Things to do in Denver when you're delayed
1) Read Jo Nesbø. The Redeemer has a nice version of the old he'll-make-a-good-cop-one-day trope:
3) Wish that the airport's numerous slick Internet kiosks permitted saving and downloading of pictures, so I could show you some of the giant redwoods amid which I wandered yesterday. I don't go in much for awe, but those trees sure got the job done.
© Peter Rozovsky 2009
"In the last year, however, Skarre's self-confidence had evaporated somewhat, and Harry had begun to think it was not impossible that they would make a decent policeman out of him after all."2) Wander the immense length of Denver International Airport's Terminal B, with its neon, its bi-level concourse, its smoking lounge, its massage chairs, and compare this to Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport, with its fast check-in and its gates with ground-level glass doors giving directly onto the runways. The terminals are narrow and parked smack amid runways and mountains, a small reminder of what aviation must have been like before code-sharing and hubs.
3) Wish that the airport's numerous slick Internet kiosks permitted saving and downloading of pictures, so I could show you some of the giant redwoods amid which I wandered yesterday. I don't go in much for awe, but those trees sure got the job done.
© Peter Rozovsky 2009
Labels: Denver, Jo Nesbø, miscellaneous, what I did on my vacation
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 3:13 AM
26 Comments:
Peter, I lived in the mid-west in the 1980's and spent time in Denver. I was amused as a follower of conspiracy theories to see that there's some weird wiffle surrounding Denver International Airport -
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Denver_Airport.html
We live in a weird world
Ali
Thanks. That's quite a story, though I think the murals referred at the outset look good.
I'll read the article at greater length when I'm fully awake, but it looks as if the airport might have blown Italian waste and corruption up to American scale. The tent-like terminal building look nice at night, though.
I just looked at a bit more of the article, and I can tell you that I feel no weird forces at work, though the people who built the airport might tell you that that's just what they want.
Ali, we live in a weird world, all right. I just tried to call up Existentialist Man at this airport computer kiosk (yep, I'm still here. Read my next post for details.), and I got the message "Content restricted. Forbidden keyword: naked girls."
You dirty old sod, you.
Ali
I lived in Denver for 10 years up until last April in fact. You're a Brit, right? so you're bound to know David Icke.
There's an entire section in Icke's book The Biggest Secret about DIA. Apparently there are underground tunnels under the airport where the lizard men who run the Earth live and control the entire Rocky Mountain Region. The murals are only a clue to Illumanti that they are in the right place etc.
What's great about Icke is that if you write to him and tell him that you were say molested by George W Bush who then took off his human head to reveal his lizard alien head he'll believe it and put it in his next book.
Peter
If you're still stuck I suggest you take that annoying train to the main terminal and make your way down to the secret tunnels. You could have a real scoop on your hands.
You could certainly have worse company than The Redeemer. I reviewed it 10 days ago, and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Hi Adrian,
Thanks for that, BTW enjoyed DOWN RIVER and have a few of your more recent work on the TBR -
Yes, there is a weird force at work, David Icke has gone mental, and now David Shayler, former MI5 agent also a conspiracy nut has gone mental
Weird stuff indeed, but there is something strange in Denver, lived there for a while, before returning to London / Dublin.
The world is parallaxed
Ali
Peter,
Nice movie reference BTW.
Hmm, and the Homeland Security alert just happened to be raised to orange this week. Coincidence? So the lizard men would like us to believe.
Adrian, I'm still young enough at heart to enjoy innocent pleasures like indoor trains at airports.
One odd thing about Denver International Airport is the number of levels/floors it has. No doubt this is fraught with practical and symbolic significance.
Dorte, in that case, I'll hold off reading your review until I've finished the book. I am enjoying the way Nesbø weaves together the stories strands, and I smiled when my old friend (and Harry Hole's), Øystein, has just made an appearance.
Incidentally, how would one pronounce Øystein in Norwegian? For that matter, what's the correct pronunciation of Nesbø?
"The world is parallaxed
Ali"
No, I'd say the world is banjaxed or maybe poleaxed. Must be that thin air in Denver.
Incidentally, I saw a bumper sticker in Santa Cruz for the Mystery Spot. I was all excited, thinking I may have come across a crime-fiction store. But the Mystery Spot is a tourist attraction that highlight – you guessed it – weird natural phenomena.
Thanks, Brian. Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead is a decent movie, at least for its first two-thirds or so, but I've always found the title preeningly and annoyingly clever.
Of course the movie lifted the title from a song by Warren Zevon, you werewolves of London.
v-word:expyri
Marco, I hadn't known, or I had forgotten, that that was the source of the movie's title. Zevon is an acceptable inspiration, but I'm still not crazy about the title for a movie. Or maybe I expect a movie with a title like that to be more over the top than this one was.
This assessment excepts Christopher Walken's character, who was pretty far over the top.
The film was made in and around LoDo which has been completely transformed since then.
Denver's greatest gangster of course was the king of the con-men the great Soapy Smith who left us too soon.
I had not heard of Smith, "perhaps the most famous confidence man of the old west," according to Wikipedia, an enviable honor.
You know, Denver's past could use a good fictional evocation.
Thomas Pynchon romped through turn of the century Denver in Against The Day, but I'd like to see someone have a go at the Soapy Smith story which has nice 3 act structure.
Or perhaps someone could do for Denver what Scott Phillips does for Wichita in his crime novels. He doesn't write history, but he does give a strong sense of a place and what made it.
It occurred to me whan I read your comment that Denver has a surprisingly small place in America's imagination of its own past.
Peter
Yeah apart from L Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth of course which prominently features the Denver Public Library.
Colorado Springs makes up for Denver's poor relation status with lots of books and films including The Prestige and Dr Quinn Medicine Woman.
And maybe thats why the lizard aliens picked Denver as their Earth base, because of its low profile?
Or maybe the lizard people have wiped all the colorful Denver tales from our minds. No way they could have busloads of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman tourists tramping about the place.
Peter
Of course not only was Dr Quinn filmed in California (the absence of a gigantic 14000 foot mountain couldnt be hidden) but it was actually set before Colorado Springs became a town.
I'll come clean, I've never actually seen the show but the Walt Whitman episode sounds very special.
I think Homer Simpson liked the show, to the point of insisting that he and Marge watch it together at home in one episode.
Pronouncing Nesbø and Øystein?
Well, without using phonetic symbols, the closest I can get is ´Nesber´ and ´Oistein´. Not good, but what can a person do with only 25 letters???? ;)
I bet Finns or Hawaiians would kill to have as many as 25 letters.
Thanks for the lessons, Even without phonetic symbols or sound files, I get a good idea of the pronunciation.
Your Nesbø prescription tallies closely with what I'd read was the correct pronunciation of the ø, but I could not for the life of me figure out how one would pronounce the letter at the beginning of a word.
The funny thing is that you say ´ø´ all the time without knowing it. If you pronounce letter/teacher etc the British way, you end off with something pretty close to ´ø´, and if you say early and earnest, you begin with the same ø-sound, just a bit too long. So really, most of your unstressed vowels are øs :D
I had to say Jo Nesbø's name to a Swedish person once, and I was highly self-conscious of my efforts to pronouce it correctly -- I ended up with something like "NES-buh."
I have never felt comfortable with unstressed vowels, so he may remain Joe Nezbow when I mention his name to my fellow North Americans.
Incidentally, the Swedish person in question was Helene Tursten. I asked her about a matter I raised on your blog: the recurrence of Satanism as a theme in Scandinavian crime novels. She seemed not to like even the hint that one of her books may have shared themes with those of other authors. Or maybe she was just having a bad day.
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