And now for something completely different…. OK, I guess by now you realize that this is pretty much par for the course when it comes to how I do things over on the PiercingKen Blog and believe me I would not have it any other way. So my plans for this particular evening was to catch the long awaited return of the band Armored Saint. I was going to be reviewing their show for my PiercingMetal site in my role as Maestro of the Metal Republic. Before the gig one of my friends from the scene was discussing finding a place for dinner and that his friends who were joining were bringing along their telescopes. Clearly he was joking I thought. Right? I mean he had to be….
He wasn’t and indeed his friends Tom Hoffelder and Joe Alcott came to the Metal meanderings bearing two whopping telescopes (that’s a technical term in case you were wondering). Tom is the chap looking into the lens on the scope in the next shot. Check this baby out. According to Tom, this is a Newtonian reflector with an 8 inch f/6. He stated how he was also using a 7mm eyepiece which gives 175 power on Jupiter.
Yep. The team was training the scope on Jupiter. It was rather visible this evening and of course easier to spot by the trained astronomatic eye. You folks do know Jupiter right? Fifth planet from the Sun, biggest one there is in the Milky Way galaxy. Here is a photo I snared from Wikipedia.
Tom briefly told us what they were doing and I snared this recording with the Panasonic Lumix for the sake of the posting. Sorry for this being so short, there was quite a crowd assembling and he had moderate the scopes usage.
Since its over 500 million miles away, its clear that Jupiter is never a place that I can possibly visit for the purposes of photography or anything else and I guess that is a good thing when one considers how this guy runs around the place if you can believe your old Outer Space Men collection 🙂 – That’s Colossus Rex if you didn’t know and he was a part of an amazing set of plastic figures that I had when I was a child. They have long since been gone from my day. Oh well.
Here is another shot of the telescope that Tom was manning. I had to keep going back and forth to the concert and was making visits to the viewing base on the corner between each bands set. It was a lot of running around but who cares, this was amounting to a very fun night.
The next telescope was Joe’s and while a little smaller, they were training its lenses on the Moon. According to Joe this was also a Newtonian reflector and was an f/8 with a 17mm lens, a 2x Barlow (which doubles the magnification) and a blue UV filter. I’ll never remember that so I decided to ask Joe a little more.
Here is Joe explaining a little bit more about this for your edification.
Here’s a cool shot of the Moon which I got while surfing. Believe me I had all my real deal cameras with me and was not able to get a decent shot of Earth’s only satellite. I guess that is not really easy to do. Anyone?? Please fill me in.
Of course since this was a Metal show hang we had lovely ladies in our company as well and here is our official spokesmodel for the evening Miss Lindsay Abken (she’s also an artist and musician so talented). Hi Lindsay 🙂
Here’s Chief Observatory Office Tom Hoffelder with Miss Lindsay. This was becoming a very Metal “Big Bang Theory” episode because it was calling up all the interest in Science and the great beyond. I did not mind at all.
Next up our Lieutenant of Lunar Matters, Mr. Joe Alcott. Oh yes, and Lindsay.
I decided to be in this particular posting and hey why not, its my website after all. How could I resist such a charming lass anyway.
Here’s another shot of Tom checking out the settings on the scope. I was not able to get a photo of the hundreds and hundreds of people that were lining up for this experience. These guys were doing this for free and a few times I acted as Carnival Barker with their friend Mark. “Hey NYC, do you want to see Jupiter?” we shouted. You would be surprised at how many people stopped and got right on line. Pretty cool.
Just before leaving I said goodbye to the massive telescope and mentioned I looked forward to his return to our fair metropolis. The said they will be back sometime in middle January to do this again. Thanks for picking these coming cold weeks. I suggest you watch my @piercingken Twitter to see when I mention this stuff happening again.
To coin a popular super hero refernce I will leave you all with “Look up in the sky” and change it around to “because there is some really cool stuff going on up there that amazes and inspires. We are all just a really tiny piece of the puzzle at the end of the day. Thanks so much to the Sidewalk Astronomers for this interesting time. You should know that these stalwart celestial explorers all missed the Armored Saint concert but I don’t think that this bothered them at all. Their Facebook page is below. Be sure to “Like” it.
Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sidewalk-astronomers/
All posts by Piercing Ken
Foodtastic: The Ungrilled Cheesy Sandwich
I’ve been meaning to post this simple little recipe for a quick comfort grilled cheese sandwich which in all honesty is not grilled at all and more melted to achieve its effect. I started making them like this to avoid the extra intake of excess butter or cooking oils. That’s no good for you if overdone after all. Sharing this one with you was based on one of my friends posting on her Facebook how much she loved grilled cheese sandwiches so now the rest of you readers benefit. Let’s begin.
We are starting with a couple of pieces of white bread but these days I have opted to use something a little healthier like a whole wheat or seven grain bread. It surely adds to the taste and if you want to be brave go with pumpernickel.
Once toasted we move over to the toaster oven. I hope you have one of these as otherwise the rest of the recipes steps are kind of useless to you. You CAN use a microwave but that is just not the same in my humble opinion. Of course you can try and let us know how you made out with the comments section. We’ll leave the kitchen light on for you.
For this recipe I decided to use some spicy brown mustard. I like a little kick to my food and you can also use a good hot sauce (not the pepper water that is often sold as the stuff) for a different vibe to the fun. Since I had the Gulden’s stuff in the house I went that route.
Lay a few slices of American cheese on each slice of bread. I went with two for each side as that was going to be more than enough. My goal is to eat and not overdo it and we still had some ingredients to go.
As I assembled my working area I noticed I still had some mozzarella cheese and I wanted to put it to good use. I sliced it up nice and thin and applied to the top of the slices of American cheese.
Now we’ll put the tray back into the toaster over and click the toast button which should run for about a minute on a standard device. You need to stick around for this since its a very quick process and you don’t want to burn your sandwich. Once melted it looks like this if you didn’t over melt and its quite visually appealing. We’re almost done.
I mentioned loving some spice so I took some whole pepperoncini and sliced them into halves. For this particular sandwich I only used one larger pepperoncini as it was more than sufficient. If they were smaller you could surely use a couple of them or even try out some Jalapeno peppers. Mind you that I have NOT yet tried those on this but it would probably work out fine.
Take the whole thing and put them together and press lightly so these two sides of cheese meet and connect. We’re still working with some hot stuff so that should happen with no incident. Doesn’t look too bad in the end right? I know that I was happy with it.
Now it’s time to eat and you can serve this with a sour pickle and some chips or perhaps pretzels. Total preparation time is less than ten minutes if you need an exact count and that is great. It’s also easy to clean up after this one.
Ingredients Used:
Sliced Bread
Sliced Cheese
Sliced Mozzarella
Slicked Pepperoncini
Spicy Mustard
Happy Thanksgiving 2011 Everyone!!!
Hey it’s Thanksgiving once again isn’t it? Well so it is and in that I would like to wish you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving. This is a very big and very family oriented holiday here in the USA and while I realize that we have a lot of global readers on the blog, I ask that you folks indulge me for a second here. This year has been a tricky one for a lot of people and with that in mind its best to remember the good things and good people in one’s day and be thankful for them. Do you have some decent health, a handful of trustworthy people around you and interesting ways to spend your time? If so you have a serious bounty to be thankful for. Could you use a little more money? Well, who couldn’t and as the economy has show us that kind of thing comes and goes more often than we’d like. Perhaps you’ve experienced some kind of loss this year and while that saddens me too, its best to remember the good times and be thankful for the time you had spent with that person. Remember we all leave eventually and some just sooner than we would like. We’ve not a set amount of time on this plane that’s for sure. Try to make the best of what we do have and make your life one that positively impacts the life of someone else. You can do this with kind words, gestures and even support. Positive energy is strong medicine in an uncertain world.
Oh so I snapped some images of Thanksgiving related stuff that I happened upon and wanted to share it with you all before you get a move on into your day. Check out these couple of turkeys (horrible I know, but this is what you get from me).
I like the comfortable look on this little Pumpkin Man. He doesn’t seem to have a care in the world and all is solid with him. A nice place to be every once in awhile don’t you think?
Next we see one of the protester’s from “Occupy Thanksgiving” whose position is more of an Anti-Pumpkin one. Sadly I don’t think he has a leg or drumstick to stand on (queue snare drum).
A festive napkin for sure but not the kind of plate I like to see on Thanksgiving. Empty that is. My hope is that everyone gets their fill today.
Here is a slightly different take on a stuffed turkey. My grandmother actually made this many years ago and since I’ve always loved it, I decided to share a visual with you all.
Next up, the only way that I like to be given the bird. Let the feasting begin…..
I’ll close out by saying thank you to all those who have made my day a little bit better. Thanks to the parents for the constant support and thanks to my friends for being around for fun times and adventuring. Thank you Heavy Metal music as you drive my passions. Thanks also to anyone who reads and enjoys the websites that I have brought out to you, I really appreciate that stuff and promise to do more.
Take care of yourselves and treat each other good a little more than you might usually.
The Big Apple “Pyramid” or Sol LeWitt Structures Exhibit
I’ve often said to both friends and visitors to our fair metropolis alike that you just never know what you are going to see when you walk through the streets of New York City. This is another example of it and was seen just off Broadway at City Hall. It’s a pyramid structure made up of concrete blocks and looks to stand about ten to twelve feet high. It was part of the Sol LeWitt Structures public art display and I only managed to snare a few photos of this particular one. Time was not on my side that day but please enjoy these and the information sign.
Here are the finer details for you all. I felt it best to snap a photo of that rather than line out every single detail verbatim.
A shot from a slightly closer vantage point.
And yet another from a little bit farther away. Its very nice to look at but I always enjoyed the visual of pyramids myself.
I should mention that this pyramid is a little bit of angle trickery as well and the structure does not go completely around. Its only on the side that you see in these photos. I realize now that I should have taken a couple of more shots to show you exactly what I mean but I can always do that later and append this posting.
A Return To Metal \m/: Machine Rehearses (11/10/2011)
One thing I want to share more of whenever possible are the music adventures that fall outside of the stuff I normally do with the PiercingMetal.com site, and this seemed like the perfect place to do it since the blog’s overall premise was to be more in tune with my actual life. That being said, many years ago I was the drummer for a New York City based Heavy Metal band called Machine. The four of us were active on the local scene in the late 80’s and at the start of the 90’s and played numerous gigs including the famous L’Amour in Brooklyn. The band consisted of Jeff Mackey (bass guitar/vocals), Rob Rizzo (lead guitar/vocals), Anthony Trzesinski III (lead guitar) and I (drums) and we managed to do some Metal good while we did this. Perhaps I will reflect upon just how different being in a band was at that time in a future blog post but now the reasoning for this particular one. Even though the band had ended many years ago, we all stayed in touch when it was possible to do so and sadly without going into any personal detail, our guitarist Anthony Trzesinski III would pass away in early January of 2011. It was terrible to lose a former band brother and any musician will tell you that you live a lot of life in the times that you work together in this fashion. Thanks to the planning by one Anthony’s closest friends (Joe Affe of the band Maximum Penalty), a benefit to honor his memory was organized and musicians who he knew were all called upon to help raise a glass in true Rock and Roll fashion. One of the group’s that was tapped for the memorial event would be Machine, a band that had not worked together since 1991. It was going to be interesting to see if this worked at all.
Rehearsal studios in Brooklyn are not so common a thing nowadays and I remember when there were at least three in my own neighborhood but that was a long time ago in a music scene far, far away. Joe would secure time at the popular Fastlane Studios which is out in Kings Highway. Everybody would gather there and have a lot to work out in a short time. Behold the entrance to the studio.
This was a view that I hadn’t seen in quite some time. The DW 5000 bass drum pedals you see are mine as is the bag of sticks but everything else was property of the studio which was great. Less lugging things around and more time to focus on the task at hand. The carpet was a bit of a mess so the drummer in the space before me definitely spilled something or they just haven’t cleaned it in a forever. Back in Machine times I used a sizable drumkit but for the reunion/benefit event the drummers would be keeping it more compact and I think I was the only one who needed a double kick drum so this pedal would be my resolution. I was nervous of course since it was not something I had kept the chops up on. Here we go.
The videos below are from the second session of rehearsals that were done at the Fastlane Studios out in Flatbush. We all hit the space together with the folks in the All-Star Band and we closed out the rehearsal time by giving our Machine material a run through. It was a little choppy at the first session the week before but it seemed that it was workable at the second session we did. The first tune we opted to do from our repertoire was the song “Mechanikill” which was one of our more popular numbers and one largely an ATIII composition. Since we had friends hanging around these sessions, I asked our buddy Ewok to film the Metal blasting with my Sony Cybershot camera.
Machine’s “Mechanikill”
Next up was our signature tune “Misery (Loves Company)”, both songs were sung by Jeff. This was one of our oldest of the creations which I think we had about a dozen of before it all ended. The guys in the studio were all seeming to have a good time as well. Never a bad thing. United once more in Metal for a good reason.
Machine’s “Misery (Loves Company)”
As a band Machine loved a lot of the classic players, and one of the bands we enjoyed most was Motorhead and while Jeff might disagree with me, I don’t think that “Iron Fist” was the first tune we played together as a band. I could have sworn it was Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”. Oh well. Here is our go at “Iron Fist” just the same with guitarist Tommy Falanga who once worked with Jeff in the band Tempest. Tommy and I are actually colleagues on the Heavy Metal Mayhem radio show these days. He’s the co-host and I am the weekly concert calendar reporter and scene guy. Love it.
Motorhead’s “Iron Fist”
Jeff said that he and Anthony had Motorhead’s “No Class” as their theme song, and I never knew this until these rehearsals. Oh well, we cannot know everything but they were indeed close so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Personally I had never played this song before these rehearsals and was nervous for this one. I felt it was the longest 2.5 minutes of the sessions. In the end it worked out.
Motorhead’s “No Class”
Last but not least here is a silly photo of Jeff, Rizz and I from the rehearsal that preceded the one in these videos. It was a very spontaneous shot and I guess it worked for what it was.
I’ll try to blog about the overall benefit affair when time allows me to do so. I hope you enjoy these videos. It was surely interesting to be doing this kind of stuff again that is for sure. I had to say that I missed it just a little bit more than I had expected to. Keep it Metal my friends.