Going Back Backstage

As previously mentioned, on last year's vacation, we took the Casino backstage tour again. The first time we'd taken the tour was on our 2013 vacation. Once again, here's a remix picture of the outside as a line drawing!!!

I likely could have made a post about just the tour on the previous trip, but never did. I remember our guide on that particular tour was a girl named Porsche that my wife really liked. The closest I did was the years later tale of the Chime Tower post, which I first heard on that particular tour.

As outside, so is it inside!!! A beautiful building, with fine construction. The ground floor houses the theater, which is a work of art. It is also nearly acoustically perfect, and on the tour it was mentioned that it was measured to use the same geometry for some other auditorium, possibly Carnegie Hall or maybe Radio City Music Hall.

Murals adorn the walls, and the ceiling is adorned with gold leaf.

Centered at the top of the stage is a depiction of Botticelli's Venus, our guide noted that the designer had depicted her as a redhead!!!

The construction was right around the time of the transition from silent movies to the talkies, so naturally an organ was included. It's being worked on currently.

Our tour guide had pointed out from the theater the private suite of William Wrigley Jr., but noted that he generally preferred to be out mingling with the guests. This is the view from his suite.

This was also during the big band era, and there were several posters of bands that had preformed there.

The projection room featured several generations of projectors, from arc light projectors to digital projectors. This was our tour guide, I don't remember his name, but it might have been Tom. He did a great job. The wall behind him has several people that have signed their names. Most of them, he said, you probably don't know, but prominently in the middle was the signature of Stan Lee!!!

There were displays with several vintage pictures of the area, and construction of the Casino, as well as the original structure that was there.

On the top floor, the world's largest round dance floor!!! Something new that they're doing now, they've re-purposed it as a skating rink!!! There's a spinning ordainment in the middle of the ceiling that Surrogate wanted to get underneath and take a picture of. There weren't too many people skating up there, and I told him he probably could just stride out there like he was supposed to be there, lay down and get his picture and no one would give him any trouble!!!

The tour finished up on the outside promenade. Our guide was fielding any questions, and I asked him if he was familiar with the story of the Chime Tower, and why the ramps were no longer carpeted. He wasn't, and I was able to relate the story as I had been told on our previous tour.

After the tour was over, we worked our way down to the next level where the restrooms are located. They had this nice bar area, where they had a video playing about the old days of Avalon and the Casino.

And as teased in the previous post, the selfie in the restroom mirror!!!

Instant Art

I've once again picked up a few shirts, and have been taking pictures to share them here.

This is one of them, a Christmas shirt from King's Hawaiian. This was the shot of the front, it has a Christmas tree with the King's Hawaiian logo on the top. Could be a Christmas sugar cookie.

Photos had done one of their “pop out” effects, and I'd been planning on using that when I posted about it.

I enjoy King's Hawaiian, and have always liked the Bing Crosby classic, Mele Kalikimaka, and it has a Hawaiian themed snow globe with a plate that says Mele Kalikimaka on the base. That's probably got a lot to do with what sold me on the shirt!!!

Today, photos offered to do a remix of a photo. This was a new one to me, I'll take a look. It's got several styles to re imagine the picture. The one that looked best to me was the drawing style, so I gave it a try. Came out pretty good!!!

That came out pretty good, I'll try another!!! This style looked nice, but it came out with an outdated Halloween theme!!! Not bad, but I feel like all it kept was my face!!!

Next I tried a 16-bit style one, it also came out pretty good!!! I noticed that it actually kept the Christmas tree, but flipped it to the other side and swapped the King's logo for a star!!!

This one was the last I tried, I feel like it kept my face pretty close, but semi cartooned the rest of me!!! And what's with the arm tattoos???

OK, that was fun!!! Let me see what else it can do... Not long ago, Sid was balled up on the perch, and I went to take a picture. Of course, he doesn't cooperate, but I got a decent picture of him peeking over the edge. Let's see...

Tried the illustration kind of look, and even not seeing his lower part it got the markings location right, but the color was off.

Since I liked the style it had done for me, I tried it as a drawing on lined paper, and once again, it came out pretty good, even though he lost his original pose for all of the generations.

Finally, I had it do it as a claymation kind of look!!! The colors are still off, but I still like the result!!!

Good times!!!

ReDecorating

I had made mention of a couple of items recently. One was that I would likely be replacing my printer in the near future. The other was the lack of content I've had recently.

Well, I took care of both of them today!!! I was going to try and scan a form the other day, and I couldn't get my printer to get past the “Print Head Not Installed” portion. I messed with it for a few minutes, then called it, and ordered a new one!!!

I stuck with Canon, since I've been happy with the one I had, present experience excluded. Got a Canon Pixima G6020, another all in one with print, scan, and copy functions. Since it's a much newer model, it's also wirelessly connected, and since ink has been a major expense with my previous printer, this one is an ink tank model with big reservoirs. Oh yea, I can also scan and print from my phone now, as well.

As a side note, I had long ago mentioned the artwork on my file cabinet upon which my desktop computer tower and printer have always sat. Never had an actual picture here, only a link to a page on a long gone Geocities site. When we were living in Long Beach, my wife had saved up and bought a set of chairs and a love seat that were black with blue and maroon pattern shapes all over them, and when I got a 2-drawer file cabinet, I painted it black, and hand painted similar blue and maroon pattern shapes to match. The chairs and love seat are long gone, but the file cabinet remains, so I've included it in the picture here!!!

A little over 12 years ago, I had painted the bathroom in a black and white theme. My dad made up the custom painted toilet seat that has been the base for many of the pictures posted on this blog, and when I'd painted it up, I picked up three black 5”x7” picture frames, with the idea that I could rotate in various black and white pictures. (The only picture that actually shows much of the black and white was the third on this post) The first three, I printed out pictures of Mochi sleeping on the top of the cat tree, Leo relaxing in the sink, and a vertical picture of both their paws. I'd added the picture frame effect in Paint Shop Pro, and had them printed at WalMart. Well, those pictures have stayed there since that day, until today!!!

After setting up my new printer and printing the test page and a test picture, I printed out these pictures to replace the old ones. The first two are from out Texas trip from a few years ago, both taken in Galveston. The first was looking out from the window of the Best Western (second picture from the end of this post). The next was on the beach on the Gulf of America (the final picture on this post). When I saw both of these pictures, I knew they'd work great for the theme I was using in there!!!

For the third, I kept with the theme of having a cat picture. I used Sid's X-ray showing the repair!!! Hey, it cost me a lot of money!!!

Looking Back: The Antenna Install

I have made reference in a couple of recent posts about the antenna I installed on the Sky. This was back in January of last year, so it's been a while. It's a bit of a story, and here it is!!!

As I mentioned, the original style antenna is a tall solid mast, and it's on the rear fender, right where it's in the way when you are putting the top down or up. All that remained of the original was the plastic base, and around an inch of the original mast. I purchased a little rubber antenna of the style that had been popular during the mini truck craze of the 80's. I had figured I would just remove the original, and plug the replacement in wherever the original cable plugged in. Of course, the radio is a ways from the stereo head, so as a plan B I was thinking I could just splice the cable as needed.

Not previously mentioned, Zonker actually has two antennas, the standard over the air antenna mentioned, and a satellite radio (and probably OnStar as well) “Shark Fin” antenna on the middle back of the rear deck, and of course, both have cables that pass from the trunk area to the interior.

I removed the rear body panel and the center console cover, figuring they would pass through and probably run down the console. That's what you see here, there's a lot going on. The box in the middle of the picture is, I'm pretty sure, the satellite radio receiver. Towards the bottom of the picture, you can see the subwoofer of the Monsoon audio system (which I also previously mentioned that I had repaired by gluing the cone back to the surround) and towards the top is the Monsoon amp. I tried to trace the over the air antenna cable, but was only able to positively ID the satellite cable.

I took a step back, and reconsidered the approach I was going to take. The old antenna base was going to have to be removed to put the new one on. While I was antenna shopping, I saw that almost all of the antenna masts are internally threaded. I went ahead and worked the stub off, and unscrewed the large flat nut on the top of the base, which revealed the threaded rod base. The replacement antenna has a near opposite approach, with a threaded bolt extending down, which is captured and kept from turning with a couple of flats in the metal portion of the antenna base. OK, what can I do with this??? How about using a nut in place of the bolt, and screwing it down to the original threaded stud??? Yes, that could work, but it may end up needing to be shortened, or some sort of adapter made up. I found a flange nut with the correct thread, which of course was too wide for the slot in the metal base. I used a cut off wheel to slice two sides off, and shortened one end, to make a nut where everything lines up.

Next up, how to get everything to line up... The metal base to the antenna is too small to work with the original plastic base. The plastic base for the new antenna has a similar shape, a tapering cone, with the correct size recess for the metal base, and a little extra flange and height on the bottom. Since I already had the cut off wheel set up, I trimmed the flange and a little height off the base, and things were getting close to the right height to sandwich it with the original base, but of course the shape wasn't matching up. I ran a bolt through the newly trimmed down base, and chucked a couple of nuts in my drill, and attached it to the drill. I had the younger run the drill, while I used some coarse sandpaper to shape it down into more of a spherical shape. After the shape was good, I used fine sandpaper and a sanding pad to smooth it out, and it actually polished up beautifully!!!

It ended up looking something like a snowman, with a base cone of the original base (which actually follows the fender contour nicely), the new base turned spherical, and the metal base, which already has a round shape, being two halves that you can use to adjust the angle!!!

At the same time I had ordered the antenna, I also picked up a couple of phone holders. When I had started working from home, I picked up a wireless charger stand for my phone, since I was using my phone a lot for work (I've got a whole folder of work apps I need to uninstall), and the wireless charging was working great!!! I figured I'd look into a similar holder for the cars, and found a couple of these for not a lot. I still hadn't come up with a good holder for Kutcher, and since it tends to get a lot more use, I'd put one in it first. I'm usually not impressed by suction cup style bases, but these work great!!! It's a clear silicone cup with a release lever, and I was able to stick it to the middle of the console, and have the phone holder just back from the gear shift. Just recently, something went wrong with the indexing of the arm, and now it wants to rotate down, guess I'll be taking it back to the drawing board soon. Also, for some reason, it doesn't seem to charge nearly as well as the home unit did. Anyway, here's the one I put in the Sky, it sets it right between the instruments and the heater controls, and it's stuck to the smooth part of the dashboard right over the middle HVAC vents. Lights up a cool blue!!!

So, there you are!!! 80's antenna installed!!! Not going to snap off putting the top up or down, and it seriously improves reception!!! Cool 80's aesthetic vibe, as well!!!

And a happy 512 day to all!!!

The 80's Called, They Want Their License Plate Frame Back

License plate frames aren't much of a big deal to me, but they do give it something of a finished look. I got a patriotic one for my first Saturn which was pretty cool, but faded as it aged. 3 came with a Saturn of Permian Basin dealer frame, which had the white faded out on the lettering, which I cleaned up, spray painted silver to match the car, and sanded the letters to reveal the black plastic and painted the Saturn logo red. When I sent her away, I swapped the frame to Scruffy. The silver doesn't go as well, but it's in memoriam. Back when I was running a CNC machine, I had come up with a few programs for various frames that I could add text to, my favorite being the 512 frame I left on Nasty. I'd always figured I'd make up a couple more of those, but got out before I had a chance. Zonker didn't have one when I got her, but I took care of that recently!!!

I was emptying a trash can, and someone had tossed out one of those “Drive Pink” license plate frames. I'm all for supporting a cause, but I think they look hideous, and unless you got your car from selling Mary Kay, they really don't go with any of the cars they are on!!! I'd never really looked closely at any of them before, but since I was up close, I got to see that it's actually a quality piece, made of steel (I think). I could come up with something with this...

I sanded it down, and gave it a few coats of gloss yellow. Then I used skinny masking tape to do a series of random stripes, reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen's Frankenstrat from the “1984” album. Interesting, when I was looking for info on that guitar, I discovered that he retired it after they played the Us Festival '83, which was the first concert I went to. Maybe one day I'll do a post on that!!!

I then applied a few coats of gloss black, removed the tape, and did a few coats of a clear reflective paint. That flattened the look of the gloss black, which I hadn't foreseen, but I actually like the way it came out!!! It had a little bleed around some of the cross points of the tape, but it's good enough.

As I'd previously mentioned, I had also added an 80's reminiscent rubber antenna, and I feel like the frame also has something of an 80's vibe. I was going to see if I had some stainless button heads to install it with, and came across some tamper resistant screws from back when I was doing packaging tooling. Installed it without the plate for a picture with black oxide screws, then decided that stainless steel ones would be better, since they won't rust.

Took a picture close up, like the blank one, then when I was at the bank, I realized a full back picture would work better, with the black top and exhaust valance panel. Bonus, the antenna is also visible!!!

Sphere Quest

For our vacation this year, we did similar to how we've done in years past, where we went to one area on part of the vacation, and another area for the other. Instead of one part being in Catalina, as we've done twice before, we did the first half in Carlsbad, and the second in Ventura!!! Since they are in different directions, we did a layover at the Green Palace for a night not in a strange bed!!! Before heading on, I was looking at the map to see if there were any other attractions we would want to check out in the area, and I happened upon this!!!

Usually when we head out that way, we take a direct route, but by heading up past Magic Mountain and then across, we could stop in Santa Paula and see a floating granite ball!!! It was similar to the time we took a side trip to see the Bronze Fonz statue.

It's located in a little park right along the railroad tracks. I've seen two other spheres like this, both of them in Disney parks, one in Disneyland, the other in Disney World. Every time I'd encounter one, I would always spend some time playing with it, so this seemed like an opportunity to do so without spending hundreds of dollars just to get close to it!!!

Of course, it wasn't up to Disney standards. The area seemed pretty nice, but there were a half dozen bums hanging out at one end of the park, and, if you look close, you can see someone tagged the poor defenseless sphere.

There were a couple of other sculptures in the park. A mama bear and her two cubs.

Had to take a picture of mama bear on the mama bear!!!

At the end of the park near the main road it's located on, there is a monument to two Highway Patrolmen who alerted the residents to the St. Francis dam failure in 1928.

The drive going out this direction instead was very scenic, compared to the way we usually go. I was glad we went that way, and made friends with another granite sphere!!!

Fuzzy Wuzzy

I feel like it's been a long time since I've posted, but it appears I've gotten in at least one a month so far this year. I've got one, maybe two more in me. As far as updates go, I finally was able to dispose of the shell of 3 two weekends ago, nearly a year after the incident. One of them is yet another pet project, but for now, you get this!!!

On my walk the other night, I came across this... very fuzzy Toyota!!! While I don't think I'd ever (never say never) do or have a car like this, I kinda love that it exists!!!

I wasn't aware, but apparently there's a lady wrestler named Candy Pain. In finding a picture of her, I came across the name of the artist who did this to the car, she's named Peggy Noland, and naturally, she's also based in L.A.

Golden Hour

A week back, I took Scruffy for an alignment. Having the front subframe removed had messed it up. The update on the swap, I ran into an issue bolting the transmission to the engine, and ended up damaging the pump on the transmission, so, since I've never had too much luck working on transmissions, ended up having it towed to the transmission shop. When I picked it up, started off with the oil warning light on. That spooked me, I shut it right off, and checked the oil. All the way full. OK, must be the wire to the sensor or something, right? Start driving it back, and after a while, it goes off, but the low coolant light starts blinking. That doesn't concern me much, I hadn't had a chance to do anything with the cooling system other than fill it with water and cooling system flush, and the needle is in the normal area. It turned off a few miles later, but then the temprature light went on, and the gauge heads to the top!!! I'm in traffic, and before I could even start working my way off to the side, the gauge drops, and the light goes off. Then the oil light comes on again. Once I got it home, I drained, rinsed and filled the cooling system, and checked the oil pressure wire. Everything looked good, and it never came on again. Passed smog with no problems, and other than the alignment, everything is fine!!!

The alignment shop I use is in Glendale. I had gone after I got off work. I asked the tech about how long he thought it would take, and after he told me around 45 minutes, told him I was going on a walk. Since I've been seeing it for years but had never been there, I headed straight for the local graveyard!!!

Imposing brick walls and an iron gate surround the property.

Within, there is much beauty among the dead.

Many statues, and great views of the surrounding area.

It's been years since I've gone through a graveyard taking pictures. I remembered why it works out so well.

I haven't been getting as much walking in as I would like to these days, with the time change it's not as easy to get out in the afternoons before it's getting dark. This was a great one, not only did I cover a good amount of distance, but I got to do a bit of uphill walking, too!!!

On the subject of it getting dark early, it so coincided with my walking time that I was in the right place for the "golden hour", as the sun makes it's final descent on the horizon.

I was glad to have been there for it!!!