I seem to have found my way back to the baseball stadium. Outside the northwest corner are statues of the Cardinals who have been inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Don't remember who this old batsman was but he seems intent on breaking some windows of the Bank of America building, sometimes known locally as the Darth Vader Tower (the glass exterior is black). Note to visitors from other countries: this is not our country's national bank. That is the Federal Reserve. There is a regional branch of the Fed a few blocks away. Bank of America is a very, very large private bank whose name was recommended by the famous consultants, Hubris Associates.A digression: the Fed's web site has a truly bizarre kid's page. The more tots know about monetary policy, the better off we will all be.The older building in the bottom center was once the regional headquarters of AT&T, which split into Southwestern Bell and the other so-called Baby Bells, which then became SBC but sometimes Cingular, all of which passed through a worm tunnel in a black hole and was transformed into, voilá, AT&T. No, I certainly don't get it but see Stephen Colbert's incisive analysis of the process.
TOMORROW'S POST: Run For Cover!
A triptych is a painting or any image in three panels. There are about a bazillion of them in European churches and museums, like this one and this one, most often on lofty subjects. It's now common to see them made of photographs. However, since my artistic license has been suspended on points, I take my triples any way I find them.Back at the Mardi Gras parade on a cold, snowy February day. Some people are really ready to let it out and show it off. Click this picture for a larger version and look at the words on the masking tape stuck to his jacket: "HEY POINT [a local radio station and sponsor of the parade] CHECK OUT MY TATTOOZ." Then examine the fine craftsmanship on his back and belly, with the radio station's frequency written with a Sharpie, I guess, over his flaming navel. And I want to tell you, it was cold.
TOMORROW'S POST: A Swinger
Taken on the same cold winter day as the picture in my first post of this blog, the south leg of the Arch catches the setting sun through broken cloud. It looks extraterrestrial or perhaps even divine, a ribbon of metal falling from the sky into the trees. Okay, maybe that's a bit pretentious. If I had some stout bone and a few large apes, I could pretend that I'm that I'm a low-grade Midwestern Stanley Kubrick and make a picture following a femur and the mysterious steel into the heavens until we see a slowly rotating space station, then associate it with an MP3 of the fanfare from Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra with a segue into The Blue Danube. Man, that would be a lot of Photoshop work.
Are my notes getting too obscure?
TOMORROW'S POST: A Profane Triptych
St. Louis has a number of buildings with trompe l'oeil paintings on the walls, particularly around the city center. (Why don't I do a series on that? Note to self...) This is the back side of an old downtown office building, sparsely occupied these days, viewed from 7th and Locust Streets. (Most east-west streets in downtown St. Louis are named for trees - not insects.) We did not steal Michelangelo's David from Florence (which doesn't have a CDPB and deserves one) and put it at the end of a fake loggia. It's just a weird thing to see while walking around a medium sized Midwestern city.
The loggia is a charming architectural element created in Italy, characterized by a passageway on the outside of a building, supported by columns and open to the air. Beautiful examples are found in Florence, and, most famously, on the Doge's palace in Venice.
"Ain't got any of them loggias around here in Missouri, do we, paw?" "Nah, son, just some fake ones. Here, have another can of the product of the local mega-brewer."
TOMORROW'S POST: Thursday Arch Series
American urban blues - the newspaper machine on the side of my office building. Our local paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has been dumbed-down over the years like so many U.S. dailies. Most people I know get their news from National Public Radio, The New York Times, or the Daily Show, but you gotta have the PD for local sludge, your favorite comics and a daily sudoku at no extra charge. And the supermarket coupons. You will never find supermarket coupons in The Times.
TOMORROW'S POST: The Fake Loggia
THE RALLY
THE GAME
Yesterday was a gorgeous day in St. Louis, bright sun and 75 F. (24 C.). The Cardinals held an opening day rally in Kiener Plaza in the city center. Nobody knows who Kiener was and I can't even find it on Google. Three friends were enjoying the sunshine and beverages produced by the local mega-brewer. They met some nice young ladies who were promoting the fine restaurant mentioned in yesterday's post, which has just opened a new outlet on the plaza. The irony is that they did not appear to consume many 2/3-Lb. Double Bacon Cheese Thickburgers, despite their enthusiasm for their employer. The ladies' shirts bore various slogans, one of which was "Hunger Patrol." Really? Hungry for what?The baseball game opened with great ceremony, featuring members of past Cardinals championship teams. Poor old Stan Musial, so honored that his statue towers outside the stadium, came onto the field in a golf cart but was not well enough to walk over to the other veterans. The home team then took a 6-1 drubbing by the Mets. Late in the game, some fans still tried to work up a bit of enthusiasm.
Note the tee shirt of the man at the left of the first picture (click the picture to enlarge it). A small, publicity hungry publisher issues an annual ranking of America's safest and most dangerous cities. This year St. Louis topped their bad list. The lists are completely bogus, of course, for statistical and demographic reasons too lengthy to mention here. Maybe the owners should satisfy their needs with the Hunger Patrol instead of picking on us.
TOMORROW'S POST: Bad News
Now don't go thinking my city is all grace and beauty. Just two blocks south of the stadium is this purveyor of one of the main nutrition groups for some of my countrymen (and women), the others being the the category that includes the Hardee's 2/3-Lb. Double Bacon Cheese Thickburger (1300 calories, 40g of saturated fat, 205mg of cholesterol and 2110mg of sodium - click down the list at the right side of the linked page) and Krispy Kreme Donuts (who wont even list nutritional information on their web site - you have to call them. And probably give the password.), wrapping up with the group that features Busch Bavarian Beer (made by the sponsors of the stadium), Captain Morgan Spiced Rum (who orders you to drink responsibly), etc. etc. Well, the stuff they sell to eat inside the stadium isn't any better. (Look! Look! There's a Hardee's in there! Thickburgers!)
This rant was not brought to you by the American College of Cardiology, but it could have been. I apologize for any offense. Back to baseball in tomorrow's post.
