This exists. Or at least it will when it opens on July 17, 2015.

The Henn na Hotel at the Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Nagasaki, shown here in an architect's illustration, will have robot staff and a novel auction process for reservations in peak seasons.

The rest of the story: Huis Ten Bosch theme park to get hotel staffed by robots (The Japan Times).

 ...It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. -- Alice Meynell, 1859

...this is work product of Norway's National Police Directorate

First, the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta and the design group The Metric System gave Norway's currency, the kroner, a bold, hip new look. Now,


super new travel documents from the National Police Directorate, by Oslo-based Neue Design Studio, arrive on the heels of those arty banknotes.

The rest of the story: Norway's New Passports Are Designed to Make Every Other Country Feel Inferior by Kriston Capps (CityLab)

Ecuadorian exceptionalism? Uruguayan exceptionalism? Indian exceptionalism? French exceptionalism?

A lot of seniors (a State Department estimate suggests that the number may be between 3 million and 6 million) are heading for the exits because they can extend the benefits from their savings, pensions and social security (and receive better medical care) in many other places. But, given the job market (in the short term) and the rigid class structure (in the long term), young people have even greater incentives to reject the shackles of the American economic system and see what else is out there!

The rest of the story:
Get Out While You Can: Why Young Americans Should Consider Moving Abroad by Thomas McGath. Instead of accepting low-paid work or unpaid internships, young people should focus on globalizing themselves. (AlterNet)

Funny Tombow One Man Band

Rain and Other South Sea Stories: perfect reading while lounging in a cruise ship deckchair by William Somerset Maugham, author of The Painted Veil, Cakes and Ale, Of Human Bondage, and The Moon and Sixpence.

...just spent an awesome couple of hours immersed in Charles Bradley (thank you, Amazon Prime) after watching the live-stream Roseanne Cash-Buddy Miller-Jim Lauderdale concert in NYC (thank you, Lincoln Center). But felt terrible for the local band that stole the Lincoln Center show. I realize that we ran out of band names around the time of Vanilla Fudge. But, The Lone Bellow? Really? Would you walk across the street to see an outfit called The Lone Bellow? You know you wouldn't, unless you thought they were a Shel Silverstein cover band. Maybe, before they release their new album, they could sponsor a naming contest. The Zach Williams Band would work (he's the band's leader). "The Zach Williams Band stole the show at Lincoln Center last night." See? Or, if there's never been a band named Brooklyn, like Boston or Kansas. That'd work. "Brooklyn stole the show at Lincoln Center last night." The Lone Bellow? Not so much. In any case, if you're a Prime member, add Charles Bradley to your Amazon Music playlist now, and get the several Anthony Hamilton albums while you're at it. And, at least for now, it's still possible to watch Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Roseanne Cash and, yes, The Lone Bellow at Lincoln Center.org.

Charles Bradley performs soulful cover of Black Sabbath's 'Changes'


Rosanne Cash, The Lone Bellow, Buddy Miller & Jim Lauderdale at Lincoln Center

Shel Silverstein: I was stoned and I missed it

Anthony Hamilton: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Sack dresses seem to be enjoying a revival among teenagers here on the West Coast.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Raw shrimp at Sake House by Hikari

On my way to Culver City’s Boulevard Music Summer Festival last night (an evening of Motown, Ray Charles and James Brown covers by the indefatigable Brenda Lee Eager supported by a wildly talented band), I stopped by chance at Sake House by Hikari (9729 Culver Blvd, across from City Hall). Not only were most of the items sampled pleasing (don’t miss the Crispy Tuna) and the regular prices reasonable, but happy hour ('til 7) brought the cost down further. Sake House’s eclectic menu includes sushi, sashimi, maki, udon, teriyaki and tempura, it has indoor and outdoor seating, and it’s open daily for lunch and dinner. There’re also Hikari locations in Korea Town at Chapman Market and in Montebello.

Sake House by Hikari, 9729 Culver Blvd, downtown Culver City, and K-Town at Chapman Market, 3465 W 6th St #150, L.A.; and Hikari Sushi, 1864 Montebello Town Center.

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”
– John Muir on travel, in a letter to his wife Louie in July 1888

(photo: John Gabree)

Fiction on Twitter: From short short story to endless stream

It is said that Ernest Hemingway once bet that he could write a complete short story in six words. He was Twitter-ready a half century before anyone conceived of tweeting.

Last week Twitter announced that at the end of November the company will host a five-day Twitter Fiction Festival (#twitterfiction), “a virtual storytelling celebration held entirely on Twitter,” inviting creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world.

According to Twitter, it has hosted great experiments in fiction already, from Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” to Teju Cole’s “Small Fates” to Dan Sinker’s @mayoremanuel. And Twitter notes it has even inspired some literary criticism.

To get into the spirit of things, and without getting into the whole business of streaming and interaction as components of twitter-fiction (working within the limitations of the classic tweet, you could say), I came up with this tweet-length short short story:

On the desiccated, recalescent planet, barren at last, the desolated creature, a cockroach, grief-maddened, devoured the corpse of its mate.

Hemingway won the bet, by the way. As the story goes (and the anecdote itself may be fiction), he scribbled “For sale: baby shoes, never used” to take home the pot.

Unusually affecting portrait at 617 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles attributed to Jr and Vhils. The head was created by scraping the stucco down to the building’s brick wall and shaping the features of the face with paste.
Resources:
The Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles
Los Angeles Murals: Red Line Tour (DiscoverLosAngeles.com)

Heading east on I-40 toward Gallup. Bob Dylan‘s great bluesy new album, Tempest, on repeat. Nobody cops licks & embraces cliches with more gusto & abandon than Bob Dylan.

The band’s hot. The stories’re gripping. 50 years and counting. Amazing.


You can get Tempest by Bob Dylan at Amazon.

Chopped a large heirloom tomato — keeping seeds aside — and sprinkled with lemon juice. Laid Spanish anchovies across chopped tomatoes and topped with tomato seeds. Served with cubed feta cheese and whole grain crackers (and a glass of Merlot).

Taxation without representation

Since tourists don’t vote in places they don’t live, it’s customary for local governments to gouge visitors with excessive and arbitrary travel taxes and fees tacked on to hotel rooms, airport, railroad and interstate bus transactions, car rentals, etc., at venues like airports, lodgings,
and so on, where local voters are less apt to go. A particularly egregious example: taxi ride fares in Las Vegas, a sprawling western city where most locals drive their own cars and parking fees are minimal to non-existent to attract gamblers.

You’ll want to think twice before taking a Vegas cab. Turning on the meter costs $3.50 — before you’ve traveled an inch. At the end of the ride, a tip is added with no obvious way to remove or change it. If you choose to use Visa/MasterCard or Amex, there’s a $3 fee to swipe the card. A short trip — from the Venetian to Caesar’s, say, about a half mile — can set you back $15.

Is that $3 swipe fee even legal? (In California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Texas, at least, it would be against the law; what’s up, Nevada?) Doesn’t charging the fee amount to offering a cash discount? Visa rules don’t allow retailers to charge cardholders a checkout fee for using their cards; probably neither do the agreements of other credit card issuers. Even if, in tight times, a business felt it needed to make up the sums paid to the credit card card companies, these amount to about 3% of the cost of a transaction not, as in the case at hand, a usurious 20%!

Beach, Rosa del viento eco-hotel, Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

On your virtual travels, don’t fail to visit the site of New York-based photographer and fellow traveler Malcolm Kirk. Galleries on the site focus on Iconic Figures — revealing studies of prominent figures in the arts and sciences, from Marcel Duchamp and Saul Steinberg to Richard Feynman and Arthur C. Clarke, including the famous portrait of Andy Warhol that the iconic and ironic artist turned into a series of silk-screened ‘self-portraits’ that hang in major museums throughout the world; Man As Art — a record of tribal body decoration in Papua New Guinea that was published in a large-format hardcover book documenting islanders’ visually stunning tribal body decorations, headgear and carved masks; Silent Spaces — a documentation of aisled barns dating back to the 12th century; and Enclosed Gardens — a pictorial essay covering some of the world’s most magnificent gardens, self-assigned projects that each involved years of research.

Books by Malcom Kirk:
Silent Spaces: The Last of the Great Aisled Barns (Bullfinch Press 1994)
Man As Art (Chronicle 1993)

We read on buses (and trains and planes and subways*), so Bogotá is taking the logical next step in putting books where we use them.

* The Underground New York Public Library is a virtual gallery featuring the reading-riders of the NYC subways. The New York Public Library, the real one not the virtual one, maintains its smallest branch in the Metropolitan Transit Authority located down a flight of stairs, just outside the turnstile entrance to the No. 6 train on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 50th Street.