Under the Power Lines

The bike path cuts through the north Redondo neighborhood, under the power lines.

After a long hiatus, I decided to put a bit of exercise into my daily schedule. Whew!!! Maybe I should hit the gym, where the nice air conditioning will keep my spirits up.

Well, I'm now exhausted. So, this will be another "Image of the Day" lazy Tuesday.

In choosing how I go about spending my blogging time, I focus on content generation, sharing my personal feelings about various cultural topics, putting up photos, and linking to relevant videos. I don't have sufficient time to community-building activities, like visiting other blogs and leaving frequent comments. Certainly, I enjoy many other blogs, but I don't like leaving "nice post"-style remarks. It feels slightly disingenuous and inauthentic, like chattering spam-lite.

Nevertheless, it is this type of blog browsing networking that leads to the development of a community. And, if I had a large community following, I could have a fun lazy post by writing, "A bike lane and power lines converge upon a power station. Thoughts?"

Oh well, I'm happy rambling to myself and my dozen readers. ;-)

Welcome to Deneva

TRW's Space Park campus was used for the Star Trek episode "Operation: Annihilate!"


One interesting aspect to life in Los Angeles is that the city has been in the background to countless movies and television shows. So, you can go driving by buildings that you have seen in the movies numerous times a day. I'm not talking about "landmark" structures that even tourists can identify, but about structures that are relatively unknown even by locals.

In this post, we'll be looking at some buildings from the Space Park campus. It used to be owned by TRW, but in 2007 the company was bought by Northrop Grumman. This location was the setting to a Star Trek episode "Operation: Annihilate!" It was selected because the architecture had a "futuristic" design by the standards of the 1960s.

The TRW Tower of Space Park

Sadly, I couldn't get really detailed photos because the site is a secure facility. But it is adjacent to Redondo Beach public space. Therefore, I was able to stroll along the boundary and take some photos from afar. ;-)

Music for Aliens and Oddities

Flying Saucers from Mars Attacks! (1996)

We can't let the birth date of Leon Theremin pass without celebrating his great invention, the Theremin! An electronic instrument, the theremin is played without being touched by the performer. Here's Wikipedia's description of how it is played:

The theremin is almost unique among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact. The musician stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas. The distance from one antenna determines frequency (pitch), and the distance from the other controls amplitude (volume). Most frequently, the right hand controls the pitch and the left controls the volume, although some performers reverse this arrangement. Some low-cost theremins use a conventional, knob operated volume control and have only the pitch antenna. While commonly called antennas, they are not used for receiving or broadcasting radio frequency, but act as plates in a capacitor.

The sound is weird and unearthly, yet with a distinct and authentic quality. It has been featured in science fiction soundtracks ever since the '50s, most notably in Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day the Earth Stood Still.



Leon Theremin demonstrating his electronic invention.


Let's listen to some examples.