Silly Picture to Fill Space- Breakfast

We had hoped to post a breakfast-related entry on Sunday since it was Easter here in the United States, and on Easter Sunday, there is a tradition of having a large breakfast or brunch for the occasion.

If one happens to stop into the the southwest Virginia town of Floyd, we highly recommend Oddfellas Cantina, where they have great brunches year-round.

Thanks to those of you in Slovakia and Chile for checking out our blog today; we really appreciate it.

The Backpackers Are Beside BestBuy (entry 5 of 6)

Note: This is the fifth entry in this six part series. The even-numbered entries are located on our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" (www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com); here is today's entry. This series discusses how I took photographs of all seen public art displays in Roanoke, Va., which is part of the city's "Art in Roanoke" campaign.



I had just finished taking a photograph of "In Flux" at Vic Thomas Park. I went inside the neighboring Black Dog Salvage, which featured antiques and novelty items as well as the black dog, which is the store's mascot.



It was Monday, Austs 15th. And, there were now just two public art displays I had not found. They were "Glory Pipes" (featured here) by two Arizona artists and "Happy Wanderers" by local artist Charlie Brouwer (well, he lives in Floyd County which is near Roanoke).



Of the two, "Glory Pipes" seemed like both the easiest one to find and the most accessible one from Black Dog Salvage, which is located on Memorial Avenue just past the Grandin Village area of the city.



So, I headed to find "Glory Pipes," which is located in downtown Roanoke on Franklin Road at the SunTrust Plaza. This makes it sound easy to find, but that proved not to be the case.



I drove by striking Verizon workers, and waved at them. I heard a few days later on NPR that a woman in Arlington, Va., was mad at the strikers because they were delaying her Internet installation. She said something to the effect of how 'these people should just be grateful to have a job.' It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans, some of whom are actually independents or even Democrats, distrust the government, but have no problem trusting big corporations and mega-churches with ministers who look like '70s teen idols from "The Partridge Family."



I parked my car at a place which turned out to be fairly distant from "Glory Pipes." As I walked towards a bicycle shop, I asked a fellow pedestrian where the SunTrust Plaza was. She pointed directly across the street. I felt like a bit of a dork, but then again, I may have walked for 20 minutes on my own before figuring that out.



Once I got to the SunTrust Plaza, which is fairly close to Arzu Restaurant, a Turkish and international fine dinning establishment managed by friend Halil, I still had difficulty finding the sculpture.



I walked around the lawn, and then there it was.



According to the Art in Roanoke web site, "Glory Pipes" is made from LEDS, electornics, aluminum pipes and a steel plate. At night, apparently, the inner portions of sculpture glow. The artists say that the piece is meant to create dynamic tension and motion.



It happens to be a tricky sculpture to photograph, and one has to take adequate time to find the right angles.



But, I was able to snap a fair number of shots, and from there I went to the Mill Moutain CoffeeShop downtown and realized though it was mid-afternoon that "The Happy Wanderers" would have to wait for another day.



SIDEBAR_ The answer to our question last week about the distance between Abingdon, Va., the town near the Tennessee border where the Barter Theatre is and the Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, was d) 5 hours, 45 minutes.

Strange, but True Things We Learned This Week...

All of these things have been verified through various sources, but if you don't believe me, you can spend hours and hours on Google, and leave a post on here saying: "Ahhh, but you are wrong." Let's get started, and we will get to the African pygmy goat when we can:

1. Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) actually liked many American western tv shows as a kid, including his favorite "Bonanza!" I first read about this in "The Week" magazine some eight years ago. But, this week, I also learned that the sinister terrorist leader also like Bruce Lee kung-fu films. But, none of these things are as disturbing as a report I heard from the TRT (Turkish Radio Television) right after September 11th, when I happened to be in Istanbul. A Turkish man who was a classmate of bin Laden's at a school in Switzerland when they were both children said that this future kingpin of terror was 'a quiet unasuming kid who usually sat in the back.'

2. And speaking of Turkey, as "Mental Floss" reported in a recent issue, one never wants to confuse a Greek with a Turk or vice versa. Since the hip magazine didn't mention the man's name, I had to check the BBC's web site for additional details. As it turns out, Athanasios Varzanakos, 77, who would have definitely qualified for our long, difficult names list, a Greek villager, had been mistaken for a Turk. The Swedish yogurt company Lindahl had put the image of Varzanakos on its Turkish yogurt products. So, the Greek man sued the Swedish company for $7 million; he 'only' got $270,000 in return. This leads us to the goat because if one wants to find Greek yogurt or goat milk yogurt, they can go to the Harvest Moon in Floyd, Va. Alas, they don't sell Turkish yogurt which is very hard to find in America except in New Jersey (where there are a lot of Turks and Turkish-Americans).

3. The BBC reported last night that there is a hip hop craze spreading through Yemen, of all places. There have been similar stories in the international media about this curious pop cultural trend. In 2010, Laura Kasinoff of "The Christian Science Monitor" reported that she had seen 'turbaned men dancing with daggers and rappers donning New York Yankees caps' taking the stage in the capital city of Sana for a hip hop fest. Hagage Masead, an American of Yemeni heritage who should not/never be confused with a radical terrorist in Yemen who grew up in New York state, has been at the heart of this movement.

4. "This American Life," a popular weekly NPR show, featured a story about a "Tuscaloosa News" reporter in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who was fooled into publishing a local story that proved to be false in the wake of last week's deadly tornado rampage in the area. Apparently, the story was that a local man from Tuscaloosa, which is also home to the University of Alabama, was killed at a local tobacco store and people walked all over him to get cigarettes. But, one can hardly fault the reporter as this story was verified by local government officials in Tuscaloosa! As a former newspaper reporter myself, I can see how this can happen all too easily for reasons which are far too complicated to explain here. Besides, the militant librarian here in Mount Airy, NC, (not really where I am) has warned that the Internet goes down in 22 minutes and 35 seconds!

In Turkish, It's Called Tembellik

We could've looked up what's the Norwegian word for laziness too, but well we're too lazy!

The cat is in Japan (in the original image; this black cat might be from Mexico), well not my cat Gizmo, who is somewhere near Floyd, Va., but this cat in particular.

One knows laziness is very bad when you don't even want to post a blog entry!

But, for those of you with more stamina, we recommend "Garfield without Garfield," a satiric take on the comic strip with the World's Laziest Cat (and, the world's oldest cat as Garfield has been around for 32 years now!). The web site for that is garfieldwithoutgarfield.net

It's time to take a nap....!