Watershed

Stingrays and Dead Pink Flamingos

So the weird news of the week was that a guy got stabbed by a stingray.  In fact, the stingray jumped in the guy's boat, and while he was trying to throw him off, he got stabbed in the heart.  Unlike the Croc Hunter, though, he didn't instinctually pull the sting out, so it served as a sort-of plug.  So he lived to make it to the hospital, and lived through the surgery to remove the barb.

The Pink Flamingo was not so lucky this week.

RIP: Pink Flamingo, 1957-2006

By Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub
Home & Garden Editor
Posted October 20 2006, 12:37 PM EDT

The pink plastic flamingo, a Florida-inspired icon that has been reviled as kitschy bad taste and revered as retro cool, is dead at age 49.
 
The pop culture symbol met its demise after its manufacturer, Union Products, of Leominster, Mass., was socked with a triple economic threat -- increases in costs of electricity and plastic resin combined with loss of financing. Production ended in June, and the plant is scheduled to close Nov. 1, according to president and CEO Dennis Plante. Union Products made 250,000 of its patented plastic pink flamingos a year in addition to other garden products.
 
Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, paid tribute to the infamous bird that has been immortalized everywhere -- from the John Waters' movie Pink Flamingos, to bachelor parties and lawns across America.
 
"Let's face it," he said. "As iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy, campiness in the American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo."
 
The birth of the plastic pink flamingo in 1957 coincided with the booming interest in Florida, Thompson said, making it possible for those in other parts of the country to have a little piece of the Sunshine State's mystique in their yard.
 
By the late '70s, according to Thompson, the pink flamingo became a symbol of bad taste. It was considered trash culture and embraced by folks with a wise-guy attitude. They knew better (wink, wink) but embraced the iconic symbol anyway.
 
By the late '80s and early '90s, he said we learned to make fun of pop culture items such as the pink flamingo as well as appreciate them.
 
"The pink flamingo has gone from a piece of the Florida boom and Florida exotica to being a symbol of trash culture to now becoming a combination of all we know -- kitsch, history, simplicity and elegance," Thompson said.
 

Lauderdale by the Air and Sea

So the Air & Sea Show was in Ft. Lauderdale this weekend. And since my place is just a bit north of where the show was happening, we were getting flybys all weekend.  Which was both cool and distracting.

During a past Air & Sea Show in Chicago, I was in Wrigley Field watching the Cubs.  A couple of jets buzzed the field once or twice -- so low that it seemed like one of them went between the banks of lights.  I'm sure if they had been that close in reality, we would all have been scorched by the afterburners.  But the massive sound of the jet engines makes them seem really near to you, even if they're quite high up.

I was able to see bits and pieces of the show, from just outside my front door.  But as you can imagine, it was hard to get any closeups.

Still, some of these give you an idea.  And the first one cracks me up -- I took it from right near my garbage cans, just outside my back door.

These next three are in order, of a single plane turning around.

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And ifnally, 5 jets flying in formation.

Yellow Frontyard

Speaking of lush, here's the view out my front door this afternoon.

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And here's a closeup of yellow.

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Not a bad thing to walk past while doing laundry all day.

That was one really annoying aspect of the class-oriented society in Dubai.  We literally could not find a laundromat.  I washed underwear and socks and t-shirts in the hotel room, while sending out shorts and suits to dry cleaning, until I couldn't take it anymore and used the hoterl laundry service once.  30 bucks for some socks, and a few t-shirts.

I was never so happy to stick quarters in a machine as when washing my clothes today.

Lush Life

So I've been getting over jet lag and adjusting to being back home the last couple days.  Working on the last feedback from the client, too, but that's just a detail.

One of the things I was saving up for, gustatotily, was the first hamburger I got back in the States.  Le Tub, at least on a Friday afternoon, is back to being not-too-crowded.  That was a good deal.

What was strange, though, was the drive down.  I took A1A all the way from Commercial (with a stop off in downtown Lauderdale).  No big deal.  Clean sand and blue skies, just like normal.

Then  I hit the causeway at Dania Beach Blvd., crossing over the Intracoastal to the barrier island.  It was so lush, aggressively shovingt out dark greens and dark blues; the water and trees below the blue sky, that I almost had to pull over to the side of the road.  After a month in the desert -- and make no mistake, even with the Gulf close by and the tall buildings and the watered lawns, Dubai is desert through and through -- the power of greenery and, er, blue-ery was dizzying.

Where did those COLORS come from?  Amazing.

Calling All Ladies!

I took this picture to annoy my sister, who is in her 6th month with a nugget inside.  Every time I look at it, I giggle like a moron.  So I thought I would share.

The "OB GYN   By the Sea" combination I find funny to start.  But when  you add in the "Space Available for Lease", I wonder:  "What kind of noonie clinic you people running here?"

Long Distance Commuting

I've ben alternating between various cars while in Florida.  It's all part of what my Mom calls "our family's communistic lifestyle", where we share everything.   So I switched out to what I consider my primary car: my '85 BMW -- the Bimmer.  Now, the Bimmer was the car I drove back and forth between NYC and Chicago during the Fall and Winter of '04.  One of the last major events in Brooklyn, in fact, was that the Bimmer got broken into (again, after one time in Chicago), and the stereo got stolen (again).  In fact, I drove all the way back to Chicago with a busted window in December freezing cold.  Bundled up for 12 straigfht hours, while Jack Frost whistled and whispered and spit at me for 800 miles of I-80.

I still haven't replaced the stereo.  Which means that the 3.5 or 4 hour drive from Orlando to Lauderdamndale was pretty silent last night (except for the sound of a grey cat wauling).  What did I to keep myself occupied and awake?  For the first half of the drive, from 4 Corners to Ft. Pierce, I thought about sex.  Sex I've had; sex I'd like to have; all with the various combinations of historical and fantastical women (sometimes in the same person) to go with it.  After Ft. Pierce, when I switched from the Turnpike to I-95, I sang out loud.  For a good 45 minutes of that time, it was making up new lyrics to my song, "I'm Tired", which the Robot and I recorded a couple years ago.  I may have an MP3 sitting around somewhere.

Anyway, that's my advice for all you long haulers out there.  If your radio goes on the fritz, two good options for wakefullness are to think about sex, or to sing to yourself.  10-4, good buddy.

Ship! It's a ship!

I want everyone to note how careful I was not to refer to the cruise ship as a "boat", btw.  I got yelled at by co-workers last week for doing just that.

But boy, is it funny to talk to folks who work for cruise lines, or the Navy, and deliberately and blithely called those big vessels "boats".  I was taught that habit by a Marine who I met during college.  Like most Marines I've met (and Army folks), he really enjoyed things that made Navy folks unhappy.

Bad Pix

Dang.  The picture below is of yet another by-the-sea bidness.  The Athena-by-the-Sea Restaurant.  But the picture turned out lousy, so it's hard to read.  Also, further down is the "Lord's Realty".  I assume it's a place where you can buy a timeshare slot in Heaven.

So, to make up for the lousy picture, here's a nice one of the holiday season on the beach:

Intracoastal

So, up and down the Atlantic Coast of Florida are all these barrier islands.  From the Space Coast to Key Biscayne, these are the islands where all the expensive highrise condos tend to get built.  Also, they're where the hurricanes land first when they sweep in from the Atlantic.

The body of water that separates these barrier islands from the mainland is called the Intracoastal Waterway.  The Intracoastal actually goes all the way from Key West to  Boston, and along the Gulf side all the way to the Rio Grande.  It's maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers for boats and ships to have a protected traffic path.

Here's a view of the Intracoastal, facing south from the Oakland Park Blvd. Bridge.

Canal Neighborhood

Straight out the front gate, you go a block and end up at on the the many, many, many Ft. Lauderdale area canals.  If only they went far enough west, I would consider commuting by kayak.  And if I worked downtown, I would SERIOUSLY consider commuting by kayak, since I could race the Water Taxi service around the canals and buildings.

If you went straight ahead for a little bit, you'd hit the Intracoastal Waterway, btw.