter what anyone says, it’s so tremendously satisfying to leave a bar that we entered seamlessly, only to find a line of needing people waiting in the snow just to get in; we felt so cool and happening.

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Indianapolis Cumbia

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

The history of music always reveals fantastic twists and turns, and is one of the ways that we know things are much more connected than they seem, and also that the world is indeed a lot smaller than we might think.  There might be moments when you hear a beat in a song that reminds you of another beat that you know from thousands of miles away.  You might at first dismiss it as coincidence only to discover that there is a deep relationship beyond coincidence.  Like the six degrees of separation, music works by association, and sometimes it travels faster than the speed of light.  So, you might not think that you could be traveling in the midwest, and stop at a particularly gorgeous luxury hotel in Indianapolis, and spend the day shopping and the night listening to Cumbia.

Most people might not think of Cumbia and Indianapolis in the same sentence, and it’s possible that at one time these words did not really know each other very well.  But the Latino population in Indianapolis is much denser now, and the city’s shifting again to reflect new cultural influences.  This makes it a particularly exciting time to be here, because there’s a lot more to see and do, and the music just got that much better.  It’s possible now to see performances by stars like Peewee Gonzalez, the former singer for the Kumbia Kings.

He comes from Washington and was raised in Texas, where his musical knowledge was formed.  He’s still not at a drinking age, so there’s time for a thousand more influences to come in, and in this world, anything is possible.  Cumbia comes from Colombia, and has become immensely popular in northern Mexico and in border towns, and generally is taking root everywhere.  But to even call it a Latin American form might not be precise.  It is a kind of courtship dance, and combines rhythms from Colombian indigenous influences, along with European dance forms, and the heartbeat of it very likely has its origins in West Africa.  Indianapolis is just another stop on the way to somewhere and something else.

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Events and Activities in Knoxville

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The first city founded in Tennessee was Nashville.  The second was Knoxville.  This means that when you visit Knoxville, find a wonderful hotel, and then set out on the quest, there is a history to be found and experienced that will blow your mind.  Well, that is if you happen to be another person who is taken with the history of the cities in the United States, such as myself.  The buildings that still stand today, the old streets to walk down, and the feel of being in an older city of the U.S. is one that is to be cherished and embraced to the fullest extent.  This is the perfect place to spend some time, for an entire vacation, or for a weekend retreat.

Historical tours are available that will take you through the Old Gray Cemetery, the James White Fort, the Armstrong-Lockett House and the Ramsey House Plantation.  This is a tour that will offer a look at not only the history of Tennessee, but the history of the United States as well.  Any walking tour through the city requires a stop at the Haley Heritage Square.  Here one will find an emotional tribute and memorial dedicated and in honor of Alex Haley, the award winning writer of the epic novel “Roots”.

In 1982, Knoxville was the hosting city to the World’s Fair.  Now, more than twenty years later, the site still attracts visitors from around the world.  There is a scrumptious Candy Factory, a playground and the Knoxville Museum of Art, all located within this one site.  And throughout the rest of the city, there are many more galleries and museums that explore the science, the culture, the art and the history of Knoxville.  The Knoxville Zoo is a great place to visit if you are traveling with children, as there are many interactive exhibits and educational programs that mix a bit of fun with a bit of learning.  The rich history, and the variety of ways to experience that history is one of the things that makes this city one of the perfect vacation destinations of the Southern United States.

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Traffic and Eternity in Carmel

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

For all of the things that speak to contemporary life in Carmel, Indiana, there is also that charm of middle America that underlies everything.  This is the heartland, and it seems impossible to get away from that idea.  People like John Mellancamp would sometimes come public with their Indiana connections, and make entertainments designed to change the way we think about the middle of the country, but it takes less than a generation before they become equated with it.  It’s a very large part of the iconic version of the U.S., and embracing or avoiding it both seem like powerless attempts to control a myth.

However, those who visit are often the ones who have the best chances at defining something new for the rest of us, and there are plenty of places in Carmel where hotels can offer hospitality while you investigate the myth of the midwest.  If you’re like most, you’ll be so caught up in the charm that you’ll forget the purpose and wind up enjoying yourself.  But if you like to live in tangents, then you might enjoy knowing that one of the first automatic traffic lights in the country was installed here, in 1924.

This is significant for a number of reasons, and not all of them are possible to list, but essentially, this light would be the opening for modernity, and also serve as its immediate closure.  This is the light of the future, and its promise is so great on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, that it carried a certain gravity.  What was open here was unknowable, and the Great Depression a couple years later only sealed the notion that technology might be turning in a direction we don’t have any control over.  The popularity of Einstein’s theory would soon make this even more apparent, and essentially create a paralysis in thought and action.  So today, when we hear about the elimination of lights altogether in favor of roundabouts, we see an eternal return to the moment before, the moment just before, everything changed forever.

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Not Only People get to Eat in Singapore

Monday, February 8th, 2010

I have had 2 tremendous days in Singapore. My 12 hour flight did set off some jet-lag, so I was tired from the get-go, but I was determined to jam in everything I could into my little adventure. I stayed at a hotel that promoted itself as a luxury hotel, not! It was okay, but luxury, no way; the location was good though, just off Orchard Road. Did I hear ‘shopping anyone?’

My first impression of Singapore were great impressions. It’s so fantastically clean here, the streets have literally no trash on them. Shopping options are astounding and the food here is outstanding! I used the hotels free Internet service to find a restaurant in China Town, because that’s where I wanted to visit first. I found this great restaurant guide ‘Restaurants in Singapore‘: on line and it gave me a great list of restaurants that I’d be interested in checking out.

When I was in Chinatown, I was torn at which culinary delight I’d want to try first, I went for the Damelou restaurant, which was a good choice on my part, when I entered I was that it was packed with locals, so this told me I hit a jackpot. I ordered the soup with dumplings, which I devoured, it was really very yummy and then I did almond paste for dessert. Then it was time to do some wandering around. I stopped inside many of the stores and eyed all the wonderful things I wish I could buy. After such a great meal, I grew tired and my jet-lag was really kicking in, so I headed back to my hotel and took a nap. Only slept for an hour, cause it was time to check out the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. I took the bus from Orchard Road and it only took me 40 minutes to get to the zoo. Too be honest, I found the zoo to be somewhat average, maybe because I have been to Africa, that the Zoo’s Night Safari was a let down. Even the animals were bored, the leopard was overweight.

After that, I decided to do a really Singaporean experience, get my feet sucked on by the Garra Rufa fish, it’s Singapore’s way to get a pedicure. I really enjoyed having all my dead skin removed by all these fish! It was unexpectedly relaxing and truly a unique experience.

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Rocky Mountain Experience in Denver Colorado

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

I’ve had a romantic attitude about the entire state of Colorado every since I was a child and I first heard the music of John Denver. And it’s not like he was not like he was exclusively Colorado oriented; but still, Rocky Mountain High is a great song. And as far as I understand it, it is one of two recognized official state songs so I’m not the only one that thinks that. In fact, I used to sing that song a lot in my house growing up and my family began to get tired of it. It was almost like my theme song and they would here it every time I walked into the room.

Naturally, when I had the opportunity to visit a good friend in Denver I accepted immediately. I was nineteen at the time and had been working at a local gas station. With no offense to the station, I was more than willing to quit my job and take off for a month that summer. And honestly I think it was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The mile high city was so beautiful I just had a great sense of peace combined with an excitement, which I know is an interesting combination, the entire time I was there. It really just felt like it was where I was meant to be. My friend suggested I go ahead and just move there since I had already quit my job and everything.

For some reason I decided almost on a fluke to apply to the University of Colorado Denver. The process wasn’t so much of a fluke as I hadn’t given any thought to colleges since I missed the deadline for applying to my state school. When my application was approved I nearly fainted. I had a good track record in high school and scored high on my SATs I just, I don’t know. It’s like casually pursuing a dream and it comes true or something, I can’t quite say what exactly I felt like. But I was accepted into the College of Arts and Media and I would begin school that fall. My parents were so excited when I told them that they immediately made reservations in one of the Colorado hotels to come and help me get settled in. Rocky Mountain High, I’m home.

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