A Word on Manhattanhenge

I went to Gantry Plaza State Park yesterday in the hopes of seeing Manhattanhenge, a phenomenon that happens four times a year when the sun either rises or sets aligned with Manhattan's street grid. Unfortunately, I was a bit late in seeing it, but upon seeing the following information, I came up with a great idea.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's office originally supplied NewYorkology with the wrong dates, (May 31 and July 11) which were originally posted in the headline for this entry and in the text below. The new and improved dates for Manhattanhenge 2007 are May 30 (at 8:10 p.m.) and July 13 (at 8:20 p.m.)

Here's the source.

The July Manhattanhenge will be on a Friday. The second Friday of July. I'm going to see about tying the Manhattanhenge viewing with the stake dance to be held that night.

This Ain’t a Scene, It’s a Transit Video!

My latest transit video. Enjoy.

2:58.25!

Attention faithful blog readers: There is a new record for travel through the 60th Street tunnel between Lexington Avenue-60th Street and Queensboro Plaza. The time is 2 minutes, 58¼ seconds. The record was attained on Wednesday, 09 May 2007, at about 17:04. Lead motor of involved train is 8732, an R160B type car built by Kawasaki in 2006. Top speed during this run was about 58 miles per hour. This new record beats the previous one by about nine seconds.

I like fast trains. I love it when the express train I'm on zips past the local train I'm not on. The problem is that there aren't too many places for trains to go fast in the subway system. However, the East River tunnels make for some speedy spots. Ever since my MiniDisc days, I played “Bodyrock” by Moby as the train made its trek through the tunnel. After the train stopped at Queensboro Plaza, I would check the time, and give a letter grade for the trip. If it was below 3:10, I'd give an A+, 3:10 to 3:20, an A, 3:20 to 3:25, a B, etc. If the song finishes before the train stops at Queensboro Plaza, the ride gets and F, and since I got my first iPod, I made my own playlist which includes Strong Bad saying, “Not good enough, F--” (from for kids), and a recording of Anne Robinson saying, “You are the weakest link…Goodbye!” (from The Weakest Link). After that, I play a song from The Murmurs. More recently, I've been alternating between that song and You’re Pitiful by “Weird Al” Yankovic. When the trip goes well (i.e. “Bodyrock” is still playing while I'm standing on the platform at Queensboro Plaza, I'll play “I Like That” by Houston or “I Like It” by Narcotic Thrust, or both. Take a look at my recently played songs on Last.fm (under "What I've Been Listening To"). If you see Bodyrock followed by any of the songs I've mentioned, then you'll know I've been through the Sixty.

This doesn't mean I don't like slow. I like slow when it's okay to go slow, or unsafe to go too fast. But when your train tops out at 45 MPH in a tunnel designed for trains to go 70, then the trip leaves much to be desired. There's a reason for speed limits, but they don't need to be artificially low. I support putting the rapid in “rapid transit,” so I'll continue to do this.

Where Has Cinema Etiquette Gone?

Today, I (along with my mother and grandmother) went to see Spider-Man 3 at the AMC 34th Street Theater. The film was good. The audience I had the displeasure of watching it with however, need to go take a remedial Cinema Etiquette class.

There was a group of teenage girls sitting next to me who just wouldn't shut up! Something would happen in the movie, and the girl sitting to my left would give a brief synopsis of the last 30 seconds of the film to the girl sitting to her left. By the time we were nearing the end of the film, every time she would say something about the movie, I felt like saying, "Yes, we know!"

Then, there were the cell phones. Have they stopped playing those pre-show commercials that tell people to turn off their cell phones? There must have been about 15 cell phones that rang (whether audibly or not) throughout the whole movie. And people were answering these phone calls, and having conversations!

Like I said, most of the folks in that theater badly need to (re)take Cinema Etiquette 101. At least there weren't a bunch of screaming kids to worry about.

McDonald's: Overpriced?

So I went over to McDonald's this morning to get some breakfast. I order the Deluxe Breakfast Platter with orange juice. THEY WANTED EIGHT DOLLARS FOR IT! Now, I've paid more for a meal before, but that was because the quality of the food warranted it. The quality of McDonald's food does NOT warrant paying eight dollars for two pancakes, scrambled eggs, three pieces of bacon and a hash brown. Six dollars, maybe, but NOT eight. It's drive-thru robbery! It's price gouging! It's an outrage! I'm not going back to McDonald's for breakfast anytime soon.