This is a post for the Syfy Channel for their great new series CONTINUUM launched in the UK 27th September, it's fictional and fun. As it's Inspired NYC I thought you wouldn't mind if I played with my normal life to imagine what it might be like to travel to NYC in 2077.
I hope you enjoy the rather non-traditional post, Inspired NYC about actual 2010/11 posts will be available to all my blog readers in ebook format soon for free, I'll keep you posted.
Continuum is the epic new futuristic thriller which makes its exclusive UK premier on Syfy on 27th September at 10pm.
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| © 2012 Timely Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved. Click to see full image |
No worries, I thought, I slipped on my tourist ID bracelet, sealed on top of my UK one with a lick of DNA saliva, and headed down to Starbucks queuing/standing in line for ages, tho’ I love it here that your ID tells them your name so no awkward moment standing at the counter, and this sweet slip of a boy held out my cup, he may not have pronounced it right, but my name was calligraphy style engraved onto the paper cup. Nice. Almost a souvenir.
New York is still New York though, and although the air taxis are much faster, the drivers have the foulest mouths, so I took the ground Yellow driverless cab, the autonoCab robot woman's voice was so polite and the drive was a smooth slow one cutting through Central Park and over to the Eastside highway.
So the cab is covered in holographic Ad’s that change with the blink of an eye, as you expect, just like in London, and it reads my ID of course. I hear the usual US ridiculous greeting in the worst English accent “Hello, jolly good morning, where would you like to go today?” It took me three attempts for the Robot to understand my English accent, in all these years not a lot has changed. My head is throbbing, and while I know it's all friendly, I am now bombarded with Ads of hangover cures-how does it know these things!!
I make it, leisurely; as the Americans like to say… so leisurely I’m late. But in one piece, to find the conference in Union Square has begun, kicked off by a huge holographic Frank Sinatra, belting out ‘New York, New York’. My retinal scan is so embarrassing, what happened to a paper list? I had to take off my sunnies, to reveal my shrunken, drunken eyes, and let the bouncing spider scanner pick at my iris.
I can’t help feel a bit embarrassed as the PR must think I’m one of those ‘up at noon journos’, but I’m in NYC! Can’t really waste a night can you? Finally in the press area, which is much less crowded. I can see the breakfast bar is full of Tea and Coffee, so much for queuing/standing in line earlier.
My press pack
contains the usual elecy brochures and a thin jacket that flashes occasional
fairy like lights and changed colour after dark, with a tag glowing on my lapel
with ‘Media' followed by my name rotating round and round. I am a sucker for
these gifts. The best item though, were the hair bands, they sparked little
flecks of light, and have little grooving autumn fairies on the ends, mine was
missing, the PR said she’d see if she could find a spare, probably thinking I
lost it.
Despite my head, the atmosphere is electric you can’t help get sucked in. Just like our parade show in London on the 27th there is a huge Parade, only in NYC there are cheerleaders dancing, projecting out of the side of floats, and bands playing able to project a 360 degrees wave of sound.
It feels like they will touch you, even land on you, it’s insane, breathtaking. Even the kids, the loud shouty ones, are stuck to the spot.
Thank heaven September in NY isn’t too cold, and the sun is shining, else the party elves, I kid you not, wouldn’t be seen. I have no idea how they do it, but these elf like guys, full of love and rainbows, appear to burst out of the parade at specific spots and hand sweets/candy to the kids, then they just disappear again. The engineers tell me the ‘clever candy’ people at N&M’s and Sadtech designed the elves but they don’t work very well without sunshine. Almost like a real fairy tale eh? Willy Wonka eat your heart out.
We were on our journo float, which is fab, because at any time you can slip on some jumper pads- an all-in-one sorta suit to us Brits, and the burst of energy beneath lets you float, so you can zip up and down the parade soundlessly hovering. The photographers got excellent shots of the crowd and the floats like this almost hovering over people’s heads. My stomach couldn’t really handle it, ahem. So it was solid float and pastries for me.
This is a parade, much like St Patrick’s Day- an all day parade. By day it honours the service people in the city, fire fighter, protectors, corporate benefactors, corporate congress and those very, very many CEO executives and appeals to the little young folk of the city. By night, appealing to all those off work finally, ready to let their hair down, our pastries became canapés and our coffee became cosmopolitans.
For the finale the central float full of senior dignitaries, and this float is a pretty beautiful one at that, decked out with all the decadence of royalty, so it was pretty mind blowing that the band Lemur popped out on a fire platform in the centre of it with their new single ‘Blast', eco-friendly smokeless fireworks erupting from their bodies.
I’m sure it was only after she’d seen me taking enough notes and photos, the PR lady handed me a hair band and cocktail, well, it’d be rude to say no, hair of the dog and all that…
Continuum Cast:
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| All photos © 2012 Timely Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Additional
cast include TONY AMENDOLA (Stargate SG-1, CSI, Once Upon A Time,
Dexter); STEPHEN LOBO (Smallville, Little Mosque on the Prairie); LEXA
DOIG (V, Stargate SG-1); ROGER CROSS (The Gates, Fringe); LUVIA PETERSEN
(The L Word); TERRY CHEN (Combat Hospital); OMARI NEWTON (Blue Mountain
State, Sophie).
