Monday, March 29, 2010

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution


I caught the first two episodes of the new tv show "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" this past Friday night on ABC. Two of my kids attend Huntington High School, where Oliver wants to re-do the menu to provide healthier food.

My 10th grader, Joey, has no love for Oliver. The next episode will show an incident at which my son was present. It seems Oliver grabbed the fries of some kids' trays and held them up the camera or said they were no longer on the menu. He took food off kids' plates.

My son said Oliver prepared some kind of crunchy macaroni dish that was pretty nasty. That could be true, but remember that's coming from a kid who thinks the four basic food groups are macaroni, chocolate, doughnuts, and chocolate doughnuts.

So why is this here? Because the show had some nice helicopter shots of Huntington from the air. In particular, flybys of the East End bridge in the crimson light of dawn and a mid-day flyover of the 6th Street Bridge (technically, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge) were wonderful. (Joey to Adam during one of those shots: Stop yelling out the name of every bridge you see).

To fill things out, the show had a few town shots that weren't from Huntington itself. For example, it showed a Norfolk Southern train going through a railroad crossing. That was probably shot down where Ceredo and Kenova butt up against each other.

And there was an overhead shot of an intersection I didn't recognize.

Anyway, if you want to see some scenes of where the Ross family lives (actually, we live a few miles outside of town, but we have a Huntington mailing address) and where the two Ross teens go to school, catch the next episode.


More on the ghost fleet



The fleet of towboats headed for Pittsburgh for scrap or rebuilds got through the Pike Island Locks and Dam this morning. A Flickr member who goes by the name WillynWV was there to get some photos. You can see them here.

On a related note, I just got off the phone with David Smith, who runs the company that formerly owned the Trojan, one of the boats being taken upriver. He said the boat is structurally sound, and its new owner is thinking about rebuilding it. That would be good news for a boat built in 1923 at Marietta Manufacturing at Point Pleasant WV.

UPDATE: The Flickr member known as wvtowboater has added photos taken when the fleet passed Marietta OH.