Action Park, NJ

Action park is a water and amusement park in New Jersey that's been closed for (at this point) many years. Although it's no longer around, it still generates buzz because of its infamous past - some locals referred to it as "death park" because of the hugely out of proportion amount of injuries and deaths for an amusement park.

From wikipedia:
Action Park was a waterpark/motor themed park open from 1978 to 1996 in Vernon Township, New Jersey, on the property of the former Vernon Valley / Great Gorge ski area, today Mountain Creek. It featured three separate attraction areas: an alpine slide; Motoworld, where patrons could operate motorized vehicles on land and water; and Waterworld, with many water-based attractions such as waterslides. The latter was one of the first American waterparks.[1]

Its popularity went hand in hand with a reputation for poorly-designed, unsafe rides; inattentive, underaged, underpaid and sometimes under-the-influence employees[2]; equally intoxicated and underprepared visitors — and the poor safety record that followed from this perfect storm of circumstances. At least six people are known to have died as a result of mishaps on rides at the park, and it was nicknamed "Traction Park",[3] "Accident Park",[4] "Class Action Park", "Danger Park" and "Death Park" by doctors at nearby hospitals due to the number of severely injured parkgoers they treated. While little action was taken by state regulators despite a history of repeat violations, in its later years personal-injury lawsuits forced the closure of more and more rides and finally the park itself. The new owner of the ski area has reopened the water attractions as Mountain Creek Waterpark, with a vastly increased emphasis on ride safety.

More pictures, stories, and information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park
http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/action_park.htm
http://www.weirdnj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=28

good commercials

Although most commercials are the bane of our attention spans, occasionally one slips through the cracks with either remarkable music, humor, imagery, or story. Here three relatively recent ones:

Book: Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever (by walter kirn)

Walter Kirn:

Working his way up the ladder of standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and class rankings, Kirn launched himself eastward from his rural Minnesota hometown to the ivy-covered campus of Princeton University. There he found himself not in a temple of higher learning so much as an arena for gamesmanship, snobbery, social climbing, ass-kissing, and recreational drug use, where the point of literature classes was to mirror the instructor's critical theories and actual reading of the books under consideration was optional. Just on the other side of the “bell curve's leading edge” loomed a complete psychic collapse.
LOST IN THE MERITOCRACY reckons up the costs of a system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within. It's a remarkable book that suggests the first step toward intellectual fulfillment is getting off the treadmill that is the American meritocracy. Every American who has spent years of his or her life there will experience many shocks of recognition while reading Walter Kirn’s sharp, rueful, and often funny book—and likely a sense of liberation at its end.