Making Metal More Attractive

Metal usually looks more like the band than the singer...maybe it's a trend that will continue (at least, if the music can't get any better).

Keeping Your Beach House Safe

Hey, That's Not A Supply Ship...

A discarded chunk of a Russian rocket missed the International Space Station on Saturday.  And how did you spend your weekend?

The debris was "barely close enough to be a threat", according to NASA, but still close enough to force the six astronauts to seek shelter in escape capsules. The closest the debris came to the station was around 2:30 am, and wasn't noticed until Friday, when it was too late to move the International Space Station out of the way. Looks like somebody wasn't doing their job...

This is the third time in 12 years that astronauts have had to seek shelter from space junk.  Most recently it was a disabled sattelite, and before that, it was Battlefield Earth in 2000.

Octo-blah

If you've been hoping for semi-nude photos of "Octomom" Nadya Suleman, today's your lucky day. For the rest of us, not so much.

The cash-strapped mother of 14 (all through in vitro fertility treatments) agreed to the paid interview and photo shoot for the British magazine Closer because she "can’t hold down a regular job to pay bills" and “does whatever she can", which included this.  Suleman declined a million-dollar offer to appear in porn in 2009, but given these pictures, she couldn't have earned much for it. Some things can't be unseen.

UPDATE: It's reported she got around $8000 for the dozen or so pictures (at your own risk!).  Wow, I'm sure we could put a collection together to have had them kept from the public.

Perpetual Ocean

Those Other Dwarfs

When Disney began work on the big-screen adaptation of Snow White by the Brothers Grimm in the 1930s, the writing team compiled the following list of potential names for the seven dwarfs (which, in the original story were unnamed)

They settled on Bashful, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy, and their leader Doc was chosen at a later date, but here's the pool from which they drew:


1.Awful 
2.Baldy 
3.Bashful 
4.Biggo-Ego 
5.Burpy 
6.Daffy 
7.Deafy 
8.Dippy 
9.Dirty 
10.Dizzy 
11.Doleful 
12.Dopey 
13.Dumpy 
14.Flabby 
15.Gabby 
16.Grumpy 
17.Hickey 
18.Hoppy 
19.Hotsy 
20.Hungry 
21.Jaunty 
22.Jumpy 
23.Lazy 
24.Neurtsy 
25.Nifty 
26.Puffy 
27.Sappy 
28.Scrappy 
29.Shifty 
30.Shorty 
31.Silly 
32.Sleepy 
33.Snappy 
34.Sneezy 
35.Sneezy-Wheezy 
36.Sniffy 
37.Snoopy 
38.Soulful 
39.Strutty 
40.Stuffy 
41.Swift 
42.Tearful 
43.Thrifty 
44.Weepy 
45.Wheezy 
46.Wistful 
47.Woeful 


It's worth noting for extra trivia points that in 1912, the story had been adapted for the Broadway stage by Winthrop Ames. In that production, the dwarfs were named Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick, and Que.

Miss Disqualified

Vancouver native Jenna Talackova is not going to win the Miss Universe Canada pageant on account of her penis.

Talackova, who regards herself as a “woman...with a history,” recognized herself as a female at an early age of four, underwent hormone therapy at 14 and gender reassignment surgery at 19...and was disqualified after judges found out she was not a “naturally born" female.  And they didn't know this until she reached the finals of the competition.  The 23-year-old believes she is “disqualified for being born,” has apparently been vocal about her transsexual past. The organizers counter that she registered for the pageant claiming that she was born female.

Considering that the pageant is owned by Donald Trump, and he's trying to pass that thing off as hair, he shouldn't be quick to judge what parts people have.

ISS Stars

Recognizers

Hitachi doesn't just make massagers and microwaves...they're also making electronics for your face (but not massagers or microwaves).

Their new surveillance camera system can pick out your face and compare it to 36 million others in just one second.  And if that wasn't advanced enough, it can also do it from live video (older systems needed to analyze pre-recorded footage)

Beyond just looking you up based on your face, the system scours archived footage and pulls up any clips it believes contain you, so that operators can quickly get a look at your recent activity.  Before you worry that the machines have dominated us, know that it has some limitations, such as angle (faces can't be turned more than 30 degrees left or right) and face size (at least 40 pixels square in the frame). The system will be available next spring, so do your dirty work now before they can pick you out.

DeLillo + Cronenberg = Cosmopolis

Non-Glasgow Mega-Snake

Another beastie has been found in Grand Central Station...and it's 48 feet long.

The titanoboa, if it existed today, would weigh over 2,500 pounds, and eat little kids left at right trying to take public mass transit.  A full-scale replica of the reptile was unveiled, as Smithsonian spokesperson Randall Kremer added, to "scare the daylights out of people" - and promote an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in D.C. opening on March 30. The super-reptile would have slithered 65 million years ago, come waist-high to a man, and been longer than a school bus.  

If you can't be bothered to visit New York's travel hubs, the Smithsonian Channel is also airing a program on the monster April 1.

The Deep Ones From The Great Lakes?

Police, residents and experts are baffled by the origin of mysterious booms and shaking that have been plaguing the 5,000 residents of Clintonville, Wisconsin for the last three days.  There may be a hint in the picture...

 The Clintonville Police Department said they have received over 250 calls about noises from underground shaking homes in the northeast corner of the town, which is near Green Bay.  "I think we can rule out that standard earthquake activity, [that] some swarm of earthquakes is happening in that region. It also really looks like it's not connected to, say, unusual drilling activity or some other kind of real obvious human induced signal," said Harold Tobin, a geoscience professor at the University of Wisconsin.

He says it does appear the sounds are either coming from the surface of the ground or just underneath the surface, but they must continue to study the phenomenon. The city has so far managed to rule out problems with the water and sewer system, elevated gas levels, area blasting or mining, industrial businesses, and even military operations. 

I'm sticking with the Elder Gods as the cause.  I do hope they do spare the state until after September...Scarlett and I have put a lot of time into our wedding.

Bungie Bridge

 I'm all for throwing people in wheelchairs off bridges.

Frijoles Muerte

On their own, they're not scary, but how about a 20-foot mound of pinto beans coming down on you.  Yep, I think you know where this story is going, and why it's getting posted.

Raymond Segura Jr. was killed when several tons of legumes came down on him at the Kelley Bean Company in Brush, Colorado.  Emergency crews (and even four inmates from the local prison) spent hours excavating the beans in an attempt to reach Segura, who was dead when they finally uncovered him.  There's no word yet on what caused the accident or the exact cause of death, but I'm going to venture a guess that it was tons of beans crushing him.

Romance Isn't Dead, But It Does Tweet

Since February 24, Mike Stone has used his Twitter account to hit up every pair of famous tits and ass he can contact to get a date for prom in May.  If we had Facebook and Twitter and social media when I was in high school, getting laid would have been way easier.  And cheaper.  

Stone's list includes singers, models, Jersey Shore stars, Playboy Playmates, WWE divas, and porn stars.  Lots of porn stars.  In all, Stone made more than 600 tweets, and his story has been posted all over the internet.  Though there have been some positive replies, it appears that Megan Piper, a 19-year-old starlet who never attended her own school dance, looks to be headed to Minnesota for a night of underage drinking and sex - what all proms aspire to be.

The Man From Diaper Island

 On tour with Mogwai this spring...

Let Those Wings Take You To Heaven...Or Wherever Buddhists Go

Billionaire Chaleo Yoovidhya, co-founder of the Red Bull energy drink and the second richest man in Thailand, died at the age of 89.

Yoovidhya was born into a poor Sino-Thai family in the northern province of Phichit who made their living from duck farming and fruit trading. He moved to Bangkok to help his brother in his drug store before becoming a salesman, and later setting up his own pharmaceutical factory.  TC Pharmaceutical Industries started producing antibiotics, but later focused on making the tonic drink loaded with caffeine, taurine, and glucuronolactone.  This "Krating Daeng" was the result of a meeting Yoovidhya had with Dietrich Mateschitz in 1982, and nearly 30 years later, they hold a 70% stake and $5.1 billion dollar value in the energy drink market.

The pair each owned 49% of the company, with Chaleo's son Chalerm holding the remaining shares. Red Bull is sold in more than 70 countries worldwide, owns two football teams, Red Bull Salzburg in Austria and the New York Red Bulls in the United States, and, if you read this blog with any regularity, a pair of Formula 1 teams.

People have speculated his longevity was due to daily enemas of Red Bull, and by people I mean me.

Packin'

It's better to have a gun and not need one, then to need one and not have one...or think you do.

A study conducted a Notre Dame University found that when you are holding a gun, you're more likely to think others are holding them too.  Researchers showed participants partially obstructed images of people and asked them to say whether the person was holding a neutral object (a phone or soda can for example) while they were holding either a gun or a soft foam ball.  Regardless of the image shown, like people in snow masks or a broad range of races, those who themselves were holding a gun consistently over-estimated the incidence of guns being held in the images. Scientist quote!  

"Beliefs, expectations and emotions can all influence an observer's ability to detect and to categorize objects as guns. Now we know that a person's ability to act in certain ways can bias their recognition of objects as well, and in dramatic ways. It seems that people have a hard time separating their thoughts about what they perceive and their thoughts about how they can or should act."

I guess that's why cops seem to be a little twitchy...

Waves Of Matter

Owning The Term "International"

This is one of the only times you're going to see the words "model" and "mastermind" in the same story, let alone sentence.

Simone Farrow, who I'm told is an international model, was accused of being the mastermind of a worldwide drug ring being run out of a Hollywood apartment. Under the stage name Simone Starr, Farrow was a bikini model for Ed Hardy, pin-up girl, a Penthouse magazine pet, and a three time FHM magazine's Sexiest Women In The World list maker. Her website notes her as a singer/songwriter and would-be reality show star, but made no mention of the 19 different aliases used to ship high-grade crystal meth in bath salts around the world by FedEx and the postal service.

The 37-year-old skipped her $150,000 bond in February and was re-arrested at a cheap Gold Coast hotel where she hid. One of the members of her alleged drug syndicate committed suicide in a Hollywood motel after being contacted by US authorities.  Must have been a hell of a phone call to drive them to suicide.

I'm not going to suggest that she wasn't behind the drug ring, but it would make the first time anybody wearing Ed Hardy showed signs of intelligence.

Pigskin Horseplay

After shopping his fivehead to all the underachieving teams with QB needs, Peyton Manning is heading to Tebow territory.

Manning, who was cut from the Colts after his year-long recovery from multiple neck surgeries, has decided to head for another pack of horses, to the tune of 5 years and $95 million. Apparently, God - and John Elway, hath forsaken thee, Tim Tebow.

Though able to lead the Broncos to several spectacular comeback victories, Tebow made a better story than savior - though his fanatical followers swore he had the goods.  Funny how those who can cite chapter and verse by memory couldn't remember the first three quarters of every game where Tebow couldn't make a pass to save his life.

The next part of this tale is where does Timmy end up? Who needs a back-up QB that consistently can't close?  Or worse...a starter?

Solipsist

I Know You, Little Libertine

Authorities in Eastern San Diego say a 38-year-old woman has been killed by a homemade cannonball fired by her husband and another man.  Yep, I couldn't pass this up!

She was found dead at about 12:15 a.m. after the ball slammed into her home.  And by home, I mean the Twin Lakes Resort mobile home park in Potrero.  And what better place for that tiny community to be than near the Mexican border. Apparently, the men were working on the cannon nearby when it went off. Her four-year-old daughter was unharmed, and one man was treated for injuries.

Oh, and you'll never guess that alcohol was involved...

Project XXX

While one or two actresses actually made it out of porno into some mainstream success, it's far from the norm (insert Meryl Streep gangbang joke here).  But dreams do come true...

Take Jonathan Daniel Brown, the chubby bro in Project X, who was in a real blue movie.  Three years ago, he was in Bang Bros' Fuck Team Five episode of "Nerd Hunting", and as said hunted nerd, he suffered greatly at the hands (and vaginas of) Jennifer Dark, Ashli Orion and Phoenix Marie. Orion spoke to Adult Video News about performing with Brown, and she recalled quite a bit about her co-star, given their scene was shot in 2008.

“I remember him being this cute little nerdy kid, shy, and super nervous!” she said. “He was really nice so I felt bad that I had to make fun of him in true Fuck Team 5 fashion. The poor guy had to dress up like a fast food worker delivering our order to the van. Instead of burger, he became the meat! I let him fuck me until he popped all over my ass. Being the crazy girl I am, I used my ass as a sauce tray and dipped the fries we ordered in his cum”.  And the answer you're waiting for, “Yes, I ate them and I swallowed. Fucking delish!”

Any you wonder how it was just Brown who because a star...

Magnetofluids (Part 3)

Some Kim Pimmel for ya.

Breaking Bubbe

All it took was seeing the headline to know I was going to post about it: "One Dead In Ohio Nursing Home Meth Lab Fire".

The fire chief for Ashtabula (burnt slate?), the small town in Northeast Ohio, said it was fire in the room of a nursing home resident has caused a fire that killed one and injured six others. Because making meth is far more interesting than bingo!

The man died after the Sunday night fire at the Park Haven Nursing Home, and he was making methamphetamine in his makeshift lab. Two other residents were among the injured. A lawyer for the nursing home has declined to comment, and it is not known if that attorney is Saul Goodman. The Park Haven Nursing Home was built in 1950 and had 31 rooms, and 39 names were on the current housing roster.

I hope I never end up in a home, but those are the kind of hardcore shenanigans I'm going to get into if I do.

The Legend Of Ralph McQuarrie

He made the concept designs for the Star Wars trilogy, Battlestar Galactica, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, E.T., Star Trek and almost every other science fiction classic...and passed away at age 82.

Avengers, Retro-cemble!

Johnny Utah’s Day Off

Finally, Some Truth In Advertising

It took a while, but the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas can say they delivered on their promise.

While eating  a "triple bypass burger", man at the restaurant actually had a cardiac infarction. "He was having the sweats and shaking," said "Nurse" Bridgett, who is not a nurse  but was working at the restaurant at the time of the incident.  "I actually felt horrible for the gentleman because the tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt. Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that." Yes, this from the place with a website that proudly proclaims the menu offers "taste worth dying for!"

It was the first actual known cardiac incident at the Heart Attack Grill, where menu items include a butterfat milkshake, non-filtered cigarettes, "flatliner" fries and four different burgers, each rated on an ascending scale of one bypass to the quadruple bypass burger. Owner "Doctor" Jon Basso said the man's name is being kept private and that he is recovering from the heart attack. It is unclear if the man will ever return to the restaurant , but since anyone "over 350 pounds eats free" according to the establishment, it may be worth the risk. 

How To Replace Your IMAX Screen For Only $250,000

Semper Badass

Marines from Camp Pendleton (by San Diego) are currently in Thailand for Cobra Gold, which is not a topless club, but a training exercise with military personnel from Thailand and five other regional countries.

The 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment are taking part in the annual exercise with the Japan-based 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. The training covers amphibious assault, humanitarian relief, evacuation of friendly forces and jungle survival, which includes learning to eat insects and to drink the blood from cobras.  Let me repeat that last part: Jungle survival, which includes learning to eat insects and to drink the blood from cobras.

These colors don't run because snake mana flows in our soldier's veins.  Damn.

Blowing It With The Lowest Lying Fruit

You may get spoils from your father's garden, but that does not make you worthy to tend his fields.

Clairissa Irene Riccio, aka Claire Sinclair, the 2011 Playmate of the Year, sought a temporary restraining order against boyfirend Marston Hefner (21, son of Playboy founder Hugh, and not the monster Grendel as his picture would suggest). He was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence Sunday by Pasadena police.  Sinclair's minor injuries were consistent with an assault, but she does not appear to be determined to send her meal ticket boyfriend to jail.

"I will not press charges against Marston Hefner if he keeps his word to give a public apology for physically abusing me on several occasions, and seeks psychiatric help for his anger issues. I don't condone domestic violence, but if one ounce of good can come from this bad experience, then I can live with it and move on."

Not surprisingly, Sinclair does not know that it's not up to her - the state of California can prosecute Marston with or without her consent or assistance.  Besides being frightfully ugly, Marston is also a dumb son-of-a-bitch.  You've got the keys to the girl next door empire and you've gone and fucked it up because you can't deal with how dumb nude models are and you get angry?  Unworthy.

Biz Marquee

I'm happy that one of my former improv buddies as not olly generated a career in film and television, but also has gone behind the scenes to find success.  Battleground premieres today on Hulu and is it's first scripted series. JD Walsh (and producer Marc Webb) talk about it here, and these clips may make him a little more recognizable.

I Will Always Love Money

It was no surprise to me when Whitney Houston died over the weekend, because she's spent the last 15 years on a bender in lieu of having a music career.  Nor was it a shock  that her death was going to generate some serious money.

It only took until the next morning for Sony Music to have raised the price of  Houston's "The Ultimate Collection", and by this morning, it was the second top-selling album on iTunes.  the body may have been cold, but the sales are getting hot! Sony Music owns the rights to much of Houston's back catalog, including the aforementioned 1997 album, and increased the wholesale price. This automatically boosted the retail price, and although Apple is responsible for setting the price paid, they are apparently in agreement with Sony's assessment of the higher value of Houston's songs. 

Both "The Ultimate Collection" and "Whitney – The Greatest Hits" are in the top three albums on iTunes right now.  And if she can pull a Tupac and release some new albums, she can really start clocking more money.

The Fleecing Off Figueroa

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has a bigger problem than not attracting a professional football team to play there.

Employees for the Coliseum Commission vigilantly brave illness to report to work...and then cash in those giant chunks of unused sick leave. And we're not talking a few bucks, but thousands of dollars.  Interim General Manager John Sandbrook used the sick leave allotment from his University of California administrator career to boost his annual pension by $655 a month for life - and he's who they hired to curtail sending abuses at the stadium!  He replaced Patrick Lynch, who left with more than nine years of accrued sick time, adding $1,630 annually to his retirement benefits.  But it doesn't stop there.

Sandbrook, Lynch and other managers are tied to an array of what can best be summarized as  financial irregularities in how the stadium has been run, which according to an LA Times report include "lucrative side dealings, suitcases of cash for a union agent and perks such as luxury cars, massages and golf outings for select staff".  I'm surprised they haven't been on the mayor's boat.  Many of these "managers' perks" were kept in place for months after he took the helm, and why not?  With his padded sick days, raises and stipends, Sandbrook gets close to $390,000 a year, so he's got no concept of managing the city and county's money responsibly.

And don't look to Coliseum Finance Director Ronald Lederkramer to help - he had amassed sick time valued at close to $11,000 (over 20 weeks worth) when he left last year.  And beyond that, he received thousands of dollars in payments from the Coliseum in recent years for medical costs that he said were not covered by insurance.  So outside of actual insurance, having a city job that syphons off taxpayers is the best insurance.  City Controller Wendy Greuel has withheld that sick time check pending an inquiry.  Sandbrook's office listed Lederkramer's status as "retired/pensioned," but  if he quit or was fired it would make him ineligible for a sick-leave check. 

This is just another small piece of a larger picture of financial mismanagement for the city and state.  Its only going to get uglier as more of these come to light.

The NBA Goes Semi-Pro

Buffy The Fetus Slayer

You know what more comic books need?  Abortion debates!

In the latest issue of Dark Horse Comics' Buffy The Vampire Slayer series - yes, that show which hasn't been on the air for almost a decade, has had what would have been it's eight and ninth "seasons" as comic books.  And in the new issue, Buffy decides to have an abortion. Hooray for the television equivalent of a very special episode!  Considering the generally undersexed idea of geeks and fanboys, isn't figuring out about what to do about having a baby getting ahead of what it takes to make one?

Show creator and executive producer Joss Whedon, who also develops the plot arcs for the comic, said, "Buffy was always about the arc of a life, and it wasn't ever going to be one of those shows where they were perpetually in high school and never asked why...It was about change. So there's never a time when Buffy's life isn't relevant." And what's more relevant than giving a character an unwanted pregnancy?

Andrew Chambliss, the comic's writer, adds that Buffy's choice was something that grew organically out of the story...like a baby that organically grows inside you. "Given the specifics of Buffy's life at this point in the season - facing a new kind of vampire threat, barely able to keep a job - it seemed like it would be dishonest for Buffy to not at least entertain the question of whether she should keep or end the pregnancy." Hold up there, buddy...it's not a real person, and they don't have to entertain shit.  You're writing them, so they can do whatever you want - just like you could have not written her as irresponsibly getting drunk and pregnant at her own party.


If you create obstacles for characters, then they obviously have to deal with them, but think about what you're really saying.  Here's a strong female character that's often referred to as part of the "Chosen Ones" who protect mankind, who has fought otherworldly forces for years, and now they're no better than some older version of 16 and Pregnant?  So, is Superman suddenly going to have a fear of heights?  Or the Punisher wakes up and becomes a pacifist?

I like Whedon and his other forays in television (Firefly, Dollhouse), and am looking forward to his film treatment of The Avengers, but I never cared at all for the Buffy show, mostly because everything on the WB is aimed for 13 year old girls. And as far as Buffy and her abortion, I don't really care if she wants to kill it or keep it, because...well, it's Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  It's the ridiculousness of the whole thing that bothers me, because something based on teenage vampire killers, lesbian witches, and fighting demons and werewolves seems suspect suddenly switching to serious subjects.  This isn't the happy-go-lucky 50s and 60s Batman losing his campy kitsch to become the dark knight of the 80s and beyond, which is the evolution of a character.  I think this is more a deliberate act to stay relevant by being edgy.  And I've seen this before, with the same unimpressive results...

Bin Undead

Still City

Mark Jenkins and his mannequins are street installation art.

High Times In Los Angeles

If you look up in my town, you'll find some odd things.

Last night, a man climbed to the top of a radio tower. Naked.  The 45-year-old Arizona resident removed his clothing after he began scaling the tower about 4pm.  It was unclear why he went atop his perch, but he was hungry.  He asked police for hamburgers from McDonald's and he agreed to come down after eating his meal.

And today, a suspected car thief spent five hours on the rooftops of Westwood. The pursuit began shortly before 8 a.m. when the LAPD attempted to pull over the suspect after his license plates flagged as belonging to a stolen car.  He fled and went hopping from roof to roof, at times, looking as though he would come down, and then suddenly move away. But he found a way to get down, shouting, "If I could get to my gun, I would kill all of you", and taking at least two bean bag rounds the SWAT team fired at him.

I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring, but looking skyward should prove entertaining...

Televised Inception

The Dancing Plague Of 1518

Man Without A Heart

Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier are doctors from the Texas Heart Institute, though their work may require them to change the name.

The short film Heart Stop Beating by Jeremiah Zagar shows you can live without a heart or a pulse.  The turbine-like device implanted in Craig Lewis does not beat like a heart, but rather provides a continuous flow like a garden hose.  Lewis was a 55-year-old, dying from amyloidosis -  build-up of abnormal proteins. The proteins clog the organs so much that they stop working, but after the operation, his replacement, "heart" machine keeps blood flowing through his body.

If you put a stethoscope to his chest, no heartbeat or pulse can be heard - there's just a humming sound.  "By all criteria that we conventionally use to analyze patients”, Doctor Cohn said, "he is dead". Yet even without the telltale signs of regular human physiology, there is life.

What's In Spock's Scanner? (The Complete Trilogy)

The S.S. Tony Villar

Our state is in a financial crisis, and the city is is trying not to go broke, so why would Los Angelinos be looking at hundreds of thousand of their tax dollars going to renovating a million dollar yacht?

The 73 foot long Angelena II is in drydock, and has not been on the water since September, but once it gets nearly $750,000 in upgrades, it will be back taking the city manager and his "guests" and "public relations tours".  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Tony Villar says, “It’s not a yacht. It’s a boat,” but regardless of what you call it, it's going to be a taxpayer's nightmare.

Last year $147,000 was spent for two captains primarily assigned to the Angelina, $106,000 for a pair of deck hands, and more than $32,000 for fuel and maintenance. And to make matters worse, the engines have been removed because they no longer meet California emissions standards. They need to be replaced by low-emission hybrid motors, so $489,000 in federal taxpayer stimulus money that was supposed to go create jobs, plus another $200,000 coming from the Port of Los Angeles is going towards that upgrade.

“It’s not a perk to get them out on the water,” Villar said, trying to claim it is all business. But of the more than 4,000 took the cruise last year, very few and anything to do with the business of the port. Members of the Morongo Indian Tribe, screenwriters from Universal Studios, a YWCA cruise, people from the exclusive Jonathan Club, UCLA students and dozens of the mayor’s interns were in the ship's logs.

Last week, the final go ahead from the Coast Guard for the new engines came thought, so when the Angelena II hits the high seas in about 90 days, expect another chapter to this story...and not necessarily a happy ending.

We Must All Support Local Business

Unelectable

Meme, The Movie

You can see 20 others, and the background on each...

613 Skaters Have Done This Year What He Can't

Yesterday was a big deal for football, but it was also memorable for hockey fans. It was one year ago that Montreal Canadiens' center Scott Gomez scored his last NHL goal.

Players have had slumps, but none as profound as the one for Gomez, who's last lamp-lighter was the game winner against the New York Rangers. He hasn't been injured or missing games - he's just suckedAs this season has progressed, the lack of scoring has become a phenomenon. A Quebec bar has been offering free drinks when and if Gomez scores.  Songs have been popping up on the interweb.  And DidGomezScore.com provides the cold, hard numbers.

With almost eight minutes before the anniversary, the clock almost got reset.  It was on a power play in the second period the then puck edged past Winnipeg Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec.  Gomez was a presence at the net, and after a lengthy review, the officials awarded the goal to his teammate Tomas Plekanec. Yeah, it's getting onboard the bad karma wagon to join in the mockery, but for a skater making $7.5 million, a full calendar year without scoring a goal is embarrassing.  That's no better than me, and I'm not even playing...where's my millions?

Bad Girl Or Baddest Girl?

M.I.A. is a bad ass.