The Los Angeles Times has a photo essay about cell phone towers being cleverly disguised as palm trees. I think the best thing about Emily Shur’s photo essay is its title: Nature Calls. But come on, I’ve got this one beat. For years, my parents in Medford, Oregon have had a church down the...
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Recently, I read an Associated Press assessment of how the American suburbs are no longer “your father’s suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s” and have become educated communities with vibrant arts scenes, and where Brazilian grocers and Vietnamese nail salons reside joyfully next to one another. Civic leaders in the city of Shawnee and...
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A great book called Secret Soldiers: How a Troupe of American Artists, Designers, and Sonic Wizards Won World War II’s Battle of Deception Against the Germans is about…well, just that. It covers the U.S. Army’s 23rd Special Troops and how they waged surreptitious “battles” against the Germans using deceptive techniques. These techniques were sometimes...
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One of the most prominent, yet ignored, features of Disneyland is its Main Street. Even though thousands of people walk through Main Street every day, it is vastly ignored. Too bad, because Main Street is one of the best features of Disneyland. The main elevations for Main Street were drawn up by a former...
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The true face of the James Bond series, at least throughout the Sixties and Seventies, isn’t Sean Connery. It’s a German-born set designer named Ken Adam. Born in Berlin in 1921, trained as an architect in London, Adam’s hand has influenced film style through movies such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Ipcress File,...
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In an April 5, 1982 TIME magazine article, it was mentioned that a fake White House and Blair House (the little auxiliary house across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House) were going to be built in Beltsville, Maryland: Thomas Jefferson, the architect President, designed parts of the White House. Now with Ronald Reagan, the...
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Let’s say right off the bat that it’s not the “Matterhorn.” Official term for it was “Matterhorn Bobsleds, because the included roller coaster was a big deal. Such a big deal: the first steel roller coaster in the world. But we’re less interested in the bobsleds than in the mountain itself–a 147 foot fake...
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Fake Iraq, by Maria Schriber.
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