Your Moment is Now

Miami, Florida has had a strong placement in this nation’s popular culture for many years. It is symbolic to many people and represents the beauty of warm bay waters and glorious days in the sun. There have also been more sensational representations of the local culture that are associated with a dynamic nightlife and somewhat controversial crime scene. This became an obvious association with the release of the film Scarface in 1983 and the hit television series Miami Vice, which debuted the following year in 1984. These two productions become instantly imbedded in the national consciousness and Miami developed a sensational notoriety that contributed to the fascination many people have for this unique city. Tourism actually increased during this time rather than scaring people away, which is a common occurrence with controversial associations. Many people are drawn to exploring these taboo lifestyles from the safety and stability of their own living rooms and it does nothing to deter the pleasure seeking Miami Beach tourists from their days in the sand.

Miami Vice was a popular 1980s program and starred Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas, who became enormous pop culture icons. They played the Miami-Dade police officers who went undercover on the Miami streets. In addition to creating a lot of attention to the city of Miami, the television show also changed the way a lot of series were shot. It departed from the standard crime investigation format and focused on the cultural trends of the time. It was typically recognized as being the first to fully integrate music and visual effects into the story. It drew much of its structural format on the New Wave music and cultural that was consistent with the times. Of course the mainstream pop cultural film and television aspects of Miami did not disappear with the 80s, CSI Miami is the contemporary replacement and is just as popular.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, offers much more than a view of the aquatic life. It contains 660 species of animals, and about 16,500 specimens in all — yes, there’s an abundance of fish (from the Summer Flounder to the Zebra Shark), and invertebrates (from the Blue Crab to the Giant Pacific Octopus), but there’s also mammals and reptiles, too. Some mammals are obvious choices to be included in an aquarium, such as the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin, but what about the Golden Lion Tamarin or the Pygmy Marmoset? The tamarin and marmoset are part of the family of monkeys, perhaps not the usual animal exhibit in an aquarium. Perhaps it’s easier to understand the inclusion of turtles — of which there’s a great variety, including the Giant Amazon River turtle, the Green Sea Turtle, the Painted Turtle, the Wood Turtle, and the Diamondback Terrapin (still a turtle).

The truth is that the National Aquarium not only contains the usual suspects in an aquarium — toads and salamanders and frogs, such as the American bullfrog and the Blue Poison Dart frog; and fish and sharks, such as the Banggai Cardinalfish and the Sand tiger shark — but also the animals you’d never suspect would be in an aquatic museum, such as birds and Australian animals.

Among the birds you’ll find a collection of international species, with amazingly colorful names: the Blue-Crowned Motmot , the scarlet ibis, the white-tailed trogon, the blue-gray tanager. Among the Australian animals, there’s the Black-Headed Python and the Grey-Headed Flying Fox. There’ s a Laughing Kookaburra, a Death Adder, a Frilled Lizard, a freshwater crocodile, a Snake-Necked Turtle and a Zebra Finch.

If you’re staying a few days in the best of Baltimore best hotels , then you might find the National Aquarium a pleasant way to stroll among a number of creatures, including the more amphibian-minded, without getting wet.

Mandy was in Singapore with three of her co-workers on what was a cross between a business meeting trip and overall convention. The four of them had finished a major presentation for the day and thought it went extremely well so they decided to celebrate. They had been to Singapore before and the one thing they didn’t get to do, which they all had been interested in was attend a performance of Cantonese Opera. So, on the night of their big success, they decided that they should treat themselves to a production at The Chinese Theatre Circle. Travel was a significant aspect of their job and the four of them made great traveling companions because they were all interested in exploring the local culture, including the food, wherever they went. So the last time they were in Singapore, they enjoyed some great local cuisine.

They all loved the production and were talking about it on their way out of the theatre. Mandy finally had to interrupt a conversation they were having on the detail of the customs and make up to say that she was famished and they needed to decide where they were going to eat before they could continue. Everyone started suggesting traditional Singapore cuisine options and some through in Chinese restaurants they had heard about. Finally Mandy had enough and had to say that she needed Italian food and could not compromise. Everyone was silent for a moment and then burst out laughing. Mandy was known for strong, and often bizarre, food cravings, and this fit her perfectly. Of course there is nothing bizarre about Italian food, or maybe there is who knows, but it was not what anyone else would have thought to have on that particularly evening in Singapore. It was settled though, the group was going to continue their discussion on the beauty of Cantonese Opera while enjoying pasta and or scampi in an Italian restaurant.

I went to the hotel today.  I was in New York, and even though it was morning, I was already tired, and I wanted to take a nap.  I went up to my room and did take a nap, and it was much longer than I had planned, and it was not until the next day that I woke up and realized that I needed to have breakfast.  Perhaps I would need to eat two breakfasts, one for yesterday, and it’s possible that I should work lunch and dinner in between these things.  But I don’t want this to become too much of an endless circle, because there are things I want to do besides eat.  New York has five star hotels that are sometimes exotic, and always rather pleasing in a way that apparently agrees with me.

I went downstairs and met the concierge.  She was an attractive woman, and when she spoke to me, she had a habit of brushing her hair away from her ear.  It was charming, and I recognized the gesture as one I had seen before, on other women who did not look like her.  I wanted to get her advice on the best way to walk the length of the city, and where one could go to spend some time looking into the water.  Instead, I forgot everything and tried to ask her to join me for supper.  I would insist!  If I had remembered, but I did not, and so I walked out of the hotel and looked for someone stranger than me, someone I could scorn openly.

There was no one and there were too many.  This was a rare day without clouds, and there was a feeling of purpose in my steps.  In the end, they would just be steps, but I was walking more quickly than usual.  Not twice as fast, and not even one and a half times as fast, but perhaps 20% faster.  This was a good pace.  It was enough.  Later on, I would be meeting with my friend, Camus, and we might talk about the city, or about the wars, or about the thousand things we always found in common to speak of, and sometime toward the end of the day, I might even consider something fried for my dinner.

The setting of the Oklahoma Territory inspired a grand slam musical written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. OK! It was the setting and the earlier Lynn Riggs play called Green Grow the Lilacs. This was the first musical for the future great duo and they really gave a lot of flash and awe over an old story with a different ending. The first play written with the Oklahoma theme was not a hit but Rodgers and Hammerstein made some great changes and it is still a top rated musical performed all over the world today.

Rodgers originally worked with Lorenz Hart and together they wrote some amazing songs like Blue Moon, The Lady is a Tramp, Falling in Love with Love and My Funny Valentine. When approached to do a project from the old Riggs play Hart didn’t want to have anything to do with it so Rodgers looked to Hammerstein to make it happen. Hammerstein’s original partner also refused to work on the project so that made a perfect fit for Rodgers and Hammerstein to take it on. They wrote the play and then cast singers who could act which was unusual for those days. They performed it in a small venue and then made some changes like adding the show stopper hit number Oklahoma and changing the name to Oklahoma and then opened it on Broadway in March 1943.

If you like show tunes maybe it would be fun to get the soundtrack to take with you while you drive around Oklahoma staying at luxurious hotels www.hotelsoklahoma.net singing classic songs like Oh What a Beautiful Mornin, Kansas City, It’s a Scandal! Its and Outrage!, People Will Say We’re in Love and Oklahoma song by all. If you know the musical you  can appreciate the references made about the show in other shows and industry fields like the popular South Park episode Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Meg Ryan and Billy Chrystal sing a karaoke version of Surrey With the Fringe on Top in the hit film When Harry met Sally.

In two films about a post-apocalyptic New York City, Twelve Monkeys (1995), in which most of the world has been destroyed by a deadly virus, and I am Legend (2007), in which most of the world, again, has been destroyed by a deadly virus that turns people into vampire-like beings — in these movies, you will see wild animals, tigers and lions, roaming the streets of Manhattan.  It’s a strange sight, the wild natural world against the man-made skyscraping towers of one of the world’s great cities.  But, of course, there are lions and tigers in Manhattan.  There are elephants, too, and gorillas, all in the center of town, but safely contained inside the Central Park Zoo.

While it may be odd to think of wild creatures in the center of a city, it’s less odd to think of a zoo in one.  Especially a zoo as interesting and as educational as the one in Central Park.  The zoo continuously puts together events for the public; two upcoming events include the “Naked” Polar Bear Cruise, which will raise funds for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for each minute a person manages to spend on the ride.  It’s noted, though, that even thought it’s called the “Naked” Polar Bear Cruise, the “naked” part is in quotes and they actually require you to be in a bathing suit, and not naked at all.  The event is scheduled for February 27th.  Later, still, you’ll find a Run for the Wild on April 24th, where the WCS benefit will allow walkers and runners to run along a five kilometer course at the Bronx Zoo.

However, if you’ve found a hotel by checking here, then you might want to look for activities you can do at the Central Park Zoo today.  For that, try out the penguin feeding and presentation, which is held at ten thirty in the morning and again at two thirty in the afternoon.  You’ll see king penguins and chinstraps and gentoos (also penguin types), feasting away; you may join the harbor seals for a meal, as well at eleven forty-five, two fifteen, and four fifteen.  Watching animals live, safely at the Central Park Zoo, seems to me much better than watching them on the big screen.

The sounds of the night are always more pronounced than the sounds of the day.  Here, where the volume of people and machines makes the volume of the world much larger, we melt from the day into the night effortlessly, and don’t notice the difference in degrees until much later.  This is true for light, sound, and thought.  There are many days when it is very difficult to see the sun, and there are evenings when seeing a star is the most miraculous thing in the world.  It is always this way.

The bark of New York is equal to its bite, and its bitterness is matched by the sweetness, and the echoes of a thousand angels in the night sky.  Coming into the city, coming to feel that it’s time to check in and start again, once more, to perhaps fail, and perhaps not fail.  This is the way the endless songs that we hear on the radios everywhere sound when they are played all at once.  In our solitude, the overwhelming waves drive into our private moments and ask us to pay attention.  Seven stations playing at one time, and there are words in between the music that only come out when they mix together, and the words are sometimes your name.

That’s the beginning of a moment, and moments here have to be recognized while they pass, and you don’t always have time to decide to follow them.  Instinct plays a part in all of this, and it’s a way of surviving the evenings.  The nights are ruled by instinct, and the days by reason, and they have to be sharp, and sharpening is exhausting.  This is the edge of the tooth that we once searched for.  This is the place where the teeth begin to intersect.  This is the place where New York begins to call you by your name.

Whether they are antique tires, or new model car tires, racing tires or truck tires, when they are taken care of they last longer. This is true with everything. One of the first things you can check yourself is your driving speed, and whether you tend to take off with quick starts, turn corners at a high speed, or come to a screeching stop. All three of these habits will cause the tread on your tires to wear out extremely quickly. Another element of driving that will damage your tires, is not keeping your eyes out for potholes, or consistently hitting the curbs when parallel parking or pulling into parking spaces.

If you know that you will be regularly carrying heavy loads in vehicles such as work trucks, make sure that you adjust for that with either the kind of tires you buy or by the air pressure you keep your tires set at. All of the extensions and the valves on tires should be kept sealed, as this will ensure that moisture and/or dirt will not find its way into your tire. Check your tires often for debris such as small pieces of glass, metal or rocks that may become wedged into the tire’s tread. Even the heavy duty all purpose tires such as Nitto tires, will become easily damaged by hitting a bump when one of those bits of debris is already there, the bump could cause them to puncture the tire.

One thing that many people do when they find that they are stuck in mud, or sand, or even on ice, is that they spin their tires. Stepping on the gas is a first response, but it is actually a very dangerous response, as spinning the tires like that can actually cause them to explode. In colder weather, the tire will still create quite a bit of heat causing the temperature of the tire to elevate and pressure to build. In vehicles with extremely powerful engines, this can happen in about two to three seconds. Itdoesn ‘t take very long at all. Proper care of and proper attention paid to your tires will keep you safe and will ensure that your tires have a long life of optimum performance.

There are plenty of amazing NY hotels around Central Park were you can see and do many things while you are staying in the big apple. The park has so much to offer. There are more than twenty five  million people who visit the park every year. It was first opened in 1859 and completed in 1873. In 1963 the park became an official National Historic Landmark. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. It is landscaped well in that you would think it was all natural and the buildings around it were the only things that were built. The many lakes and ponds were completely planned. There are many walking trails and open air grass areas. There is a swimming pool that turns into one of two ice rinks in the winter.

Over the years many things are added to the park. The Central Park Zoo and the Central Park Conservatory Garden came along when there were some exotic birds and animals given to the park in the first years of the parks opening. It was a good idea to create a sanctuary for the plants and animals that came along. Some other things added to the park was the Delacorte Theater which is were they put on the Shakespeare plays in the summer. It is maintained by the Central Park Conservancy which is a private organization that works with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Some of the most romantic and fun ways of getting around the park is by taking a Horse and Carriage ride. This all started in 1935 and they still hold the nostalgia of the good old days. They have appeared in many films that have been shot in Central Park. Major Giuliani went to the stables and asked the drivers to bring out their horse and carriages to help lift the spirits of the city when they were dealing with such lost of the September 11. They do give a sense one a sense of joy as they pass by.

As with many of the southern as well as eastern states, Missouri has an interesting history and its name as well as the names of some of its prominent cities is based on various figures from the country’s early development. One of the most common historic associations to Missouri’s name itself is the Missouri Compromise. The basic properties of this compromise dealt with an agreement between the anti and pro-slavery factions that were part of the US Congress. The agreement, or compromise, defined boundaries of legal slave ownership regions and established that slavery was prohibited the act north of the 36th parallel. This included the region that was formerly the Louisiana Territory. After continued debate and much disagreement and argument in the government this compromise was passed in 1820. Many of the tourists who visit the state learned about the Missouri Compromise in school though this may be the last or one of the last things on their mind as they enjoy a comfortable stay and visit the contemporary attractions. Perhaps it will come to mind when visiting landmarks and historic icons.

The city of Jackson, Missouri is another instance of name significance in relationship to history. Although, with the Missouri Compromise it was the congressional act that was named after the state and with the city of Jackson, it is was named after President Andrew Jackson. Jackson was one of the country’s more colorful president’s and today his legacy is defined by a contrast of interests and perspectives. On the controversial and unpopular side was both pro slavery and also supported Indian removal policies. His major individual liberty and pro democracy stances are often emphasized in association to his politics, though it is important to remember that these views and positions only applied to white male citizens and this was clearly defined in his views. He was known as a tough character and this earned him the nic-name of Old Hickory. He was also the country’s first frontier president and this remains a strong part of his legacy.