Okay, I’ve known that astrology was total bullshit since I worked at a telephone psychic hotline named Magikal Journeyz during college, but my horoscope today is so inaccurate that I’m ready to give up on it completely:

“Lucky you! You’re coming into a time of great abundance. Love, travel, adventure — all the good stuff is headed your way. Take your vitamins, you are going to need all the energy to can get!”

Yeah right. Today Con Edison shut my power off and they’re not going to turn it back on until tomorrow. So, it looks like I’ll be stumbling around by candlelight like Young Frankenstein. I hate life.

Also I have some good stories about my tragic trip to the Empire State Building a couple of days ago, but I don’t really have the energy (literally, my laptop is about to run out of batteries) to explain it right now. Let’s just say that I almost puked off of the top of “The Observation Deck”.

{ Dancing at gunpoint }

photo { Shalom Sharon Hair }

{ stereohell }

{ If everyone in New York City washed their laundry in cold water for just one day, the energy savings could be 5.7 million kWh. Enough to power every light in the Empire State Building for an entire month. | Tide Coldwater: Building, Saatchi, New York, 2007 | Ship + Stadium}

In the shadow of the Empire State Building lies an “automotive Bermuda Triangle” - a five-block radius where vehicles mysteriously die. No one is sure what’s causing it, but all roads appear to lead to the looming giant in our midst - specifically, its Art Deco mast and 203-foot-long, antenna-laden spire.

“We get about 10 to 15 cars stuck near there every day,” said Isaac Leviev, manager of Citywide Towing, the AAA’s exclusive roadside assistance provider from 42nd St. to the Battery. “You pull the car four or five blocks to the west or east and the car starts right up.” (…)

The 102-story building, at Fifth Ave. between 33rd and 34th Sts., has been home to broadcast equipment since its opening in 1931, when RCA installed an experimental TV antenna. Since the 9/11 attacks destroyed the twin towers, the building has regained its status as the leading transmission site for commercial broadcast outfits, with 13 TV and 19 FM stations mounting antennas on its spire.

The Empire State Building Co., which refused to provide the Daily News a list of its antennas, denied it has created any “adverse impact” on automobiles. “If the claim were indeed true, the streets in the vicinity of the building would be constantly littered with disabled vehicles,” the building’s owner said.

According to many doormen in the area, they often are. (…) Automotive experts and engineers believe the problem stems from radio frequency interference that’s “jamming” the remote keyless entry systems of cars.

{ NY Daily News | Continue reading }

The dopey daredevil who tried to parachute off the Empire State Building is coming down on the landmark with a $30 million lawsuit.

In the suit, which is expected to be filed today in Manhattan Supreme Court, Jeb Corliss says the security guards who thwarted his 2006 attempt at jumping off the building endangered his life and caused him “severe emotional distress.”

Corliss’ lawyer, Mark Jay Heller, said the suit also charges that the building’s brass defamed him by claiming his conduct was illegal, when they knew the criminal charge against him had been thrown out of court.

The incident happened April 27, 2006, when Corliss, a highly experienced BASE - building, antenna, span or earth - jumper, tried to leap off the observation deck.

{ NY Post }

In the meantime, Mr. Corliss is already hard at work on another project. He plans to “jump out of an airplane without a parachute.”

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { How a multitude of FM and TV stations broadcast from the Empire State Building }

The construction of the Empire State Building started symbolically on March 17, 1930 (St.Patrick’s Day)—per Al Smith’s influence as Empire State, Inc. president and Governor of New York.

The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk nation iron workers. According to official accounts, five workers died during the construction.

The construction was completed on May 1, 1931, one year and 45 days (including Sundays and holidays ) after it had begun.

{ wikipedia | npr }

Andy Warhol made one of his most famous and controversial films, Empire, on July 25-26, 1964. Aiming his camera out of a window of the Time-Life Building [44th Floor], he recorded the Empire State Building for six hours, from the twilight of 8:00 p.m., through the darkness, and until 2:30 a.m. The film contained only one image and extended, rather than condensed, real time. Not only did he use, unedited, all of the footage he shot, but, when the new work premiered the following March, he projected the film in slow motion [at 16 frames per second, instead of 24], bringing the final running time to slightly over eight hours. { Coskun }

Empire is a moment of time captured, more of an experience than a film, like watching a living portrait. { comment on imdb }

“An 8 hour hard-on.” — Andy Warhol

Conversation notated by Gerard Malanga during the filming of Empire
John Palmer: Why is nothing happening? I don’t understand.
Henry Romney: What would you like to happen?
John Palmer: I don’t know. Is the Foundation going to know that you did this?
Henry Romney: I have a feeling that all we’re filming is the red light. (…)

John Palmer: The lack of action in the last three 1200-foot rolls is alarming.
Henry Romney: You have to mark these rolls very carefully so as not to get them mixed up. (…)

Andy Warhol: The Empire State Building is a star!
John Palmer: Has anything happened at all?
Marie Menken: No.
John Palmer: Good. { Continue reading }

During the filming [of Empire], the lights in the office from which they were shooting were temporarily left on. In the beginning of three reels, images of the film crew can be seen reflected in the window, next to the Empire State Building. Warhol’s reflection appears at the beginning of Reel 7. { Warhol Stars }

1932: The first light to shine atop the Empire State Building (November, 1932) was a searchlight beacon which told people for 50 miles that Franklin D. Roosevelt has been elected president of the United States.	1964: The top 30 floors of the building were illuminated by a new series of floodlights in April transforming the Empire State Building into a nighttime landmark at the beginning of the New York World’s Fair.

1976: Colored lighting was first introduced by Douglas Leigh. The tower was lit in red, white and blue in celebration of the American Bicentennial.	1977: A lighting system, permitting a wider range of colors, was inaugurated on October 12, when blue and white lights flashed to announce that the Yankees had won the World Series. The installation of 204 fixtures, utilizing metal halide lamps, plus 310 fluorescent lamps, light the building from the 72nd floor to the base of the TV antenna.	1984: Designed by Douglas Leigh, 880 vertical 75 watt fluorescent tubes in the mast and 220 horizontal fluorescents at the base of the mast can now be changed at the flick of a switch. Each of the 176 panels contains five tubes and each tube is a different color: red, green, blue, yellow, and white.	2006: This blue and green lighting at the Empire State Building last march was to celebrate Earth Day, which marks the exact moment of the Vernal Equinox occurs (the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere).

The meaning behind the color themes

Blue/Blue/White UN World Summit
Blue/White/Red Bastille Day
Green/Green/Green St. Patrick’s Day
Green/White/Green Pakistan Independence
Orange/Orange/Blue NYC Marathon
Pink/Pink/Yellow Tribeca Film Festival
Red St. Valentine’s Day
Red/Black (no lights)/Green Harlem Week
Red/Red/Gold NYC Celebrates Fortune 500
Red/White/Blue 9/11/01 Memorial / Independence Day / Republican National Convention…
Red/Yellow/Yellow Lunar New Year

{ More color themes }

+ { Tower Lighting Schedule, April 2007 }

A lawyer leaded to his death from a 69th-floor office at the Empire State Building yesterday, severing a leg that crashed to the sidewalk in front of horrified onlookers.

Cops raced to the 102-story landmark just before 3 p.m. after several witnesses called 911 to report a body part on the ground on W. 33rd St. A police source identified the dead man as Moshe Kanovsky, 31, of Brooklyn.

The left leg, severed below the knee, was bare except for a gray and black argyle sock. Police said the rest of Kanovsky’s body was found intact on a 30th-floor landing.

Investigators questioned employees at Levine & Blit, a personal injury practice, and at Ashok Karmaker. Both law firms share a suite on the 69th floor where Kanovsky “did odds-and-ends work” for Karmaker.

It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted Kanovsky’s suicide.
“He was interviewing a client,” said a man who works in the suite. “He just got up, opened the window and jumped.”

At least 30 people have jumped from the Empire State Building since it opened in 1931. { NY Daily | Continue reading }

+ { Would a penny dropped from the Empire State Building kill someone on the ground? }

Would a penny dropped from the Empire State Building kill someone on the ground?

Given that the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall and ignoring such factors as wind resistance for the moment, a penny dropped from the top would hit the ground in approximately 8.8 seconds, having reach a speed of roughly 280 feet per second.

This is not particularly fast. A low-powered .22 or .25 caliber handgun bullet, to which a penny is vaguely comparable in terms of mass, typically has a muzzle velocity of 800 to 1,100 FPS, with maybe 75 foot-pounds of energy.

On top of this we must consider that the penny would probably tumble while falling, and that the Empire State Building, like all tall buildings, is surrounded by strong updrafts. As a result the penny’s descent would be substantially slowed.

Thus while you might conceivably inflict a fractured skull on some hapless New Yorker (or, more likely, some cretinous tourist from Towson), the penny would not “go through just like that.” I bet it wouldn’t even penetrate the skin. { The Straight Dope }