HAWT action [hot ak-shuhn]

Miss HAWTaction since we've been taking a break?  Still want to be steered in interesting knowledge by our staff?

BOOM.

Look to Twitter.  Eventually, we're hoping to bring the articles back, but we think Twitter's here to stay, readers.  So, join up and follow along!

HAWTaction:  twitter.com/HAWTaction - general sassy knowledge.
John de Guzman: twitter.com/johndeguzman - lots of pics and John trying to be funny.
Johnny Lead Foot: twitter.com/johnnyleadfoot - JLF. Nothing more said.
Jenn Cloutier: twitter.com/jenncloutier - Jenn. Nothing more said. Lots of retweets from Glenn Beck. Yup.

See you on there!  Feel free to RT us, @ us, DM us, d us, follow us, quote us... Feel free.  We hope to have HAWTaction articles up and running by the new year. 

Things are just a bit... busy for us right now...

Thanks for stopping by.

Regular readers know we've struggled to keep up daily posts at HAWTaction... not only has work been busy, but the hours of insomnia that were usually dedicated to filling the blog with content have been hijacked by other brain-food.

We, the tiny staff of HAWTaction, apologize, and with upcoming travels on our docket, we are going to have to take a break.  We aim to be back up and running in November.  Until then, just hit that Archive button on top - there is lots of good stuff in there. 

Recycle the sass!

Thanks for visiting.

I'm going to just, like, say it.  I think Obama's a Muslim, communist socialist from Kenya who is trying to change our entire country and take it away from the America I know and that God ordered the founding fathers to create with our Constitution.

I was so happy, then, when someone I know sent me an email with a whole bunch of hilariously funny comic book things that put Obama's decisions in, like, a clear light for us to, like, look at them.  Funny and important politically.  (I tried to find which websites these originally came from so I could, like, put a source on it.)

These are from Dana Summers whose comedy used to be in Orlando Sentinel.

I take photos like a madman. I click gigabytes like they were... bytes.  In this massive collection, I've got some decent sHAWTs (statistics, really). I'm sharing them with you in this series: HAWTsHAWT [hot shot].

I get a bit behind on the posts, what with life getting in the way.  Maybe I'll take a chance to highlight some beautiful architecture in my home town, NYC.  Chances are you, even New Yorkers haven't noticed the beauty you are about to see.

I take photos like a madman. I click gigabytes like they were... bytes.  In this massive collection, I've got some decent sHAWTs (statistics, really). I'm sharing them with you in this series: HAWTsHAWT [hot shot].

I get a bit behind on the posts, what with life getting in the way.  Maybe I'll take a chance to highlight some beautiful architecture in my home town, NYC.  Chances are you, even New Yorkers haven't noticed the beauty you are about to see.  (Lucky.)

I take photos like a madman. I click gigabytes like they were... bytes.  In this massive collection, I've got some decent sHAWTs (statistics, really). I'm sharing them with you in this series: HAWTsHAWT [hot shot].

The Washington Monument, from a unique view.  Fish-eye lens attached.

I take photos like a madman. I click gigabytes like they were... bytes.  In this massive collection, I've got some decent sHAWTs (statistics, really). I'm sharing them with you in this series: HAWTsHAWT [hot shot].

I have become lost looking out my window for hours on end.  To the east, there's the Empire State Building, the New Yorker, 1 Penn Plaza, the Epic, the Nelson, the Navarre, 520 8th Ave., the Madison Belvedere...  Construction has begun across the intersection in a move that will block my view of midtown.  (The view of Metropolitan Tower has been already been blocked in HAWTsHAWT: The New View)  I hope you all allow indulgent nostalgia over the next few months as my view is constricted until death.

I'd like to have a boat.  I'd dig jumping into a clean, slick machine with a chipper crew and have them take me out into the blue oceans.  I'd love to hop on board my white vehicle and end up in Baltimore.  Or Rio de Janeiro.  Or Madrid. 

So.... what about people that have so many boats they need to keep outdoing themselves with each new iteration?  I mean, if you start with a canoe, you're going to want a row boat soon enough.  Then a jet ski.  Then... well... you get the idea. 

And that is what's happening with Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, whose boats keep getting more an more mind-boggling.  Lets jump back to June, 2009, when he launched the longest yacht in the world: the Dubai, measuring 168 meters (551 feet).

Excuse me, but that looks like a destroyer.  Now, what does this massive boat have?  Um, how about two heli-pads, a pool, a cinema, a library, a restaurant, a private garden and a master bedroom that spans an INSANE 465 square meters (5,000 square feet).  Of course, it wouldn't be complete without some Russian paranoia: This yacht has a missile defense system that can jam incoming missiles and it has a secret underwater entrance for the yacht's very-own submarine.  You can never be too safe.  It cost $350 million.

Well, that was back in June.  Abramovich has since dumped the Dubai on someone else and he has proudly launched his NEW boat, three months later.  This is his new baby, the Eclipse. 

Oh, the Eclipse cost $1.2 billion. ONE POINT TWO BILLION USD.

I take photos like a madman. I click gigabytes like they were... bytes.  In this massive collection, I've got some decent sHAWTs (statistics, really). I'm sharing them with you in this series: HAWTsHAWT [hot shot].

I've always wanted to capture DC's mall.  I mean, monument after monument is begging for the HAWT shutterfly treatment.  Here's a shot that might spin your mind.

The fifth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia starts tonight on FX at 10pm.  This show is so good, we're shoving it down your throats again.  Trust in HAWT, readers.  You'll love it.



Sometimes there are TV shows that are really, really good that few people watch, and I feel compelled to draw attention to them.  Now I have a blog to power that drawing.  I drew attention to Arrested Development sans-blog and it, single-handed, pushed the show's canceling back by about 4 minutes, which is like a year in TV time.

The new season of TV is coming back, and because there was a writers' strike in '07, I herald this the first real return in a couple of years.  After a healthy stint in Europe (not that there was a day missed on HAWTaction), I'm coming back to two crowded DVR's.  I'm giddy, and speed/cup cakes will get me through.  (Expect to see a string of TV RCMNDTNs.)

First up in the fall RCMNDTN series is a show that has, understandably, remained hidden on everyone's cable guide.  (Who would look for an original comedy on FX?)  The show is one of the few original shows in FX's stable, and though FX has received attention for said stable, it goes to dramas like The Shield, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck and Damages.  Today, I'm recommending the lone-standing comedy, now in its 4th season.  It's a little show called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Sunny is... special in every way.  It's special in how it was first made.  It's special in how it's written.  It's special in how it's acted.  It's special how it puts irreverence on display like it was a green prophylactic on the Lincoln Memorial.  SPECIAL.  Let me walk you through it all.

I don't understand how gays don't have a federal right to be married in this United States of America.  How are we standing by while our country treats individuals as second-class citizens.

I covered gay marriage in this post from December, 2007, and you should read it: JLF: Good Thing The Gays Can't Ruin Marriage

Of course, idiots point to religion as the reason for this anti-gay bias.  Specifically, they point to the Bible, a fictitious collection of ancient fairy tales.  Our country is using religion to drive social policy.

I'm sick of it.  I'm going to call in the West Wing to help.

I take photos like a madman. I click gigabytes like they were... bytes.  In this massive collection, I've got some decent sHAWTs (statistics, really). I'm sharing them with you in this series: HAWTsHAWT [hot shot].

I try to capture the 9/11 memorial lights every year.  This is the first time I'm capturing it from the isle of Manhattan.

Two days after 9/11/2001, I still couldn't sleep in my Murray Hill apartment.  I had tried walking the streets at 3am and watching CNN all night, but I couldn't settle down until I wrote about my experience.  My 9/11.  Like any writer, I continually itch to my own work, but I chose to honor the raw emotion that kept me awake, sore, lonely, sad and shaken.

FROM WHERE THIS NEW YORKER SITS

 

The next night all I wanted was human contact—primal, indubitable, close human touch—but there was none.  Instead I was accompanied by irritating air, tainted by an odor that was roaming Manhattan, the consequence of water scorching as it touched the twisted blazing metal of New York’s toppled Twin Towers.  So, I was forced to settle for my own arms for human contact, my eyes stinging and my nose accepting its violation by the stench equivalent to a million electric fires, and I wept, never feeling so alone in all my life.

 

Then I heard the media’s announcements of the evacuation of the Empire State Building, and I rolled off my futon, so drained that I appeared callous to the thought of another Manhattan icon collapsing, this one into my apartment, and headed into the streets again where I was haunted by two things.

I'm way into big buildings.  They do a lot more for a city's character and future than most people recognize.  So, I think it's HAWTaction [hot ak-shuhn] to keep tabs on new projects like the 56 Leonard St., Archipelago 21, Dancing Tower (Kuwait), Tall Building Update, City of Silk, Shanghai Tower, Russia Tower, Anara Tower, Okhta Tower, Nakheel Harbour and Tower, Bahrain WTC, Honeycomb Skyscraper, Burj Dubai... in Dubai... in Pictures, CCTV and TVCC Towers, Tokyo Sky Tree, Burj Dubai (Revisited), Dancing Towers, Dynamic Tower, Dubai Towers, The Lighthouse (Paris), The Lighthouse (Dubai), Antilla, London's Super Tower, Eiffel Tower, Shuffle Tower, Full Moon, Caspian Bay, Chicago Spire, Chicago's Aqua Tower, Infinity Tower, Teardrop, Christmas Tree or the Burj Dubai.

I remember a time when Tall Building posts were weekly occurrences, with glorious, dream-like buildings usually promising to pop up in Dubai or Bahrain.  I look back fondly at a series that is now crippled... whose better days are behind it - better days with booming economies that allowed architectural imaginations to explode.

But, wait... what is this?  What do I see coming around the corner?  Is this a new building coming to London?  Why, I think it is!  This is a worthy shot in the arm to this aged series.  This, readers, is The Shard.


It's a little building by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who gave us the new New York Times Building in NYC.  (He is relatively new to the skyscraper game.)  I must say, the Shard is a leap forward from the not-entirely-pleasant NYT building I'm staring at right now.

Let's pop the roof off the Shard and see what we can find.

I don't know how everybody's so calm!  I mean, like, the B. Hussein Obama is totally, obviously trying to get all into our heads and control our thoughts!  What is he thinking talking directly to OUR children as they go back to school!?!?  Who is he to talk right to America?  I find it totally scary and don't know why other people aren't seeing the forest through the trees!

John sent me an article about the situation from CNN.  Listen to what people are saying!!!

"Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me," suburban Colorado mother Shanneen Barron told CNN Denver affiliate KMGH last week, before the text of the speech was released.

"I'm an American. They are Americans, and I don't feel that's OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now."

It's so true!  You are an American, and so are they, and I don't feel that's OK, either.  I hear you, Shanneen!  You are a good American citizen who fears God!  I'm scared to be in this country, too, with this shady leadership right now, too!!

It's not just American citizens who are being great Americans, but also some of those officials we elected.  Reed more!

Sometimes there are TV shows that are really, really good that few people watch, and I feel compelled to draw attention to them.  Now I have a blog to power that drawing.  I drew attention to Arrested Development sans-blog and it, single-handed, pushed the show's canceling back by about 4 minutes, which is like a year in TV time.

I really don't care that TV RCMNDTNs have boiled down to shows on HBO and FX, because they have the best programming.  Fact.  The only other network close to regularly earning the TV RCMNDTN is Nickelodeon. 

Today I'm recommending one of the best TV shows I've ever seen.  Sons of Anarchy on FX.  You're lucky I'm not making that poster the size of Rhode Island; Such is my enthusiasm...

Tonight at 10pm, the second season of this series kicks in.  Record the season opener with the DVR or Tivo, then buy the 1st season on DVD/iTunes/Blu-Ray/VHS/Amazon/Netflix.  You'll blast through it in less than a week, hit the DVR or Tivo, then you'll be on track with the rest of us next Tuesday.  You won't be disappointed.

What is this show?  Oh, let me tell you.

It's hard to filter through all of the email we get as HAWT correspondents.  We reply to as many as we can, and every once in a while, an email will get me fired up to respond with something that, well, reads like an opinionated blog post.

This reader is not in favor of healthcare reform because of three reasons: government control, cost and strategic patient bankruptcy filing.  As she says in her email:

People declare bankruptcy trying to pay catastrophic medical bills, not basic health care. Many "bankruptcy-causing" medical procedures would be delayed or denied entirely under a govt system since they decide what is and is not approved. That is exactly what is happening in Canada, Cuba, and the UK. Also anyone can walk into a hospital in this country and the hospital cannot turn them away regardless of their ability to pay. At the end of it all, if you make too much money to qualify for medicaid, but not enough to pay the bill, you can enter into a more than fair payment agreement - one that will not bankrupt you. As long as you make those payments as agreed, they cannot garnish your wages, or take your house, or anything else. And the only reason I know this is b/c my husband went thru this exact situation less than a year out of college. It took him years to pay off over $1000 in medical bills, but he paid it off without breaking the bank. It would be great to give everybody unrestricted health coverage - among a lot of other things. But the reality is that these things cost LOTS of $. That money has to come from some place, and we simply do not have it. I don't even want to know what my kids are going to have to pay in taxes, etc. years from now. There are things that need to be changed and better regulated for sure, but a complete govt take over is not the answer....

I replied, and I was disproportionally fired up.

Once again, we're taking a little break and will be back after Labor Day.

Wha-who!

I'm back!  Yay!  Like I always feel I have to say, I'm not really into politics.... because when I pay attention to it, I, like, usually get mad about something I'm seeing.  This healthcare or health insurance or whatever thing that's going on now is just plane dumb, and I don't like it at all.  Boo!

I've been on twitter (follow me at twitter.com/jenncloutier) and I'm following KarlRove and Michelle Malkin so pretttyyyy! and Glenn Beck and Senator John McCain and they are really, like, opening my eyes up to things!  It's so much easier to follow the news when it's in neat little sentences!!  Yay!  :-)  Like, did you know this??

Boo!  Fascism!?!?!  I don't want to be a Nazi!!!!!  Give me back my country!!!