If you’ve been watching the TBS network recently– like I have, because of the baseball playoffs (and Saved by the Bell reruns)– you’ve probably noticed the ads for the upcoming Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.
The three-day festival starts on November 20, and will be held at that cozy venue called Caesar’s Palace. Thursday night’s headliners include ageless wonder Joan Rivers, bad-dancing talk show host Ellen Degeneres, and SNL alum Jim Breuer. Friday night’s show will feature the disturbing Jim Norton, the unfunny Dane Cook, and the drug-test-failing Cheech & Chong. Oh yeah, and someone called Jerry Seinfeld.
The festival’s final day will showcase 30 Rock‘s Tracy Morgan, The Daily Show‘s John Oliver, and noted insomniac Dave Attell. Also, that Seinfeld guy again.
Want tickets to this Laughapalooza (trademark!)? Trade some of your hard-earned currency for them at the Comedy Festival website. Full schedule of events here.
Artist Dawn Robyn Petrlik created “Photo Op with Sarah Palin” after she saw a newspaper photograph of the vice presidential candidate posing with her daughter and a dead caribou. Now visitors to the display can suit up in a faux fur vest, grab a prop rifle, and pose with the Palins.
The piece has drawn visitors from both the left and the right. While Palin supporters happily pose with the display, many of her critics pose with their rifle pointed at her. Petrlik put a price tag of $12,500 on the piece. She says that way if it pisses someone off and they want to take it down, they can buy it from her.
“Photo Op with Sarah Palin” has been on display since September 13th, but it’s coming down this Sunday, so your opportunity for the photo op won’t last long. If you get a good shot, feel free to share it with us in the Gadling Flickr Pool.
This week Annie Scott joined the Gadling team of blogging fiends, and our fingers have been flying across keyboards capturing a mishmash of travel related items.
Along with our mini-series “Catching the Travel Bug” we’ve made another mini-series launch. Tune in for The Sounds of Travel twice a week when Gadling bloggers share with you the music that has inspired their travel. Grant began the series today with Great Lake Swimmers. Meg’s is ready to go. Look for it.
As I browsed the wealth of other info and travel finds, here are five posts that caught my eye. Each touted the unusual. There are more than just these posts in the bounty, but because this is Gadling Take FIVE, this is it.
Meg’s post on the Museum Funeral Customs highlighted this museum that captures one of the most fascinating aspects of human behavior.
If you are heading to Thailand, consider a trip to the Buddhist temple Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew, 370 miles north of Bangkok. Anna provides details about how it is entirely made up of recycled glass bottles.
Rabbit fans can see scads and scads of them at Robben Island in South Africa–at least for another week. Aaron reported that on Nov. 1 the island is being closed for two weeks while the population is thinned out.
For a most unusual ride, Jeffery suggests the Zeppelin. It is making its way from Beaumont, Texas to California.
And, Josh gave us the disappointing news that it is no longer possible to see the most expensive toilet in the world in person. He provided a video though. It’s not quite the same, but it will have to do.
Welcome to The Sounds of Travel, music that reminds of you travel, the places you’ve been and the things that you’ve seen. We’ve all got that favorite road trip song or mix tape that brings us back to the open road, to the hills of Patagonia or to the rolling waves of the Mediterranean. Listening to these pieces back at home brings us vividly back to that same spot, years later, daydreaming about the beauty of travel, the wonderful landscapes and the luster of freedom.
Here at Gadling we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each — maybe you’ll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you’ll think that they’re good songs.
Week One: Great Lake Swimmers — Backstage with the Modern Dancers
Great Lake Swimmers’ third album, Ongiara, had just been released the week before I touched down in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a week long trip with a few close friends. On the bus from the airport into the city, I happened to meet a young Canadian woman en route to her hostel. Knowing that we had a large apartment already booked I invited her to join us and with little deliberation she ended up staying with us for the entire week.
Architecture in Buenos Aires is shockingly beautiful, with narrow cobble stone streets lined with tall ceilinged, ornate buildings on either side. Apart from the exquisite ironwork and stained glass featured on many structures, you could pick up many blocks from Paris, drop them in Buenos Aires and not know the difference.
Our apartment was no exception. With tall ceilings, a broad front room that opened out into the street, an entire wall of stained glass and three bedrooms, the unit was not only one of the best but also one of the least expensive properties that I have ever stayed in.
Throughout my visit I began to explore the depths of Ongiara. At times when the others were napping, out finding groceries or buying antiques, the haunting voice of Tony Dekker filled the tall corners of the rooms, echoing through the hallways and shimmering through the bedrooms.
Now, when I hear Backstage with the Moden Dancers I’m taken back to Buenos Aires, to the young woman I met on the bus and to perching out over the apartment ironwork, peering onto the street as the fall rain blanketed around us. I see the yellows and blues of the stained glass windows, feel the black fabric on her shirt and taste the Malbec that I drank every night for dinner.
“And all of these things I don’t think they should be — released” — Tony Dekker, Great Lake Swimmers.
Graveyards that can seem peaceful during the day are perfect settings at night for finding chills and thrills. If there is a graveyard in a town or city near you, I bet there’s a tour. Regardless of the season, graveyards offer a span of history that includes triumph and sorrow. Each one hold clues and mysteries to the people who have lived before us.
Here’s a Halloween graveyard joke you can say when you are going past a graveyard: “How many people do you think are dead in there?”
(**Continue for answer and a sampling of graveyard tours.)
In Alexandria, Virginia, walk along the six blocks on the Ghosts & Graveyard lantern tour with a costumed guide who transports visitors to the 1800s through tales of ghosts and unsolved mysteries. The tour ends in the graveyard. Although Halloween inspired, it goes through November.
Ghosts and Gravestone Trolley Tours of Boston, Massachusetts goes through November 2. This tour is hosted by a 17th century gravedigger who tells tales of Boston’s murderous past. Two of Boston’s oldest graveyards are included.
The same company that offers the tour in Boston has similar tours in Savanah, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida. The Website has a link to haunted tales and while you browse ghost type sounds put you in the mood.
In Charleston, South Carolina, there is a tour company that specializes in creepy, scary places. The Charleston Ghost and Graveyard Walking Tours brings people through graveyards where tales of love, loss and prominent people can be found.
San Antonio, Texas has several ghost tour options. Many included graveyards, whether you walk or take a vehicle. These tours are also offered year-round.
Like San Antonio, San Diego has several ghost tour options. Several include graveyards. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see many links for other ghost and graveyard tours throughout the United States.
To amp up a graveyard ghost tour, here’s one that combines a stay in a haunted hotel with a ghost and graveyard tour. This version is in Columbus, Ohio. The Lofts, a boutique hotel that was once a warehouse in the early 1900s has a ghost called “Lady of the Lofts. There’s a package deal that includes a night in the hotel, breakfast and two tickets to “The Haunted Columbus’s Best of 20 Years Bus Tour.” If that tour is sold out the Columbus Landmark’s Foundation has other ghost tours and guided visits through Greenlawn Cemetery. Greenlawn Cemetery is where humorist James Thurber is buried. Perhaps he’d appreciate the graveyard joke.
** Answer to graveyard joke: “All of them.”
This joke gets people every time. Here is the joke in its entirety if you forgot the question.
If you are passing by a graveyard say, using a voice that evokes the idea that you are looking for a number: “How many people are dead in there?”