Highway in the Sky

"Welcome aboard the Walt Disney World monorail. Your highway in the sky."

[sonichedgeblog]

From the original American advertisement for ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’.

[@Sonic_Hedgeblog] [Patreon]

[bubbagumps]

► Film Facts ➛ Beauty and the Beast (1991) ღ The last phrase of Cogsworth’s line “Flowers, chocolates, promises you don’t intend to keep… ” was ad-libbed by David Ogden Stiers.

[thedevilsrain]

[a-girl-who-loves-disney]

R.I.P. David Ogden Stiers (1942-2018)

Thank you for voicing our childhood.

[ridingonsunshine]

TIL The woman who created Putt-Putt went to prison for fraud. The reason: she wanted to pay for a giant dream house, and wouldn’t let anyone stand in her way. My inner child is crying right now.

[rolandopujol]

Who’s the top dog in Albany? Why, it’s Nipper! He’s the biggest dog of them all, weighing in at 4 tons and standing 2 ½ stories tall. The RCA mascot has been Albany’s watchdog in the sky since 1958. His gramophone is long gone, but Nipper has been lovingly restored and cared for by the moving company that owns the warehouse where Nipper once kept an eye on the distribution of RCA TV sets and other electronics. These days, he’s watching over the gentrification of what is now called The Warehouse District. #retrologist

[rolandopujol]

PHOTOS: The stories behind the haunting relics of the World Trade Center that survived the horror of 9/11

Earlier this year, The Retrologist shared with you a discovery that was made amid the ruins at Ground Zero: An intact copy of the June 23, 1969 edition of The New York Times, which reported on the death of Judy Garland on the front page. 

I learned of this discovery, among many other fascinating ones that few people know about, during a tour back in 2006 of Hangar 17 at Kennedy Airport, where the Port Authority was storing  much of what remained of the World Trade Center. I photographed many of these items with my trusty Treo 650, and have sifted through my shoot to share with you these selections. Some of these items are iconic symbols of the day, but others, like an old can of beer and a Bugs Bunny statue, draw their power from how unremarkable they once were. Now, they’re all museum pieces that survived New York’s darkest day:

Can of Rheingold beer

A vintage, crushed can of Rheingold Beer “Extra Dry” was found amid the debris at Ground Zero, the relic perhaps of a construction worker’s long-ago lunch break. Rheingold is an iconic New York brand of beer, famed for its commercials that celebrated New York landmarks, and now enjoying something of a hipster renaissance. 

***

The can of Pepsi Cola

A vintage can of Pepsi Cola was found embedded in concrete, but in otherwise good shape.

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The 1973 plaque honoring WTC workers

This plaque commemorates the April 1973 dedication of the World Trade Center, and managed to survive the complex’s destruction 28 years later.

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The plaza sign for 5 WTC

Here’s an intact plaza sign for 5 World Trade Center, one of the three considerably smaller dark-glass buildings that ringed the World Trade Center plaza. 5 WTC was on the northeast corner of the site, and many remember it as the home of the Borders bookstore. Much of the building survived the destruction, but it was eventually razed. Click HERE to see what it looked like before 9/11.

***

Subway sign/WTC mall

A perfectly intact subway sign, featuring the Twin Towers logo, directs commuters toward the Nos. 1 and now defunct 9 line. The No. 9 line was shuttered for a year because of damage to the Cortlandt Station, the one mentioned here. The line eventually went out of service in 2005. I wrote about it in this Retrologist post. 

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1 WTC’s antenna

Here’s a massive chunk of the antenna that sat atop Tower One, or the original One World Trade Center. The television and radio memories of New Yorkers for a generation were made possible in part by the sounds and images transmitted by this antenna. 

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Austin J. Tobin plaza marker

This commemorative slab tells us that the “Great Plaza of the World Trade Center shall hereafter be officially” named after Austin J. Tobin, the president of the Port Authority on whose watch the World Trade Center was constructed. Tobin died in 1978. 

***

Sign for The Mall at the World Trade Center

A shopping concourse sign for The Mall at the World Trade Center. Look at the Twin Towers logo on the shopping bag. Truly amazing!

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“Death of a Salesman” concourse advertisement

A shopping concourse ad for “Death of Salesman,” which was back on Broadway in the days before 9/11. Haunting. Below, a portion of the ad reads “Never Settle.”

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Mall/subway signs for N/R trains

Another subway sign, this one directing commuters to the N and R trains. And there’s the cool logo again for the World Trade Center mall.

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PATH turnstiles

Turnstiles, complete with tickets, for the PATH train station at the World Trade Center. 

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Verizon (Bell Atlantic) utility cart

A telephone utility cart, still bearing the blue and green stripes of Verizon’s predecessor in New York, Bell Atlantic.

****

Standpipe and sprinkler cases

Stunning and haunting: Casings for sprinklers and standpipes at the World Trade Center, firefighting tools that were powerless against the horror dozens of stories above ground. 

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The June 23, 1969 edition of The New York Times

The July 23, 1969 edition of the New York Times, tucked inside of the buildings and forgotten until it was discovered during the recovery at Ground Zero. Click HERE for my earlier post on this find.

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The aluminum cladding of the Twin Towers

The World Trade Center shimmered in the skyline for three decades. This aluminum column cladding is among the few hundred feet that survive of the architectural element — 2 million square feet sheathed the towers — that helped make the twins such an icon. 

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The tridents of the tower bases

One of the few remaining Gothic columns — or tridents — that for decades brought whimsy to the tower bases, and later served as symbols of destruction. They were a hallmark of the quirky modernist style of architect Minoru Yamasaki.

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Vehicles that testify to the day’s destruction

A smashed yellow taxi, a medical examiner’s truck and mangled fire trucks speak to the devastation.

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The international flags that once graced the World Trade Center lobbies

Flags from the trade center lobbies, each neatly rolled in a tube, were found intact inside a box. Symbols of international cooperation that the trade center represented, they had hung in the lobbies until July 2001, familiar to tourists and office workers alike. In a twist that would save them, new leaseholder Larry Silverstein ordered them taken down as part of initial modifications to the complex. They were stored well underground — clearly in one of the safest places at the trade center on 9/11.

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Alexander Calder’s World Trade Center Stabile (Bent Propeller)

Sculptor Alexander Calder’s World Trade Center Stabile survived, but in pieces, recognized because of its chipped red paint, but not before some workers took a saw to parts of it, thinking it was mere twisted metal. Click HERE to see how the sculpture looked before 9/11. 

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The lottery machine

A lottery machine from a store in the trade center’s shopping concourse. To the right is an intact display of reading glasses.

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The tourist magnets

What’s with Judy Garland and the World Trade Center? Maybe the WTC’s connection as the Emerald City in the 1978 movie “The Wiz”? Anway, these magnets from a WTC store feature scenes from “The Wizard of Oz,” and include Dorothy’s ruby slippers. There’s also a nice magnet showing the pre-9/11 skyline. It mentions the Brooklyn Bridge, not the gleaming trade towers in the background. 

***

Clothing from WTC shop

Clothing displays survive intact from a World Trade Center shop.

Bikes complete with rack seemingly await the return of their owners, who chained them here presumably on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn still covered with dust but surprisingly little worse for the wear. Port Authority officials invited Warner Brothers workers to examine the relics. They were inspected and notes were taken. But ultimately, the studio decided that they should stay in New York, where it seemed they belonged.

From the World Trade Center Warners Brothers’ store. What else is there to say?

Text and photos: Rolando Pujol

MORE: Click HERE to read my complete article on these artifacts.

Follow @RolandoPujol

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[rolandopujol]

A vintage Arby’s hat glows at the golden hour on a gorgeous fall evening in Raleigh, N.C. Those who know me well know Arby’s hats are tops in my road-trip wish list, and this beauty did not disappoint. These were first installed in the 1960s, and each survivor is precious. Hats off to @arbys for helping us keep the American road interesting. #arbys #retrologist #raleighnc (at Arby’s)

[dagwolf]

spicer said this shit during passover. like don’t believe for a second he made an innocent mistake, that he wasn’t aware of what he was saying.

[dagwolf]

like this is explicitly antisemitic and he clearly doesn’t understand why

[habitualshaker]

he straight up doesn’t believe that German Jews were people

[margbarcis]

“he never used them on fellow Germans” the implication that german jewish ppl were somehow “not truly german” was quite literally at the core of nazi ideology, this is so incredibly mind-numbingly transparent.

[reptilia2003]

By saying that he never used chemical weapons on “fellow Germans” (sean spicer’s words, not mine) he is basically saying that Jews/Romanis/gays/every other group targeted in the Holocaust weren’t German. Which is what Hitler was literally saying. He was saying that those people (even if they were German and their families had lived in Germany since…ever) weren’t German. And Sean Spicer is repeating that hateful ideology. That’s what was most offensive to me about this entire chemical weapons/Hitler saga. Not that he got the facts wrong about Nazi use of chemical weapons. That he validated and repeated Nazi ideology. Fuck this guy and this entire anti-Semitic administration.

Non-Jews please reblog, we need your support 

[gwillow-deactivated20190925]

So About That Whole Thing

LONG COMIC BOOK RANT INCOMING:

Okay some things need to be said:

1. If you’re going to write a smug thunk-piece about the “failure” of “diversity” in comics, maybe don’t use the cover image of a book that’s had 4 collections on the NYT graphic books bestseller list, won a Hugo and cleaned up at Angouleme. Just because you HOPE it’s on the chopping block, oh Riders of the Brohirrim, doesn’t mean it is.

2. I will tell you exactly why Ms Marvel works: it didn’t set out to be Ms Marvel. We were originally going to pitch it as a 10 issue limited series. I had a 3 issue exit strategy because I assumed we were going to get canned. There was no “diversity initiative” anywhere–getting that thing made at all was a struggle. It was a given that any character without AT LEAST a 20-year history would tank. Everybody, myself included, assumed this series was going to work out the same way.

3. That freed us–by “us” I mean the whole creative team–to tell exactly the story we wanted to tell. We had nothing to lose, nothing to overcome but low expectations. That gave us room to break a lot of rules.

STUFF THAT IS DIFFICULT TO REPLICATE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAN:

1. Unexpected audiences. We are at a point in history when the role of religion is at a tremendous inflection point. What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this. Nobody could have predicted or planned for that. That’s being in the right place at the right time with the right story burning a hole in your pocket. Plenty of other stuff I’ve written and liked has fallen with a huge thud. That’s the norm. Exceptions are great when they happen, but hard to plan.

2. The paradox of low expectations. The bar was set pretty low for Ms Marvel, but because of Ms Marvel’s success, that bar got set much higher for similar books that came later.

STUFF THAT IS ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE:

1. This is a personal opinion, but IMO launching a legacy character by killing off or humiliating the original character sets the legacy character up for failure. Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?

2. Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is *the world.*

3. Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away.

4. The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.

5. Not for nothing, but there is a direct correlation between the quote unquote “diverse” Big 2 properties that have done well (Luke Cage, Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Batgirl) and properties that have A STRONG SENSE OF PLACE. It’s not “diversity” that draws those elusive untapped audiences, it’s *particularity.* This is a vital distinction nobody seems to make. This goes back to authenticity and realism.

AND FINALLY

On a practical level, this is not really a story about “diversity” at all. It’s a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and don’t sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DON’T SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.

[gwillow-deactivated20190925]

Here is What Quran 5:51 Actually Says

This has been a banner week for comics, my friends. A banner week. If you haven’t been following the Ardian Syaf scandal, don’t bother; it’s not worth the brain cells. If you’re already elbows deep, however, you will have come across his easter egg reference “QS 5:51″ in X Men Gold #1, with ‘QS’ apparently being an Indonesian way of indicating ‘Quran, Surah,’ i.e. Quran, Chapter (Surah) 5, verse 51. 

I am so profoundly pissed off this week that I am now going to discuss Quranic exegesis while swearing profusely. So, you know. Fair warning. 

This verse is subject to a truly fantastical amount of bullshittery in the modern era. And that bullshittery takes on a particular flavor depending on the agenda of whoever is translating the verse. Keep in mind that 75% of Muslims are non-native speakers of Arabic (I’m one of them), and of that 75%, most know a few phrases of Arabic at most; just enough to be able to perform the five daily prayers, plus some tangentially related religious terminology (I know a bit more). To put it more simply, the vast majority of Muslims around the world do not read the Quran in the original Arabic. They read an interpretation rendered into their local language. And this is where the bullshittery starts.

Apparently, the Indonesian translation of 5:51 reads something like this: “Oh you who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians as leaders/advisors.”  (I don’t speak or read Indonesian, so I am going off the explanations of others and stuff I have been able to find online.) The reason Syaf referenced this verse is because (apparently) he has been protesting a Christian governor in his province; a governor who has been accused of blasphemy and/or corruption and/or making fun of this particular verse of the Quran, depending on who you ask. 

Here is the problem: the Arabic word in that verse that is translated variously as leader, advisor, friend, intimate etc is أولياء (awliya’), the plural of ولي‎‎ (wali). And it means none of those things.

Awliya’ in this context means something very specific, and among Arabic speakers, that meaning has changed very little over the last 1400 years. A wali is a legal counselor or sometimes a legal guardian. Some examples: an unmarried girl must appoint a wali to act on her behalf during a marriage negotiation, according to Islamic law. Your lawyer is your wali in court. The executor of a will is the wali of the deceased. A parent is the wali of a child until that child reaches the age of majority. You get the gist.

The Indonesian interpretation, in this case, is less bullshitty than the English translation pushed primarily by certain extremist Sunni factions (cough the Saudis cough cough) which has also been making the rounds in comics media today: friend. A wali is not a friend. A wali is nothing even related to friendship. The literal translation of friend is siddiq; you could also use sahib (companion). Wali doesn’t even come from the same root as either of these words. The Quran never suggests you can’t be friends with non-Muslims. Which makes sense, because, you know, the Prophet had non-Muslim friends. 

So in the grand scheme of things, the Indonesian interpretation is more accurate than the one being pushed by certain other factions, but it’s still bullshitty. Why? Because it has very little relevance to a democratic, multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. It was revealed at a time when the fledgling Muslim community was engaged in a de facto trade war (that rapidly escalated into armed conflict) with its non-Muslim neighbors. In such a situation, appointing somebody from the opposing side as your legal representative does indeed seem like a pretty bad idea. 

While there are some hardline interpretations that hold this edict applies equally to all situations across time and space, Muslim history is swimming in Jewish and Christian (and sometimes Hindu) advisors elevated to positions of intimate counsel in various caliphates, so it’s clear that for much of Islamic history, this verse, much like the Pirate Code, was more of a guideline than an actual rule. (If you haven’t read about Moses ben Maimon, aka Maimonides–Jewish philosopher, Torah scholar and personal physician to Saladin himself–do.) 

This is all to say that Ardian Syaf can keep his garbage philosophy. He has committed career suicide; he will rapidly become irrelevant. But his nonsense will continue to affect the scant handful of Muslims who have managed to carve out careers in comics. From what I can deduce off of Facebook, it appears he is trying to claim the Charlie Hebdo defense…ie, he doesn’t mean anything by it; we just don’t understand the nuance and subtly of the local bigotry. Much good may it do him. Goodbye, Ardian Syaf. We hardly knew ye, which is just as well. 

PS You don’t need to take my word for any of this. I’m not a scholar; I am merely an obsessive layperson.  Here is a breakdown of 5:51 from a sheikh on a traditionalist Sunni website. 

[ridingonsunshine]

Legendary Imagineer George McGinnis, Creator of Beloved Epcot Attraction "Horizons", Dies at 87

Today is a very sad day as legendary Imagineer George McGinnis passed away at 87. George was the kindest man you can imagined, and very hum...

We lost a true legend a few days ago. RIP George and thanks for a look at a brighter future.

[callofthenerd]

My friend posed her dog with Disney characters at Disney world

[just-shower-thoughts]

In high school when we had assigned seats I always wanted to change seats, but now in college I randomly choose a seat on the first day and sit there the rest of the semester.

[tangobunny]

[1jps]

[tsuki-dono-7-deactivated2019102]