100 Years Later; and The Loudness

I missed Friday the 13th, which would have been the second such edition this year, but we had our old New York friends out visiting.

Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and to quote the Onion's boldface all caps coverage of the event: WORLD'S LARGEST METAPHOR HITS ICE-BERG. There's a reason why the Titanic still strikes our imagination with such force, but I've got more on that later.

Today marks the actual race of the Grand Prix of Long Beach. The race has brought in a number of things that were worth trying to explain to Marc and Linda during their brief visit. The first: extra people and extra cars. Strangely, the cars driven by the tourists are mostly loud souped-up versions of regular cars. The second: the noise. All those cars added to the loud whine of the racing Formula 1 cars (Indycars) added to today's mix of two helicopters and six (six!) circling Cessnas towing ads has led me to start calling the race The Loudness.

The normally sleepy bar we brought Marc and Linda to had one of the many present a-holes blaring 1980s Metallica. So, we're going to go and take some pictures and try to catch a look and get some of these posts done in the next few days.