A lounging deer at Genoa Park in Columbus, Ohio: The bathroom door at a Coffee Tree Roasters: Chocolatier lore at the Boulevard Sweet Shoppe in Oakmont: Huevos rancheros at Deluca’s. The lighting was very spotlighty—odd for a diner: Took a trip to the Phipps Conservatory. This Lovecraftian entity is hanging in the lobby area: All … Photos: Phipps Conservatory and Miscellany
Heh: Considering what the ancient Hebrews thought about the goings on in the heavenly realm with the Elohim council, and who rules the nations after Babel, a horrifying cosmic god-being directing America’s fate is not far off from the truth compared to other views. That is, if you share those ancient beliefs at all (I … Cthulhu For President, 2024
A ginko tree on Forbes Avenue and Smithfield Street: The Citizens Bank Tower on William Penn Place, taken from PNC Plaza. On the middle right is the old Kaufmann’s building, with a basketball court on the roof. Bottom right is the Warner Theatre sign, which I believe has been there since 1918: Fifth Avenue Place/Highmark … Photos: Pittsburgh, June 2024
That’s it. That’s the whole street, in one photo. This is facing west on Sandusky Street, after getting off the Andy Warhol Bridge, and on the opposite end is Vulcan Way. The gray wall on the left belongs to the Burns White building. Burns White is a law firm that moved out of that building … Photo: Silver Street, Pittsburgh
Walking around after dinner with some colleagues from work, heading southeast towards Liberty Avenue. Fun way to light up an otherwise dimly-lit alleyway. That building looming rather ominously in the background is the Centre City Tower. The exterior is rather bland, but its interior is nice. Your browser does not support the video tag. Otherwise, … Video: Overhead Lights at Garrison Place, Pittsburgh
Despite there being a ton of vendors at the World of Oddities Expo, I didn’t get as many pictures as I’ve done with other conventions. It was far less costume-based, so I was left with more or less taking photos of things that were for sale. Not necessarily bad, but it can be limiting and … Photos: World of Oddities Expo 2024, Pittsburgh
Looks pretty much tied, but “Jagoff” is playing a little dirty. Taken at the City-Council Building on Grant Street.
My daughter and I went to the August 1 Pittsburgh stop of the Coheed and Cambria tour, at Stage AE’s outdoor stage. Here’s two bad photos of Mothica and Alkaline Trio, respectively: I realize part of it was the sound system/engineering and their tech crew, but Coheed and Cambria had one of the best, most … Photos and Videos: Coheed and Cambria, Alkaline Trio, Mothica
Cowboy Bebop (2021) Let’s get this out of the way, first: this was bad, to no one’s surprise, but I gave it the ol’ three-episode college try. The original 1998 series was storytelling perfection and accepted as such by a wide margin of viewers and critics, so any kind of reboot is not only unnecessary, … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 28
WARNING: 91 photos on this page. I didn’t get sick this time, unlike last year. I’m going to update this post with more photos after today’s gathering.. Updates added! Forgot to mention two key things: 1 – I participated in a world record-setting effort, for the most number of people spinning a Beyblade at once. … Photos: Tekko Con 2019, Pittsburgh
You’ve been warned: this is a mammoth post. I wanted to get all my exemplary bits of music journalism (if you can call it “journalism”) posted here, for safekeeping. Most of them are from Noisecreep, but the site hasn’t been updated for months, so its demise may be soon Nevermind…it’s still kickin’. Buzzgrinder is still … Ultra Mega Post of Past Music Journalism
Decided to take some more skyline-ish photos. I tried getting into USX Tower, where my office was formerly located, since it’s in a different part of the city and could offer new views. No deal. However, these first four were taken in a different building (1 PNC). It’s in the same plaza as 2 PNC … Photos: Pittsburgh Skyline & Bonus Strawberry Way
From Saturday. I was feeling pretty terrible the whole time I was there, due to an oncoming illness, so I didn’t get as many photos as I wanted. It’s a pretty open atmosphere and people are always willing to get photographed but as a strong introvert it takes energy for me to cold approach strangers … Photos: Tekko Con 2018, Pittsburgh
The fountain at Point State Park, the point (heh) at which the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers meet in Pittsburgh.
Virgin Mobile towers are down. I heard that things won’t be back up for another 72 hours…so no calls or texts if you’re on their network. VM’s site doesn’t mention it at all. Here’s a screenshot of the outages, from Down Detector. Notice the large red monstrosity over my area, Pittsburgh. Regardless, the outage looks … Public Service Announcement: Yes, Virgin Mobile Soiled Its Drawers
Mind-Altering Quantum Experiment Shows Time Has Never Existed As We Think It Does – “You totally can’t trust anything about the universe, except the results of my experiment. Trust me! Science.” Study warns that science as we know it is evolving into something shoddy and unreliable – Bring back natural philosophy and engineering-as-research! How to … Links of Possible Relevance, Part 17
If you’re ever in the Pittsburgh area, you can now buy a real, genuine, dead tree version of Pale Blue Scratch at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in scenic, famous golf-coursey, Oakmont, PA. * Unnecessary side bar: is there a name for this linguistic phenomenon, where two causally unrelated things are grammatically linked together? The fact … Pale Blue Scratch Now Available in Oakmont, PA
Taken from the USX Tower on Grant Street. There was a protest against violence or jobs or birds. Something or other. I don’t know—just take your pick of Marxoid causes and it would fit right in. It wasn’t terribly large; what you see in the photo is the whole thing. It was very noisy and … Photo: Pittsburgh Protest, July 2016
Under construction. The brown building in the background is the USX Tower.
Don’t mind me here. It’s part of my mortgage-paying job to notice and fix the things I’m gassing on about below, so none of this post is necessary. It’s all sidebar observations. Is anything on here that necessary to begin with? It’s not that Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center website is bad, per se, … How Not to Do a Convention Center Website
A cut and paste post while I’m busy finishing up Pale Blue Scratch. I recently finished a staycation and was busy annoying everyone on Facebook with my humdrum, activities in the dense suburbs of Pittsburgh. Here they are, serialized for your pleasure—because what’s more entertaining than what an average white American male does in his … The Staycation Dad Chronicles
Inspired both by Ed’s posts about riding out in Oklahoma County and by the fact that I finally took Functional out on a non-commuting ride this season, here’s a very photo-heavy post of the route I did with some friends/in-laws. For the Pittsburgh area, it was a very flat ride with some nice views along the … Photos: Allegheny Valley Bike Ride
I’m not too keen on photos of myself, but Hot Metal Studio did a great job of making me appeal to…myself. The session was for the new book’s author photo, but this isn’t the one I’m going to use.
Pittsburgh is very hilly and very overcast. The correct combination of these two things can yield some great sky and cloud photography. This isn’t great photograph per se, but it could have been with the right equipment and not a so-so phone camera. The right photographic “raw material” is there. This was taken during the … Photo: Pittsburgh Sky
At the Altar Bar in Pittsburgh – September 22, 2014.
I made good use of the “Listen To Metal” stickers I helped Seth with. This was placed next to a map of the Pittsburgh subway system. When I checked last it was taken down. I have no idea what the pink smudge on it is: On a Pittsburgh Steelers promotional poster: On a pillar on … Photos: Listen to Metal Stickers
Rick Sebak narrated a PBS documentary on the history of amusement parks (Youtube playlist here). He mentioned baby incubators at Luna Park in Pittsburgh at the turn of the century, but it was also at the Luna Park at Coney Island. It comes off as unseeming to put babies and nurses on display for the … Baby Incubators in Amusement Parks
I was going to write a post about the paradox of the card game War—the paradox being that it should always “end” (aka, “keep going forever”) in a draw with neither player receiving all the cards, even though games of War do in fact end. I found the solution to this online on Math Overflow, … This Post Involves an Episode of Frasier Dubbed in Hungarian
My mother in law recently gave us two coffee pots, made by the WearEver company. They began around the turn of the century in the rust belt (Ohio, western Pennsylvania) and are still around in some form today. I imagine that these were some of the first things they produced. The company was closely related … These Coffeepots Are Over 100 Years Old
On my way back from the optometrist this morning I walked up 4th avenue, which was one of the first streets on which I remember driving in Pittsburgh. It was some years ago after a job interview. 4th avenue starts (or ends) at PPG Place, a curious agglomeration of crystalline spires and shimmering glass. There … An Extremely Subtle Reminder of My Pending E-book, Bored in the Breakroom
The Road is Cormac McCarthy’s tenth book, and it’s about a father and his son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America. It was panned by critics and by the crowning jewel of praise, Oprah, and has been already been shuffled out of Hollywood as a film. McCarthy’s other recent success which made it to film was … Book Review: The Road
There’s colored yarn strings of stuttered graffiti phrases on the once-bare concrete walls that parallel the east busway on the ride into downtown. One of the legible phrases is “NO SET FUTURE”, set in half-serifed seafoam. Given the number of people that ride on those buses every day I’m estimating that more people will read … One Set Future
Saturday and Sunday were pretty busy for me, as it was Art All Night in Pittsburgh. I checked my “art” in (I goofed the process up a few times. Apparently I can’t follow simple written directions…) with Marcia and her husband Travis, came back to my place for some food, then hit up the actual … Art All Night All Done