Connecting The Dots -- May 8, 2019

I doubt most readers caught this or connected the dots.

Except for those who have been living under the Geico Rock, "everyone" is aware of the proposal by Occasional-Cortex to ban air travel in the future and, instead, rely on rail.

Cynics pointed out that this would be difficult for those who wanted to travel between the US and the EU.

It turns out a Portuguese scientist, João Duarte, has found evidence suggesting that a tectonic plate may have peeled apart -- and that could shrink the Atlantic Ocean. The report was published in the same "journal" that predicted the Statue of Liberty would be submerged by the time our grandchildren entered college.

If confirmed, the new work would be the first time an oceanic plate has been caught in the act of peeling—and it may mark one of the earliest stages of the Atlantic Ocean shrinking, sending Europe inching toward Canada as predicted by some models of tectonic activity. 

So, Trans Canada Railway, with stops at: Montreal, Quebec City, St Johns (Newfoundland), Aluk Tunorleg (Greenland), Reykjavik, Edinburgh, Paris. From Edinburgh to Paris, the train will be known as the Hogwarts Express, where it will connect with the Orient Express. And, then of course, the last short leg, the Bering Express connecting Siberia with Palintown, Alaska.

By the way, is applying "Express" to names of railroads an oxymoron?

Occasional-Cortex -- looking better and better every day.

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Moby, The Musician

It's too bad this wonderful bio of Moby is behind a WSJ paywall. Maybe it's free. I don't know. But it was an incredibly good bio of Moby, about his life as a child. His father died when he was two years old; he was "raised" (and the term is used loosely) by a flower child of the 60's. The beginning:

A young widow, my mother was pretty and loved the beatnik life. She wanted to be a painter and hang out in Greenwich Village. Connecticut was too mainstream and confining for her. So in 1969, my mother and I flew to San Francisco. She used the two plane tickets her parents gave her as a graduation present. When we arrived, I remember the city being overrun with hippies.

My mother was a free spirit. But from my adolescent perspective, her daily routine with her new hippie friends was terrifying. Often, they’d pile into a VW with me in tow, drive around smoking pot, walk around with other hippies, and smoke more pot. None of them had jobs and all complained about not getting enough money from home.

One of my early memories in San Francisco was my mother and her friends sneaking me into an X-rated movie house. They were high and needed a place to hang out.
After six months of this, my mother and I returned to Connecticut. I assume her reasoning was practical, that her son needed to start school. She felt the pull of the familiar.

We moved into an apartment near her parents’ house in Darien, Conn. When I started kindergarten in 1970, my mother found new hippie friends.

I think she gravitated toward that lifestyle because her dad worked on Wall Street. She felt liberation would be possible only by rejecting her parents and embracing the counterculture.

Music was his "safe space."

Moby is now highly successful and doing well.

By the way, he, too, like me, cannot abide large houses, or McMansions. He lives in a modest abode in Los Feliz, Los Angeles.

Moby's music:

• First 45 (I wonder how many folks know what "45" is): C.W. McCall’s “Convoy.” 
• First album: “Live and Let Die” soundtrack 
• Favorite ‘80s albums: New Order’s “Power, Corruption & Lies,” Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Heaven Up Here” and Joy Division’s “Closer.”

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Almost Twenty Years Old

Short:

Mulholland Drive, interview, 2001

Long:

Mulholland Drive, Cannes, 2001