Recently I saw a photograph of utter Thanksgiving Day excess: a duck stuffed inside a chicken stuffed inside a turkey, slit down through the breast so the meats looked like various layers of sedimentary rock. It was gross, a perversion of the form that you would not want on your dinner table- and it made me think of Cars 2.
Cars 2 picks up with the duck; an over-boiled 007 pastiche spy tale forced up the tail-pipe of a hick-in-the-city yarn (sidekick Tow-mater), which is then rammed up the tail-pipe of the original turkey- a sweet kids story about Lightning McQueen growing out of his selfish and egotistical ways.
What we get is messy, overindulgent, and ultimately just as stomach-turning as the Thanksgiving Franken-turkey: a distended mess that goes on too long, has just way too much stuff in it, and not not nearly enough Lightning McQueen gravy.
McQueen and Tow Mater in a big old spy chase sequence (one of far too many).
Think for a moment about Toy Story. The sequels both picked up on something real and imaginable in the world of Woody et al, and then thrust them into the middle of it; but in a believable and bounded way. Toy Story 2 is defined by Woody’s decision to go along with his Round-up Gang. He made the choice that then forced everyone else to come to his rescue. Toy Story 3 is even simpler and more of a natural out-growth of the story arc so far- Andy grows up, the toys get dumped, and they have to figure out what is next for them.
I expected something similar from Cars 2. I only saw the original recently- but enjoyed it a lot. The premise is easy enough to swallow: arrogant race-car Lightning McQueen is forced to take a long hard look in the mirror of slow-life reality- and everything from there follows on in a nice and logical way, with McQueen learning several lessons (be nice to people, accept help, turn right to go left) which he then applies towards winning the finale race. It is a proper story with an arc. I thought maybe we would follow on from that organically, perhaps with McQueen training his son to be a race-car, or even simply facing off against challengers for the Piston Cup.
You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off
Instead we get an out-of-left-field spy caper led by Michael Caine’s special agent- hunting a secret weapon being developed by a cabal of rust-bucket ‘lemon’ cars. This storyline absorbs our characters, pounds them near flat as pancakes, and leaves them as barely moving cogs whose personalities have next to nothing to do with the outcome of the plot. It hops us in true spy style across 3 gorgeously rendered countries each hosting a race in the World Grand Prix, sponsored by the new biofuel Allinol, that leave us just plain exhausted and gasping for air. It thrusts Tow-Mater, the comedic sidekick pickup truck from the original, into the limelight, and completely sidelines McQueen to little more than a princess-in-the-tower to be saved.
Ugh.
There are so many problems with this movie. It’s not just that the original characters get swamped by the plot, that there are waaaay too many scenes, or that McQueen becomes an afterthought. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the spy story strapped to the Cars 1 cadaver like an artificial heart doesn’t actually work.
I’ll explain.
The spy plot, mild ***SPOILERS***
It’s a story of green biofuel versus Big Oil. This is interesting. A Richard Branson-like entrepreneur is pimping his new biofuel Allinol across a series of international races; but there are all those crappy cars moving in the background to try and stop him, by poisoning the biofuel and forcing the cars using it to flame-out on the race track. Throughout the movie we are shown pictures of the head honcho bad guy’s engine- but never his face. He could be anyone.
What it results in is a denouement that requires as much of a leap in logic as the movie Salt or the 9/11 truthers. The conspiracy suggested by Cars 2 is totally stupid and pointless, with a vast amount of complex manipulation and energy directed into an outcome that could have been achieved with minimal to no effort at all.
To be specific-
*** REAL SPOILERS ***
The Branson character is actually a lemon car, heavily invested in Big Oil, who wants biofuels to fail. He has set up this entire Allinol biofuel as a straw dog stand-in for ALL green energy, and organized for it to fail in a very public way. By doing this he hopes to remain in power as a Big Oil guy. At the end he gets unveiled by a string of very hasty and incredible leaps in logic from Tow Mater, most of which are glossed over quickly lest we examine them too closely and find them full of rust holes as well.
But the conspiracy. The fact is- Big Oil was in power already. The lemon cars had the power already, and there was no green biofuel to challenge them. There was no reason for the Branson-car to do this whole story. He already had everything he wanted. I’m going bold because it annoyed me that much, and yes they tried to sweep most of this deep plot mechanic stuff under the carpet in the gloss of a speedy finale. But it irks. It makes you watch and think- well, what was the point in any of it?
*** END of SPOILERS ***
There was no point. Not like in Cars 1, or in the Toy Story movies. Nothing that happened in Cars 2 resolved an existing threat or solved a problem. Nothing happened at all, except some cars whooshed around some tracks while a very silly self-contained loop of a conspiracy theory played out around them. Ugh.
Pit stop
Could the movie be fixed? Yes. You could probably fix it mostly in the edit.
1-? Push McQueen more to the front, Tow Mater to the back again. This is what we came to see.
2- Cut the number of races from 3 to 2. There was just too much. Or cut the amount of cross-cultural stereotypical slapstick going on at each to make them less wearying. Less chase sequences!
3- Make the bad guy a proper bad guy, who has to be defeated- not just unmasked.
4- Have way less spy stuff. Open with the Tokyo race, probably, and flame-outs. Introduce the spy story at the side- if at all. We don’t even need it, really. Instead let McQueen investigate what’s going on out of concern for his friends getting flamed-out.
Finish line
Just quite disappointing and exhausting; an overstuffed and under-torqued piece of evidence that even Pixar are able to lose sight of the finish line from time to time.
Girls Generation is a big news 9-member pop group from South Korea. They are currently breaking into Japan and other Asian countries in a major way. This can be seen in their cute same-looking legs gracing the covers of many product ads, from cookies to Cheetos.
Girls Generation prep for launch. My favorite is probably, um, the leader? 9 different flavors of same though, really.
Cheetos – serious taste-having cheese. With 1 collectible card.
It’s an odd branding exercise. If they’d carved each individual Cheeto into the shape of one of the girls’ legs, I’d be impressed. Of course they didn’t. It isn’t even a new flavor.
10 cards to collect, 1 per pack. If I was a completionist, I’d have to eat 20+ packs to get them all. My stomach hurts thinking about it. That’s a lot of chemical chEese numbers.
I guess the dynamic of girl’s groups has changed, or is just different in Asia, from the days of groups like the Spice Girls. Look at the Spice Girls. Now that’s a real girl’s group- festooned with Union Jack’s and oozing variety. My favorite was Geri.
Are you a fan of Asian girl groups? I know there are plenty out there. Get up close and personal with some branded Cheetos this fall.
Finale- the ladies and their cheese. Could they look any better than this?
See more weird Japan content here:
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If you’re interested in Japan’s haikyo (ruined / abandoned buildings) check out the web’s best galleries here.
Fighting in real-life is pretty dumb. You’ve gotta be a drunk or some kind of psycho to go around initiating fights with real people, though there are doubtless plenty of both. I remember being yelled out countless proposals to fight while walking pub-to-club on the night-streets of Bolton, UK, as though they were casual invitations to dance. There was the same pulse-quickening excitement, flushed faces, the same hopeful anticipation. I’m sure it happens every night still.
It’s strange, but then some people just like to fight, like Begby in Trainspotting (though more accurately he just liked to glass people in the face). Those of us unprepared to lock horns with such idiots do well to muffle our ears and stay out of their way.
Japan is the perfect place to do that.
PRO
I’ve lived in Japan for quite a while, and have never once been attacked, and only twice drawn into a fight. Of course I’ve heard wild stories, as everyone has- of yakuza shootings in downtown Shinjuku, someone getting their arm cut off with a ninja-blade in Roppongi, as well as endless tall tales from my old gym-mate who swore he once round-house kicked 5 rowdy salarimen in the face with one blow (and also broke his girlfriend’s four-poster oak bed with his vigorous technique), and so on… The fact remains though, real-life fighting just doesn’t happen here.
Except for the few times it does. I’ve been in two sort-of-fights in my Tokyo tenure, really just scuffles. Here they are-
STALKER
In my first year in Japan I worked at an eikaiwa (English conversation school) in western Tokyo. The school’s manager was my friend, and frequently stayed at the school late (often sobbing alone in her office because Head Office were brutal in their expectations), long after I and everyone else had gone home. Part of her job was to do preliminary interviews with potential students, and do everything she could to sign them up- and to accomplish that she was probably extremely friendly.
One young J-guy took that friendly manner for true affection, and started showing up at the school after-hours. I heard about it from her a few times, but didn’t think much of it because she laughed about it and said he was ‘sweet’ and begging her for a date, and would leave when she asked. Her business, I thought.
Then one time she locked the door on him, but he pushed hard enough to disengage the locks and chase her into the school. Quite scary? I lived within 10 minutes walk of the school, and had told her I’d come and try to help if he came again, but that time she only called after he’d left. Nothing had happened, except him looming around intimidatingly. She was pretty shook up. I suggested going to the police to report him, but she said no. Being new to Japan, I acceded, not knowing the culture.
Then maybe a week later he came back, and she called me. I sped off to the school. I arrived there out of breath, to see some guy exiting the elevator. Plainly this was him. It was a very odd moment as I watched him walk away, uncertain if I should do something or just let him go. Clearly there was no present danger. Still, I was concerned about what might happen in the future, so I figured I’d try to scare him off. I gave him a few shoves (which felt very uncomfortable, to be the aggressor), and yelled at him to clear off.
To my surprise though, he didn’t turn tail and run away, as I’d rather expected (and hoped). Instead, he took a swing at me. And so, we got into a fight.
It was surreal, kind of herky jerky and through a haze, as commuters walked past us into the train station. He punched, so I punched back. He kicked, so I kicked back. It seemed like he wanted the fight more than me. At one point I got worried he might knee me in the balls, so I did it to him first. At another I thought he might head-butt me, so I did it to him first.
He suggested, via motions and enough Japanese for me to understand, that we should go continue fighting in a nearby alleyway. I really didn’t understand that. I didn’t want to fight more, only wanted to drive him off. At one point in a lull, I became conscious of people on the street staring at me. Though I’d been in Japan only a short time, I’d heard enough to expect that I’d be the one to pay if the police got involved. Scenarios of being deported thrummed through my head, and I walked away.
What is the point of telling this story? Hmm. Let’s hear another while we consider.
DRUNK GUY
One night many years ago while out clubbing in Roppongi I stopped with some friends to eat a Subway sandwich. Lying sprawled on the shop-floor before us, underneath the tables and chairs, was a very drunk-looking white guy. We laughed a bit, but he seemed unconscious. However a few minutes later he roared to life like a Kraken from the deep and started hurling out insults.
So I got up and tried to push him out of the shop. We were both drunk and it became an awkward kind of standing wrestling. At last I managed to push him out. He prowled outside a while longer, but nothing more.
So that is my fighting history in Japan. Both times my aim was to just get rid of someone. The point is, there is hardly any fighting in Japan, and that is without doubt a PRO.
So what could a CON possibly be?
CON?
This one is a bit tongue-in-cheek. It can be summed up in the words of Jesus thusly:
Japan “maketh them to lie down in green pastures” and become one as the sheep (I added the last bit but it basically works.)
I’m not talking sheep as in robotic automatons. I’m talking sheep as in defenceless frightened animals. Not that all Japanese are defenceless and frightened- the guy who offered to go continue fighting in a nearby alleyway suggests otherwise. But generally, the utter pacificity of this country tends to make calm and trusting pacificists of us all.
In fact this plays into the point I made in the #1 Pro / Con post on walking. Walk-in-fronters here amble and gambol across the fast-lane paths like spring lambs, oblivious to fast-walkers coming through at speed from behind. Their trust in the world around them to protect them is absolute, so no concern for personal safety need be expended.
Surely though that is a good thing? Absolutely, I’m in agreement. It seems positively enlightened to live in such a society (where even George Costanza would have a hard time complaining about anything).
However it does have a softening effect, like leaving a tooth in a Coca Cola petri dish. The sweet and sugary soda will eventually erode the tooth’s hard outer enamel and then eat into the middle until there is nothing but a slurry of calcium Coke remaining. Again, maybe not a bad thing. It makes us all to lie like lambs amongst each other. But it also leaves us incredibly unprepared for events such as this:
The foreign-guy seemed pretty belligerent, maybe with just cause, in the beginning. He’s saying:
“Don’t touch me, I’m not your friend, don’t put your hand there!” in Japanese, with a challenging look on his face. A lamb acting like a wolf in front of his friends? Then when the J-guy kicks him, and punches him, what does he do?
He gets up (careful not to drop or spill his beer, we must note, perhaps one thing to be proud of), basically holds the attacker’s hand in a strange re-seating dance, then sits down again and tries to look hard, while his friend gives the J-guy “a good talking-to”.
Hmm. There is obviously shock in a situation like this. But to take that hard kick and punch and then do nothing but dance? I think that is Japan sheepifying this guy. He has run up against a sneaky wolf, and been thumped. If that can be considered a CON, then it is a con.
Tomatoes are the great pretenders; spies who ply both sides of the aisle like double-edged moles in a John le Carre novel. One day they’re cropping up as vegetables, hidden amidst a salad, getting all the juicy low-down on what the peas are really up to with the carrots, and the next they’re in bed (are they gay? bisexual? I didn’t say it here first) with peaches and pomegranates, squeezing out seeds seductively and acting all sweet.
Trust the Japanese to capitalize on that. So you think you’re sexy, tomato?Also earthy? Ha ha, f%*k you, into the jello cup you go!
It is the summer of the tomato (or tomats, as they’re fondly known) in Tokyo. Tomatoes are everywhere. I would label it an attack, but honestly, tomatoes are not members of the meat family, and don’t have a chance as bad-asses (except perhaps for the beefsteak tomat).
From conveni to shining conveni all across this land, we can see tomats in as wide a range of cosplay outfits as you might see on Jingu bridge in Harajuku. On the menu today:
– Tomato SOY JOY
– Tomato Pot Noodle
– Tomato Jello cup
So without further ado:
Tomato Soy Joy
Do you know Soy Joy? Are you professional? Soy Joy is a range of breakfasty cereal-type bars made of fruit and that miracle curd distilled from goats- soy. They come in a range of fruity flavors that all, which all taste exactly the same.
It was seeing the tomato Soy Joy that got me started down this quest for all things tomato. A fun fact about tomatoes-
The ancient Romans considered tomatoes to be evil, because they were red like the devil and so damn sexy and juicy on the inside.
Here is the tomato Soy Joy, shot in my balcony paper lightbox:
It’s competition, a true tomat. Who tastes more like a tomat?
I don’t see much red up in here.
I ate the Soy Joy. I’m proud and pleased to report that once again, the taste experts over at Soy Joy industries have done it again- it tastes exactly like all the other Soy Joys in the range. Not even a bit of tomato taste to it.
Well done, Japan!
Tomato Pot Noodle
OK that’s the aperitif out of the way. Let’s move onto the poor man’s entree; pot noodle.What can I say about pot noodles that hasn’t been said before?
Did you know there was a Christmas pot noodle flavor in the UK for a while?
Another fun fact about tomatoes-
– Tomatoes are rich in the 5th flavor group, umami.
Umami means deliciousness. After salty, sweet, sour, and spicy, it is the fifth flavor, and comes down to savouriness. Until 1908 and discovery by a Japanese food technician it didn’t even exist!
Alright, Pot Noodle-
Nice looking tomatoes. About 150 yen.
Nice looking tomato squares. Just another disguise donned by tomatoes.
With cheese sauce. Sounds gross.
Dry. Check out those dehydrated tomato squares. That is space food, baby!
With cheese added. This looks kind of gross.
And the verdict. Actually, this tasted quite a lot like spicy tomatoes. It was good. The tomats have done it again- cloaked themselves in one of their many guises and come up smelling of umami. Nice.
And finally.
Tomato Jello
Here is the trickiest disguise of them all- full on sweet. Sweet tomato jelly. I expect more chops of tomato, that hardly look anything like the actual fruit. But, it cost about 400 yen, so maybe…
If I’d read the small Japanese print, I’d have known it included a whole tomato inside. But that would have spoiled the surprise.
Here is the real tomato for comparison.
Unimpressive, but note- a whole tomato buried in the jello!
Wow?
Awesome.
Ever seen the like of this?
Spill it tomato or this is what we’ll do to you!
Devilish and sexy innards.
A pretty stunning success. I was very impressed by the quality of this product. A whole tomato, buried in jello. Very sweet, kind of a good texture too- though you might expect it to be all smushy, there was a little bite to the tomato, giving contrast against the soft jello.
Excellent product. SY liked it enough to say she’d buy it again. Tomats, you have done it!
See more weird Japan content here:
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If you’re interested in Japan’s haikyo (ruined / abandoned buildings) check out the web’s best galleries here.
The movie Shanghai wants to be a big hullaballooing tapestry of love, espionage and betrayal in WW2 China, woven through with parallels to Casablanca. What we get though is more gold-threaded doily then Bayeux, knitted with great pomposity from dramatic but impersonal threads, few of which we really come to care about at all.
In short, it’s empty. Here’s why.
Story
Jon Cusack plays Paul Soames, an American spy sent to look into the suspicious death of his buddy spy in the Japanese sector of Shanghai, the last Chinese city not wholly under Japanese control in the middle of World War 2. He arrives with a bunch of Nazis- his cover is as a Nazi sympathizing reporter- to see Japanese Imperial soldiers run down and shoot a Chinese dissident like a flapping grouse. From there, via voice-over, his efforts to find out what happened to his buddy take him in and out of the Chinese resistance, opium dens, Bond-like casinos, spy-stuff, the plots leading towards Pearl Harbor, and so on.
Empty
Shanghai is empty of emotional investment. I watched it pretty cold throughout- never really worrying about anyone, enjoying the backdrops, but unengaged. The back drop is without a doubt fascinating, pretty, brutal. Shanghai is in a city in turmoil, there is a resistance going on, there is murder and drugs and torture all around, but throughout our hero is totally unfazed and remote.? He has the moral ambiguity of Rick in Casablanca, but for me that doesn’t work, because it gives me nothing to care about.
Soames doesn’t care about anything (except his buddy- more on that shortly), doesn’t seem to stand for anything, so neither do we. We sit through various horrible instances of Chinese dissenters getting gut-stabbed by Japanese soldiers (uncomfortable note- the Japanese come across pretty badly in this move. Not a wonderful thing to watch while in Japan, surrounded by the Japanese, who must have been squirming in their seats), but it’s like background music that our hero can barely hear, so little does it touch him. This leaves us nothing to root for, except for the one thing Soames does care about-
Eggs Benedict
Soames is on a personal vendetta to find and kill the man who killed his pal. That’s his whole drive, so you’d hope we would buy into it too. It seems essential that we buy into it, for us to care about anything that happens. We are told several time that this friend was a guy Soames admired, followed, loved even. He was worthy, he was a better man for a different time, blah blah. But the problem is that we are told that. Though we see him grinning winningly a few times in flashback, we never really see why Soames is that bothered. So we don’t feel it. And that’s not enough to pin the stakes of your plot on. It’s cooking Eggs Benedict without the eggs. All you’re left with is a muffin on the plate staring back at you. It’s empty.
Can you enjoy a muffin without an egg? I guess so. It’s kind of dry, probably. A bit bland. It’s all you get however, and leaves you with the choice- “Am I really that hungry?”
From such tenuous threads is the story woven. A rich ‘tapestry’ of worlds colliding, to be sure, but not our world, not anything we’re all that invested in. Like guests at an acquaintance’s wedding, we watch the pomp and show and nod along, all the while wondering how long we ought to stay ‘to be polite’, and what we’d like to watch on TV when we get home.
But then, perhaps this is like Casablanca. I can’t say I enjoyed that movie, either. Wasn’t that a story of disconnection, of isolation, of Americans on the sidelines while the world imploded? Perhaps. But that’s hardly the world of today. America is in the thick of all the major wars going. They are decidedly interventionist. That’s the world we’re invested in now.
Conclusion
Shanghai may be ‘true’ in a sense, but it just wasn’t that engaging, and ultimately, its interweaving threads of characters we don’t care about doing things that don’t really matter doesn’t add up to a hill of beans. Though perhaps that’s the point.
Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, John Cusack, Franka Potente, Ken Watanabe, David Morse, Yun-Fat Chow, Li Gong, Hugh Bonneville, Gemma Chan, Rinko Kikuchi, Nicholas Rowe
My story Bone Diamond – a sweeping tale of greed, madness, and murder in alt. Egypt – has just gone live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is my first ever pro-rated sale, so I’m utterly proud and pleased with it.
It’s the first step towards three pro-sales, which leads to SFWA (Science- Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) membership, which is another big stepping stone towards getting my work more widely out there.
Here’s an excerpt-
“Shh,” I whisper. I lift my bone shears and disconnect his left clavicle at the articular process, snap it at the foramen. He is screaming but I do not hear it. The smooth shank of bone sucks out of the trembling meat of his back, and I hold it up to the gathering dawn light. There, buried in the center, is a diamond, blazing a deep and furious red at its heart.
Here’s where you can read it-
Purchase / Read
– You can buy the magazine, issue #75, including one other story by Ferrett Steinmetz, on Kindle.
Kizuna: Fiction for Japan is a charity anthology of 75 stories from authors all around the world, with all proceeds going to benefit the orphans of the disaster-stricken Tohoku area, through the charity Smile Kids Japan.
It includes a story by me- The Ice-Flock Storks of Soroya – one by Michael Moorcock, and 73 others ranging across all genres-
Horror, humor, human drama, science fiction, fantasy, absurdist, bizarro, weird, new wave, bugpunk, Cthulhu, Sherlock Holmes, historical fiction, and more.
Purchase
At the moment it’s available only on ebook- here are the links:
Lighthouses are the sentinels of globalization; for thousands of years they have stood on barren shores the world over and guided the spreading hands of global trade, keeping unknown seafarers and their precious cargoes safe in the night.
Now they are dying, as modern technology renders them obsolete. Without people to maintain them, they slowly come to pieces: their lights no longer shine, their bodies crumble and decay. They are curios and museum pieces for tourists to explore.
Here are 10 from around the world.
1. Rubjerg-Knude lighthouse, Denmark
Construction of the Rubjerg-Knude lighthouse in Jutland, Denmark straddled the last two centuries, beginning in 1899 and finishing in 1900. It was built on a dune-less cliff 200m away from the sea and 60m above sea level, but as the years passed the sea drew closer, and with it came the dunes, which gradually began to swallow up the base of the lighthouse.
Initially it was 23 meters tall, but by 1968 only some 15 meters was accessible- the rest, including all the entrances, were stopped up and buried, finally shutting the lighthouse down.
1899 construction- no dunes in sight. Image from Rubjerg-Knude.
The finished lighthouse, with the dunes slowly climbing up the rise towards it. Image from Solar Energy Dream.
Efforts were made to protect the lighthouse over the years, with sand pine grates installed and lyme grass planted on the dunes in an attempt to halt their encroachment. It didn’t work, and the lighthouse was shut down, but life around it didn’t halt completely- after 1968 the surrounding buildings were converted to a sand drift museum and coffee shop, which continued operation until 2002. Now though the sand has swallowed them too, caving in their roofs with its weight.
Soon, as the sea draws closer and the winds endlessly blows the dunes inland, there will be nothing left of the Rubjerg-Knude at all.
The ‘Point of Ayr’ lighthouse has stood on Talacre Beach in Wales in various incarnations since 1776, watching over ships make the trek across Liverpool Bay from the Welsh town of Lllandudno.
Abandoned since 1840, it has lived through numerous cycles of disrepair and refurbishment, with the latest reconstruction in 1994, leaving it a cheery red and white candy-pole on the beach, framed by the nearby offshore wind-farm.
Beginning another cycle of decay; the white paint peels away. Image from Adrian Evans.
Over the year the lighthouse witnessed many changes- during World War 2 it saw Air Force Fighters strafe the beach for target practise, shooting at wooden targets in the dunes and drogues towed by aircraft. At one point it witnessed the whole nearby village of Talacre coated in silver foil, as a guinea-pig for a new anti-radar technology. Now it’s a quiet tourist spot for beautiful views across the bay.
The lighthouse is well-known in the area for its hauntings- allegedly by a ghostly lighthouse keeper walking around the top of the tower. Mediums visiting the location have claimed feeling the spirit of a lonely man, Raymond, who died of a broken heart. Some tourists have come away feeling unwell and disturbed.
To commemorate this lost soul, the lighthouse’s owner commissioned local artist Angela Smith to create The Keeper, a 7-foot tall sculpture made of hundreds of pieces of highly polished, medical-grade stainless steel pieces. The many holes in his body are intended to let the wind pass through and create ghostly chimes.
The Tillamook Rock Light was built in 1881 on a rock off Oregon coast called Tillamook Head. It was born in blood; with its grand opening overshadowed by a nearby shipwreck just days before its guardian gas-light was lit. 16 people died when the barque Lupatia wrecked on the rocks in a storm, proving the necessity of a lighthouse there.
Due to the extensive surveying and blasting necessary to build a lighthouse on the Tillamook sea-crag, combined with the erratic weather conditions, it was the most expensive West Coast lighthouse ever built. It soon became known as ‘Terrible Tilly’, for the dangerous commute required for Keepers bringing supplies back from the mainland.
1891 Tillamook Rock.
Long haul to the Tillamook Rock.
Terrible Tilly ravaged by the waves.
Tilly has proved a popular model for both painters and modelers. In fact both pottery and paper models of lighthouses are available in the States as collectibles.
Rough skies and rough waves. Painting by Lynn Wright.
Over the years ferocious storms damaged the lighthouse, shattered its Fresnel lens, and eroded the rock it stood upon, causing it to be decommissioned in 1957 and sold into private hands- ultimately beginning its final lease of life as a columbarium; a final resting place for urns filled with the ashes of the dead.
Crag-top mausoleum, accessible only by helicopter. Photo by Steven Astillero.
The Eternity at Sea Columbarium interred only 30 urns between 1980 and 1999, before the company lost its license. To this day they have not got the license back; but those ashes still remain, sitting on wooden boards overlooking the raging Pacific Ocean.
Your soul’s final resting place? Image by Dick Locke.
The crumbling Italian lighthouse perched on the edge of Mogadishu’s Old Harbor was built over a century ago, and abandoned some 20 years ago as trade dried up and the failed state of Somalia descended into a home for extreme jihad and piracy.
Now it stands as a reminder of the spectacular city Mogadishu once was, a bullet-pocked shell left to rot as a haven for homeless fishermen and qat-junkies.
A view across Mogadishu’s Old Harbor to the Indian Ocean. Image from
“[The lighthouse’s] spiral staircase is in a state of mid-collapse. Its hollowed-out rooms smell of sea rot and urine. Young men sit cross-legged in the rubble, chewing qat, a plant whose leaves contain a stimulant; and playing a dice game called ladu for hours. Some huddle in a corner and smoke hashish. They seem like ghosts in a city left for dead. But the lighthouse is quiet and it is safe; if anyplace in Mogadishu can be considered safe.”
The lighthouse on Great Isaac Cay, a small island in the Bahamas around 20 miles north-east of the Bimini Islands, was built in 1859 to guide trade-ships carrying exports of sun-dried sea salt from Inagua, rum from Nassau, and aragonite lime-stone to markets in the US.
The lighthouse, though scoured by the sea and surrounded by the tumbledown buildings of the keeper’s house, is actually still in operation as an unmanned light.
A tiny island not even visible on Google maps.
Local lore tells of ghostly noises swelling about the lighthouse during a full moon- apparently the spectres of a mother and infant child shipwrecked on the island in the late 19th century. She is known as the Grey Lady.
In 1969 two of the lighthouse keepers disappeared and were never found again; some believe they were victims of the nearby Bermuda Triangle. Others claim a hurricane around that time simply swept them out to sea. Better weather locations via Last Minute Bargain Holidays
Rusted but operational, shooting a flash of white light every 15 seconds across a range of 23 nautical miles. Image from Marinas.
The Klein Curacao (‘Little Curacao’) lighthouse was first built in 1850, on a tiny spit of land 11km off the southeastern tip of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea. It’s exactly the kind of place that Jack Sparrow would have pranced around.
Now it is hollowed out, crumbling rapidly, and nominated for endangered status, despite being rebuilt once in 1879 and again in 1913.
White masonry tower, red brick keeper’s dwellings. Image from Philip Stevenson
Located on a barren flat of rock and low scrub.? Image from Luciano Gollini
The 20m (66ft) tall lighthouse tower is abandoned, along with the two ruined 2-story keeper’s houses flanking it, but still functional. It was reactivated with a solar-powered LED beacon during the restoration of Curacao’s aids to navigation in 2008, having stood utterly dormant for many years prior. A stretch of coast dotted with rusting shipwrecks attests to its necessity. Now the LED emits two white flashes every 15 seconds.
A rusting wreck sits on the shallow rocks at left.
Wreck of the tanker Maria Bianca Guidesman. Image from here.
Klein Curacao is only 1.7km squared, with no permanent population but a few small huts used by fishermen. The windward side of the island is littered with wrecked boats, hundreds of washed-up flip-flops, and thousands of plastic bottles.
Its bigger brother Curacao sits off the coast of Venezuela, with a permanent population of about 140,000, some of whom day-trip to Klein Curacao to dive around its beautiful coral and underwater caves. Curacao officially became a Dutch colony in 1815, despite German expansion efforts in 1888, when a German naval base was established on Klein Curacao. However they were soon beaten off by the stormy weather. No ruins of the base remain.
20m tall tower looms against Caribbean skies. Image by M. J. Hagen
The Capo d’Otranto lighthouse was built in 1867, situated at Italy’s most eastern point, marking the point where the Ionian and Adriatic Seas meet.
It was abandoned in the 1970’s, but restored and reopened to tourists in 2008, where it hosts the Centre on Environment and Health of the Mediterranean ecosystems and a multimedia museum of the sea.
Prior to restoration, in crumbling and colorless condition.
The 32 m (105 ft) tall round stone lighthouse rises from a 2-story keeper’s house, the tip of which requires advance booking on New Year’s eve, when many Italians flood to the cape to watch the new year’s sun rise over the ocean.
Capo d’Otranto by pink dusk light.
After the 2009 refurbishment, looking spic and span.
The setting sun lights up the tower daily. Image from Lucera Dente.
The Aniva lighthouse was built by the Japanese in 1939, on a chunk of rock off the southern coast of Sakhalin, a thin 950 km long island situated just east of Russia, between the sea of Japan and Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk. The island was largely uninhabited until the 1800’s, when both Japan and Russia became interested in annexing it; the Russians for use as a penal colony.
Almost a fairy-tale castle on the water.
That led to years of conflict, retrenchment, and buildup of military forces, with both nations agreeing to split the island across the 50th parallel. A ring of light-houses were built on Sakhalin’s rocky coast to signal incoming troop carriers and merchant ships.
After around 50 years of sharing the island, the Russians annexed it all in the Second World War, causing some half a million Japanese to be evacuated back to Hokkaido. In 1951 the Treaty of San Francisco was signed, officially handing tenure of the island over to the Russians, though plenty of territorial issues remain over surrounding, smaller islands.
A dangerous and rocky approach. Building the lighthouse required extensive blasting of the rock it sits upon to make a level surface.
Now the Aniva lighthouse is abandoned. Its seven stories of diesel engines, accumulator rooms, keeper’s living spaces, radio facilities, storerooms, large clockwork pendulum (for regulating optical system), and 300kg pool of mercury (as a low friction rotation surface for the lens) are still, and echo only with the crash of waves against the surrounding crags.
I read about this location first on English-Russia. There are interior photos taken by an urban explorer claiming that the lighthouse was radioactive, having been powered by a small nuclear unit that had breached. Though looking at the size of the structure and the total lack of evidence elsewhere on the net (that surely a breached nuclear site would attract), I rather doubt its true. It is dramatic though.
Apparently this reads Radioactive. Surely someone’s idea of a joke.
Construction of the Ship John Shoal Lighthouse in Delaware Bay took 27 years, from a decision by the US Congress in 1850 that a light was needed, through various incarnations of caisson-foundations, screw-pile roots, 2000 tons of rip-rap, and a temporary anchored lightship, to placement of the completed iron tower in 1877.
The lighthouse went unmanned in 1973, and as recently as last month (June 2011) it was declared no longer necessary by the Coast Guard and made available for public sale.
Ship John Shoal sitting on a heap of concrete and rip-rap. Image by Nick Zelinski.
The Shoal upon which the lighthouse sits came to be named ‘Ship John’ in 1797, when the ship John ran aground there while on the last leg of a transatlantic voyage from Germany. It was Christmas Eve, and doubtless the 60 German crew were looking forward to festivities in Philadelphia. Instead they were off-loaded and transported up river to smaller settlements up Cohansey River, where they spent the holiday with strangers.
There was time enough to unload the cargo of linen, glass, rope, copper nails, gin, and German toys, before the ship John was frozen into the thick winter ice and its fate was sealed.
Ship John Shoal flocked by gulls, with a boat for scale. Image by Ann Searle.
In 1850 a screw-pile light-house was approved for the shoal, a design where long metal piles are literally screwed into soft undersea mud. However when ice floes carried away a lighthouse using the new technology, a new approach was considered: a caisson, basically just a hollow metal tube sunk into the ocean then filled with concrete, to form a solid base.
By 1874 there was a temporary light atop the caisson with two keepers in attendance, but they abandoned their post that winter due to huge chunks of ice battering the caisson, prompting the fear that it would be rolled away. 2000 tons of rip-rap, which is rubble used to ‘armor’ coasts and sea-borne structures, was dropped around the caisson to protect it from ice. Soon after, in 1877, the 125-foot tall permanent iron superstructure was fastened atop the caisson, and the Ship John Shoal Light began its life proper.
A simple model of the Ship John Shoal Light. Image from ebay.
A more detailed version, minus the side-long storage tank. Image from Harborlights.
Various stories of life for the keepers on the Ship John Light have been passed down.
– One tells of a curse in the 1880’s, a sickness that left several keepers sick or paralyzed after extended stays. This continued for several years, until it was discovered that the structure’s red leaded paint was washing into the rainwater tanks. The old paint was removed and replaced with a coating of hot tar. Health at once improved, and the curse was lifted.
The Grand Harbor Lighthouse on Fish Fluke Point, Ross Island Canada, was built in 1879, a square wooden tower 32-feet tall with the Keeper’s dwelling attached. Its fixed-white catoptric light was visible for 11 miles in clear weather. It was closed in 1963 when a replacement lighthouse went up on the nearby Ingalls Head breakwater, then smashed hard by the Groundhog Day Gale in 1976.
It has not been repaired since, prompting calls by locals and lighthouse aficionados for ownership to be transferred to a more dutiful custodian.
Looking out over the Bay, white wooden boards battered grey. Image from Robert Williams.
The history of the Grand Harbor Light tells us something of the Machiavellian political chicanery involved in becoming and remaining a Lighthouse Keeper. The light’s second Keeper, Mark Dagget, had served for 14 years when charges of political partisanship, failure to give proper attention to the station, and being absent from the station and unable to assist in a drowning situation were brought against him.
He refuted all charges as an attempt to take his government-appointed job away, ran up a petition of local citizens in his support, claimed he never discussed his political incinations with others, and finally beat the charge. Unfortunately he died he few years later in 1900, and despite pleas from his wife that their 18-year old son take up the Keepership, politics trumped charity, and the appointment was handed away.
Hollow now and surely on the brink of collapse. Image from Geccko.
With the foundation-stones blasted away, it can’t have long left. Visit via Cheap Holidays Abroad . Image from Swallowtail Keepers.
A few years later in 1912, the fourth Keeper, Lloyd Charles Dakin, was accused of attending a political meeting and ‘annoying’ one of the Members of Parliament. He too refuted the charges, claiming he wasn’t even at the meeting, but he lost the case and was dismissed, with just 3 days to clear out his family and possessions.
All this raises the question- why was it illegal for a lighthouse keeper to be politically partisan? Presumably to avoid the sensation that the job was handed out with any political nepotism in mind.
The light is owned by one Errol Rainess, who bought it sight-unseen in 1984 for no-one knows what reason. He spends most of his time in Belgium, and has another property in New York City that has also been neglected for the past 20 years. Image from George.
The Grand Harbor Lighthouse on Fish Fluke Point, Ross Island Canada, was built in 1879, a square wooden tower 32-feet tall with the Keeper’s dwelling attached. Its fixed-white catoptric light was visible for 11 miles in clear weather. It was closed in 1963 when a replacement lighthouse went up on the nearby Ingalls Head breakwater, then smashed hard by the Groundhog Day Gale in 1976.
It has not been repaired since, prompting calls by locals and lighthouse aficionados for ownership to be transferred to a more dutiful custodian.
Looking out over the Bay, white wooden boards battered grey. Image from Robert Williams.
The history of the Grand Harbor Light tells us something of the Machiavellian political chicanery involved in becoming and remaining a Lighthouse Keeper. The light’s second Keeper, Mark Dagget, had served for 14 years when charges of political partisanship, failure to give proper attention to the station, and being absent from the station and unable to assist in a drowning situation were brought against him.
He refuted all charges as an attempt to take his government-appointed job away, ran up a petition of local citizens in his support, claimed he never discussed his political incinations with others, and finally beat the charge. Unfortunately he died he few years later in 1900, and despite pleas from his wife that their 18-year old son take up the Keepership, politics trumped charity, and the appointment was handed away.
Hollow now and surely on the brink of collapse. Image from Geccko.
With the foundation-stones blasted away, it can’t have long left. Visit via Cheap Holidays Abroad . Image from Swallowtail Keepers.
A few years later in 1912, the fourth Keeper, Lloyd Charles Dakin, was accused of attending a political meeting and ‘annoying’ one of the Members of Parliament. He too refuted the charges, claiming he wasn’t even at the meeting, but he lost the case and was dismissed, with just 3 days to clear out his family and possessions.
All this raises the question- why was it illegal for a lighthouse keeper to be politically partisan? Presumably to avoid the sensation that the job was handed out with any political nepotism in mind.
The light is owned by one Errol Rainess, who bought it sight-unseen in 1984 for no-one knows what reason. He spends most of his time in Belgium, and has another property in New York City that has also been neglected for the past 20 years. Image from George.
Construction of the Rubjerg-Knude lighthouse in Jutland, Denmark straddled the last two centuries, beginning in 1899 and finishing in 1900.
The Talacre lighthouse, officially titled ‘Point of Ayr’, has stood on Talacre Beach in various incarnations since 1776, watching over ships make the trek across Liverpool Bay from the Welsh town of Lllandudno.
The Tillamook Rock Light was built in 1881 on a rock off Oregon coast. It was born in blood; with its grand opening overshadowed by a nearby shipwreck just days before its guardian gas-light was lit.
The crumbling Italian lighthouse perched on the edge of Mogadishu’s Old Harbor was built over a century ago, and abandoned some 20 years ago as trade dried up to the failed state of Somalia.
The lighthouse on Great Isaac Cay, a small island in the Bahamas around 20 miles north-east of the Bimini Islands, was built in 1859 to guide trade-ships carrying exports of sun-dried sea salt from Inagua
The Klein Curacao (‘Little Curacao’) lighthouse was first built in 1850, on a tiny spit of land 11km off the southeastern tip of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea.
The Capo d’Otranto lighthouse was built in 1867, situated at Italy’s most eastern point, marking the point where the Ionian and Adriatic Seas meet. It was abandoned in the 1970’s
The Aniva lighthouse was built by the Japanese in 1939, on a chunk of rock off the southern coast of Sakhalin, a thin 950 km long island situated just east of Russia.
Construction of the Ship John Shoal Lighthouse in Delaware Bay took 27 years, from a decision by the US Congress in 1850 that a light was needed through various incarnations.
The Grand Harbor Lighthouse on Fish Fluke Point, Ross Island, was built in 1879, a square wooden tower 32-feet tall with the Keeper’s dwelling attached.
See many more abandoned places in the ruins gallery.
Explore more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:
Construction of the Ship John Shoal Lighthouse in Delaware Bay took 27 years, from a decision by the US Congress in 1850 that a light was needed, through various incarnations of caisson-foundations, screw-pile roots, 2000 tons of rip-rap, and a temporary anchored lightship, to placement of the completed iron tower in 1877.
The lighthouse went unmanned in 1973, and as recently as last month (June 2011) it was declared no longer necessary by the Coast Guard and made available for public sale.
Ship John Shoal sitting on a heap of concrete and rip-rap. Image by Nick Zelinski.
The Shoal upon which the lighthouse sits came to be named ‘Ship John’ in 1797, when the ship John ran aground there while on the last leg of a transatlantic voyage from Germany. It was Christmas Eve, and doubtless the 60 German crew were looking forward to festivities in Philadelphia. Instead they were off-loaded and transported up river to smaller settlements up Cohansey River, where they spent the holiday with strangers.
There was time enough to unload the cargo of linen, glass, rope, copper nails, gin, and German toys, before the ship John was frozen into the thick winter ice and its fate was sealed.
Ship John Shoal flocked by gulls, with a boat for scale. Image by Ann Searle.
Red-brown iron-paneling, emergent from the water. Image by Ann Searle.
In 1850 a screw-pile light-house was approved for the shoal, a design where long metal piles are literally screwed into soft undersea mud. However when ice floes carried away a lighthouse using the new technology, a new approach was considered: a caisson, basically just a hollow metal tube sunk into the ocean then filled with concrete, to form a solid base.
By 1874 there was a temporary light atop the caisson with two keepers in attendance, but they abandoned their post that winter due to huge chunks of ice battering the caisson, prompting the fear that it would be rolled away. 2000 tons of rip-rap, which is rubble used to ‘armor’ coasts and sea-borne structures, was dropped around the caisson to protect it from ice. Soon after, in 1877, the 125-foot tall permanent iron superstructure was fastened atop the caisson, and the Ship John Shoal Light began its life proper.
A simple model of the Ship John Shoal Light. Image from ebay.
A more detailed version, minus the side-long storage tank. Image from Harborlights.
Details on the model, showing clearly the mansard roof and stylings around the windows. The interior was lined with insulating, and more comfortable, wood. Image from Harborlights. Visit similar locations via Deal Checker Flights to Florida
Various stories of life for the keepers on the Ship John Light have been passed down.
– One tells of a curse in the 1880’s, a sickness that left several keepers sick or paralyzed after extended stays. This continued for several years, until it was discovered that the structure’s red leaded paint was washing into the rainwater tanks. The old paint was removed and replaced with a coating of hot tar. Health at once improved, and the curse was lifted.
– Another story dates to 1903, when random inspections of the light were a regular feature. One keeper at that time was married, and often brought his wife out to the shoal despite a regulation that women were not allowed on the light (perhaps because they’d be far too sexy and distracting). When the random inspector came he powdered his wife with coal-dust and had her hide in the coal bin basement. The inspector however found her knitting in the man’s room, but he claimed it was his own- something to pass the time. He continued his inspection even to the basement, but the wife hid so well and stayed so still he never found her.
Though apparently he came back a few months later, and caught them then.
– A Keeper named Wells described the conditions on board around 1900 as lonely and monotonous, though with 200 to 300 visitors per year, and 8 days shore-leave per month, it was not as bad as duty at some other lights.
Construction of the Rubjerg-Knude lighthouse in Jutland, Denmark straddled the last two centuries, beginning in 1899 and finishing in 1900.
The Talacre lighthouse, officially titled ‘Point of Ayr’, has stood on Talacre Beach in various incarnations since 1776, watching over ships make the trek across Liverpool Bay from the Welsh town of Lllandudno.
The Tillamook Rock Light was built in 1881 on a rock off Oregon coast. It was born in blood; with its grand opening overshadowed by a nearby shipwreck just days before its guardian gas-light was lit.
The crumbling Italian lighthouse perched on the edge of Mogadishu’s Old Harbor was built over a century ago, and abandoned some 20 years ago as trade dried up to the failed state of Somalia.
The lighthouse on Great Isaac Cay, a small island in the Bahamas around 20 miles north-east of the Bimini Islands, was built in 1859 to guide trade-ships carrying exports of sun-dried sea salt from Inagua
The Klein Curacao (‘Little Curacao’) lighthouse was first built in 1850, on a tiny spit of land 11km off the southeastern tip of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea.
The Capo d’Otranto lighthouse was built in 1867, situated at Italy’s most eastern point, marking the point where the Ionian and Adriatic Seas meet. It was abandoned in the 1970’s
The Aniva lighthouse was built by the Japanese in 1939, on a chunk of rock off the southern coast of Sakhalin, a thin 950 km long island situated just east of Russia.
Construction of the Ship John Shoal Lighthouse in Delaware Bay took 27 years, from a decision by the US Congress in 1850 that a light was needed through various incarnations.
The Grand Harbor Lighthouse on Fish Fluke Point, Ross Island, was built in 1879, a square wooden tower 32-feet tall with the Keeper’s dwelling attached.
See many more abandoned places in the ruins gallery.
Explore more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:
Recently I saw a photograph of utter Thanksgiving Day excess: a duck stuffed inside a chicken stuffed inside a turkey, slit down through the breast so the meats looked like various layers of sedimentary rock. It was gross, a perversion of the form that you would not want on your dinner table- and it made me think of Cars 2.
