He made it to the red carpet after all! With the “ashes” of Kim Jong Il in a little urn, which he proceeded to “spill” all over host Ryan Seacrest. He then told Seacrest, as he was being dragged away,
“If someone asks who you are wearing, tell them Kim Jong Il!”
Evidently Sacha Baron Cohen wanted to show up at Sunday’s upcoming Academy Awards show in character, as The Dictator.
This is his video response:
So today we’ve got a double header of entertainment.
First up is a headshot taken from a promotional e-flyer that I received in my email today. The juxtaposition of his very serious demeanor coupled with his odd smiley face tie was too much to pass up:
He looks like he might decide to cut you if you say something untoward about his tie. I could see that picture being used in a “wanted” poster. Lesson learned: always get someone else’s opinion of a picture used to represent you in a professional setting.
Next up, courtesy of LAist, is a ranking of the top 25 douchiest bars in L.A.
I have to admit that I’ve been to several of these and for the most part, I’d have to agree. Especially with naming Circle Bar in Santa Monica to the list, that place is as horrible as they make it sound.
http://www.complex.com/city-guide/2012/02/the-25-douchiest-bars-in-la
Meet Maddie – she is a coonhound (dog) who likes to stand on things.
Or, at least, she is patient (and has great balance) and she allows her owner to pose her for some pretty awesome pictures, such as the one above.
I like the effect he uses to produce the weathered looking old school photos.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran a couple of articles (by Steve Lopez) regarding the abuse of the blue handicapped placards that are issued to people with qualifying disabilities.
People in California may be issued handicapped placards for many disabilities and ailments, of both the permanent and temporary kind. The problem with California’s system is that it lends itself to abuse, and in such a far-flung state like California which has several huge, dense population centers that are short on parking, unfortunately there are people who take advantage of the system.
People who are issued these blue (and sometimes red) placards are allowed to park not only in handicapped spots in parking lots, but also to park for free at City of Los Angeles meters.
Additionally, they are not held to the time constraint on the meters – 2 hours, 4 hours, 24 minutes, etc. They can park there – FOR FREE – for an UNLIMITED amount of time.
But the real kicker is that once issued, the permits are good for life without ever having to renew them or re-certify your disabled status with the DMV, doctor, or anyone.
Now there are some people who have qualifying conditions that are not obvious; people who do not need mobility assistance devices, such as wheelchairs, crutches, or canes to get around, who still need to park closer in a large parking lot. A family member of mine is a Vietnam war veteran who was injured during his service, and most days he gets around fine. Some days he uses his parking privileges, but often he doesn’t.
There are other examples like this, someone mentioned lupus and MS patients, who might also appear to be reasonably able-bodied, but for various reasons need to park closer.
And then there are people like this one woman who parks in my office garage. She routinely STEALS the ground floor handicapped spot from this other lady, who is legitimately handicapped – she uses a walker to get around, and even then has difficulty even making it from the garage to the lobby.
It makes my blood boil when I see this first woman come tearing into the garage, swing into that spot near the front, tires screeching loudly on the polished concrete, music blasting. The driver’s side door flies open and she pops right out – ON HUGE HIGH HEELED SHOES – spins, opens the door to the backseat, and dives into the seat to retrieve her purse which had shifted to the other side. She then hustled into the lobby, not quite running but almost, to catch the elevator upstairs. One day. As I witnessed this, the other, actually disabled lady slowly drives by and looks wistfully at the taken spot, and drives on upstairs in search on another spot.
It makes me sick, it really does. As far as I have ever been able to tell, this other woman is perfectly healthy (and fairly young). The only thing wrong with her, health-wise, is that she is obese. And not that obese, relatively speaking.
I think that any doctor who hands out disabled parking passes to fat-asses ought to be censored by the state and national medical boards. There already isn’t enough parking for legitimately disabled people in California without people like this woman at my office. To issue them to the obese seems like a crime to me – a crime against the legitimately disabled.
I will try to sneak a picture of this woman running or carrying heavy things from her car to the lobby, and will send it in to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
It’s one of those things which has to be seen to be believed.
This is evidently in a train station in Osaka, Japan.
I love amazing inventions like this. Imagine the programming that goes into something like this.
I am told this is from some Japanese film … go figure. Hey, nobody likes to stand in the rain without an umbrella!
Superbike Planet is one of the very few websites that I read on an everyday basis. It is a motorcycle roadracing focused website, and I really admire several things about their style, attitude and philosophy on reporting.
They aren’t afraid to pepper their articles with a little bit of opinion, which in the straight-forward, general journalism sense would usually be a no-no. Partly because I generally share their views on many racing matters (such as the disasterous takeover of AMA Pro Roadracing series by the DMG), and partly because the stakes are frankly lower in reporting on racing news, I think it’s OK that they spice things up a bit.
The other thing I really love about the site, and Dean Adams, its editor in chief as far as I know, is the massive historical perspective they bring to the table. For people like me who haven’t grown up with racing in the family, even in a spectator sense, the stories and anecdotes are very informative and entertaining.
Here is a great example of what I’m talking about. Evidently there is some truth to the myth that racers are tough on things like rental cars. In this story, they talk about how one AMA superbike team went to a racetrack in Texas for an off-season test of the equipment.
Arriving at the track, they found that “a thick layer of Texas dust” had settled on the track surface after months of disuse, making it dangerous to ride the motorcycles because the dust reduces the traction that the motorcycles’ tires are able to get.
Usually when this happens, there are specialized blower trucks that they drive around the track, that help blow debris (and sometimes water) off the track. Evidently they didn’t have those trucks at the facility that day, so they began driving their rental cars on-track, to help remove the dust.
Being racers as they were, things soon got competitive and then spiraled out of control from there. As Soup puts it:
“The automobiles, which were newer sports cars and luxury vehicles (other than the mini-van) when they were rented (with the full and optional insurance, mind you) simply and quickly began to disintegrate. Designed to haul Joe America from his house to his job each day on a sedate expressway,the machines were way out of their element traveling at 130mph, with severe G forces pushing against them.
In this test [that] one the editors from Consumer Reports could only dream about, parts failure skyrocketed. One nearly brand new machine became a creaking, frame bent, tires rubbing against the fenders, seat belts sacked out from trying to hold the driver (and his passenger) in the seat against the G forces, doors won’t open, now the dash is loose too, machine, ready for the scrap yard, in less than thirty minutes, without ever touching the wall or another automobile.”
racing to the red light 