Here’s a Christmas bonus: Darlene Love sings Christmastime for the Jews, a Robert Smigel/Saturday Night Live production from 2005. Possibly more information than you need on the history of this music video at Uproxx.
Oh, It’s Definitely Christmastime
From 2009, Darlene Love sings Christmas, Baby Please Come Home. Or, if you prefer, listen to her first appearance on David Letterman in 1986.
No. 5
Wild and Historic New Jersey: Prints and Paintings
Fantastic historic prints and maps of New Jersey can be see in an online exhibition by the Morven Museum. Like the images above, a view of the Delaware Water Gap by an unknown artist, and an engraving of Bordentown Landing by Karl Bodmer, because of course he and Prince Maximillian stopped by to visit Joseph Bonaparte’s estate before heading west.
The original exhibition, Portrait of Place: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761–1898, was held at Morven in 2013 and was drawn from the collection of Joseph Felcone.
Autumn in Washington’s Crossing
Political Cartoonist Tom Toles Just Retired
Political cartoonist Tom Toles has just retired. His cartoon above is so good, I cut it out of an actual newspaper in 1998 and still have it. See Tom Toles’ final cartoon.
Volcon Grunt: Big Wheel EV Motorcycle
This looks interesting: An all-electric off-road motorcycle with fat, fat tires and a retro headlight. The Volcon Grunt will hit 60 mph in 60 seconds and has a range of 100 miles. Added bonus: the Grunt is waterproof (IPX67) and, Volcon says, can be driven underwater.
The Grunt is, like most cycles, rear-wheel drive, but it looks a lot like the two-wheel drive Rokon motorcycle, a gas-powered go-anywhere grunt that has been around for over 50 years. The Rokon Trail-Breaker has eight-inch wide tires and hollow wheels that allow you to float it (sideways) over any stream too deep to ford. The Grunt is also analogous to the Yamaha TW200, a more traditional dual sport motorcycle with a seven-inch tire in the back. The TW200 does not float.
If you want an electric 2×2 motorcycle, the Ubco is your bike, although it tops out at only 30 mph and its tires look positively skinny compared to the other three bikes.
The Grunt will be $5,995, not bad considering the Ubco EV bikes start at $6,499. Wanna stick with gas? The most basic Rokon is $6,975 and a new Yamaha TW200 starts at $4,699.
Ode to the Holidome
So we were just talking about Holiday Inn (the movie) and now here’s a CNN feature on the Holidome – the indoor pool/amusement park/party center that was a feature of many Holiday Inns (the hotel chain) in the 1970s and 1980s. Yes, the actual hotel chain was named after the inn in the Bing Crosby movie.
Buy Bing’s* Hudson Valley House and Make Holiday Inn Real
A colonial farmhouse in the Hudson Valley that, realtors say, was once owned by Bing Crosby is for sale for just under $1.5 million.
The New York house is not far from the Connecticut border, within reasonable commuting distance of NYC, and includes a barn and rentable cottages, so you could recreate the whole Holiday Inn fantasy for real.
The house is described as “a 1700s pre-revolutionary mansion which has undergone several major renovations. Originally built as a Dutch Stone House in 1743 it was made into a brick colonial in 1772. Then it was made into a Gothic Victorian at the turn of the century. Its final major renovation was as the center piece of an outstanding 600 acre beef farm owned by Bing Crosby.”
But wait – did Bing actually live there?
High Point State Park, New Jersey
I’ve been in New Jersey a long time, but had never made it to High Point State Point. Up in the northwest corner and very close to both New York and Pennsylvania, the park surrounds, not surprisingly, the highest point in New Jersey. The obelisk was built in 1930 and is 220 feet high.
The land was donated to the state by Anthony and Susie Kuser in 1923. The Kusers, were, among many other things, ardent birders. In the early twentieth century, Anthony Kuser encouraged the (futile) search for surviving passenger pigeons by offering a reward for proof of their existence in the wild. The reward was never paid.
The Dryden Kuser Natural Area is within High Point State Park The Atlantic White Cedar Bog here is, at an elevation of 1,500 feet, thought to be highest bog of its kind in the world.