Westward Ho!

After months of searching for a job in a place a bit closer to home and in a climate condusive to human life, I'm pleased to announce that we've moved from Wisconsin to Utah, en route to Seattle! We move out there in two weeks. So if any of you guys are planning a trip to Seattle look us up and we'll take you out for a night on the town. You can all look forward to blog postings now that smell more like fish and less like hops. But before we start blogging in Seattle, I gotta put up some pictures of the ride out west, and some of the fun we've been having here in Utah. Sara and Zoe and I are way excited to start a new adventure out west.

Priceless Rock Junk

Welcome to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame! Please hand over your $25, your cameras and your immortal soul! These are but sacrifices of the Gods of Rock. As my faithful blog readers already know, I am a sucker for "priceless" Rock 'n' Roll memorabilia. My many trips to the Hard Rock Cafes of the world were certainly not for the chicken strips and the Legendary 10 oz burger, rather, the red leather pants worn by Freddie Mercury and Tom Petty's jeans when he was with the Traveling Wilburys. For a guy like me, the rock museum was like a walk into Mecca itself, or perhaps a more appropriate simile would be that it was a portal to my own personal Nirvana. After a lot of thought I've decided that rather than bore you with all the amazing stuff I saw, I'll just mention my favorite; the triple omega 8-string bass guitar owned by John Paul Jones. I spent several minutes drooling over this thing, and several more minutes today trying to find a picture of it online (no cameras allowed). If anyone ever wanted to buy me a guitar, this is where my taste lies: Zoom in and look at that fret board! Yeah, I could go on and on forever, I mean the display case containing this fabulous chunk of wood and steel was right next to that cool red car in all the ZZ Top videos. Plus there was an entire room of Beatles stuff and it was super gear. Needless to say, we stayed until closing.

Via Zoe's cutities, Sara and I got to know one of the security guards, who filled us in on the little secret that we could take pictures in the lobby. Here they are:

Friendly security guard took this picture of us in front of some of the cool guitars at the front door. These were done by celebrities, which automatically renders them masterpieces. I'm not sure who did the Ramones guitar, or the George Harrison guitar, but the blue one was done by one of the most vile people in the world, Yoko Ono. I like the Ramones. And I like George Harrison.

Remember that span of about 6 months in the 90's when everyone was wearing a Phish hat in order to fit in? This hot dog was at the forefront of that movement as it brought the members of the band into the audience during their 1994 Boston New Year's Eve concert. That's Sara below the airborne tube steak, next to Billy Joel's convertible.

And finally I think I'm obligated to include these dangling cars from a number of past U2 concerts. Unlike most U2 songs, these cars are all very unique and artistically interesting. I really liked the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. It was a great way to finish up our tour de Midwest.

Cleveland and it's Hall of Fame

So this is the exterior of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Gift Shop and Snack Hut. I too was curious as to why Cleveland is considered the birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll, we found out that it's because some local DJ guy made up the term and popularized it. There's actually a big exhibit in the museum dedicated to the Cleveland rock'n'roll scene, which, I must say is pretty lame-o. No offense to you, Drew Carey, if you happen to be reading my blog between recordings of the world's most bestest game show ever, but the evidence suggests that Cleveland does not rock...or at least it didn't until the Hall of Fame came around.

As you can see from its funky shape, the museum itself is quite the site to see. It was designed by Chinese architect I.M. Pei, who was also responsible for a way cool building in Hong Kong called the Bank of China Tower, you should look it up. Right next door to the building is the football field where the Cleveland Browns play, cleverly named the Cleveland Browns Stadium. I thought it interesting to note that Cleveland is the only NFL team that has never played in or hosted the Super Bowl. Go Cleveland! The stadium and the R'n'R HoF are both on a little peninsula that juts out into lake Erie.

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh with my Cleveland facts, the city is far nicer than some of its Midwest counter parts, in that it actually has buildings that look like they're inhabited. Plus I think its pretty cool how all the suburbs are built up on hills and each one is named Something Ridge. But enough about Cleveland, this posting's supposed to be about the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Please note that I appropriately wore my Zeppelin sweatshirt into the complex. There are actually people at the door checking to make sure that all patrons are appropriately dressed, thanks to them, no one was admitted onto the premises bedecked in Hannah Montana or Brett Favre apparel. This alone justified the $25 entrance fee.

A Stop in the Forest City

My good wife has had to endure many hours of whining over the last four years as I've begged her to take me to see the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and during this trip we finally did what was required to shut me up. Off we went to Cleveland, Ohio. While there we also got to enjoy a visit with Sara's cousin Justin, his wife Anna, and their three cute little girls, Daisy, Lilly and Violet. I'm still wondering why in the world we didn't take any pictures while we were visiting them, probably because we were too busy talking about this and that. It's so cool that we country folks from the west can survive in the "big" cities of the Midwest. Of course, none of us actually stayed there forever, it seems that potato-fed westerners only temporarily enjoy being corn-fed midwesterners.

Cleveland had other exciting things to offer, but we didn't really have a whole load of times to experience them. We do, however, have many pictures snapped from the car window of the local sites, such as the FREE stamp, which is located not too far from the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. This is another one of those great big chunks of public art that is placed in the most unusual of places all over the world. I really think somebody should put together a book filled with the world's best public art. It would have to be a giant book that would be placed in the middle of the kitchen and propped up with massive amounts of hidden steel. The FREE stamp was done by married Dutch artists Coosje van Bruggen (female) and Claes Oldenbur (male). They also did that gigantic clothes pin across the street from City Hall in Philadelphia, and my personal favorite, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, which I'm sure to post a picture of one of these days, seeing how it's located in Seattle.

We also enjoyed checking out Lake Erie, which is very large. Those Great Lakes are super cool to see, I still can't wrap my head around how huge they actually are. I think they should be called seas instead of lakes, I don't care how unsalty they are. As you can likely tell, it was sorta rainy while we were in Cleveland, so our exterior pictures were taken in such haste that they came out mostly blurry...and wet. Here's Sara as pictured with some boats. We like boats because you just don't see them every day, and that chain is pretty awesome.

Historic words etched in stone...and motorola screens

Holy cow, I feel like I've been blogging about Gettysburg for the last two months. I think this last posting should finish it up, these pictures were taken at the actual disputed spot that Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. All the pennies on the monument were put there by visiting tourists. Sara and I checked, and there were no slots for debit cards, so we weren't able to properly honor the giver of the famous address.

As always, I've got loads of partially useful facts about the address itself, but I think I can boil them all down to this single sentence: Four months after the battle in Gettysburg, Lincoln spoke for about two minutes, preceded by an old guy who spoke for over two hours, all this while only half of the 7,500 dead soldiers had been buried. That's pretty sad stuff. The words of the address are super moving, I remember reading them while standing in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. We were there pretty late at night in January, just Sara and I, and we spent nearly an hour reading all the inscriptions up and down the walls. The enormous statue of President Lincoln stared down on us as we read his famous words in gigantic stone letters. This is in great contrast to the experience had by the field-tripping youth at the Gettysburg Address site who spent most of their historical tour texting to one another. Or perhaps they were using their cell phone apps to read the Gettysburg Address and commenting to one another about it via text message.

The best-known portions are at the beginning and the ending of his brief speech, but I also love the stuff in the middle. I wonder if presidents come up with better stuff to say when tragic events occur? I guess what I really like about presidential speeches of those days were that these are the actual words of President Lincoln, not his assistant speech writer twice removed. Perhaps presidents of nowadays would write their own speeches if they had someting more important than greenhouse gasses and health insurance to write about. Gettysburg was an incredible experience, I don't think I've ever put so many words on this blog about any other place. If you can get there, you just gotta make the trip.