It is reported that 2-month old Jie-jie, the Chinese baby born with three arms, has successfully undergone surgery to remove one of his two left arms.

I'm all for surgery to remove potentially harmful things from the human body such as a ruptured appendix or wisdom teeth, but I think the parents should have thought this one through a little longer. Think about it, this guy could hold a fork, knife, and spoon all at the same time. He could golf in the rain while holding up his own umbrella. He could drive a car and never have to take his hands off the wheel to signal. He could set the typing world record. He could comb his hair, brush his teeth, and shave all at the same time, ultimately cutting two thirds off his morning prep time. He could reel in a fish and drink a beer at the same time without the aid of a beer helmet. Don't even think about beating him at an arcade fighting game. Juggling would just be stupid for him. And the ladies would love him. 

Tags: science, news

At 6:06 and six seconds tomorrow morning, the numbers will align and look something like this:

06:06:06 – 06.06.06

If you have a child born at this exact time, don't let him live to see 6:07. He'll grow up to be more than a big pain in your ass and spilling grape juice on the white carpet will be the last of your worries. 

Once a year, the citizens of Tustin CA and the surrounding cities congregate down El Camino Real in Old Town Tustin and eat a crap load of chili. It’s almost like Orange’s International Street Fair, but replace all of the delicious foreign treats and beers with chili and Budweiser.

Five bucks will get you six sample-size tasters of chili, some of which make your stomach smile, others that make your toilet frown. My personal favorite was Hypnotic Chili which I believe was made by some day spa. I was actually surprised how many different chili stands were not from restaurants or bars and were from random local businesses. Of course our favorite local restaurant, The Tustin Brewing Company, was there to represent and they dished out their chili in a miniature bread bowl. Theirs was tasty as well. The loser in the taste department was Hot Rod Chili. I don’t even think boiling bum’s underwear in a vat of cat shit even counts as chili.

Another loser in the chili cookoff was the Moving Thunder Chili Team. Now I can’t judge based off of personal taste, because I never tasted it. But there’s a good reason why I never gave it a shot. Take a look at this picture. Notice anything suspicious with the chili stand? I’m not talking about the logo with a lighting bolt going into a toilet bowl; that actually got our attention. Something else. Take a close look. Need help? Check this out. I’m pretty sure they didn’t understand the concept of the cookoff. Nowhere in the rules did it say: “A competition of flavor, aroma, and ability to use dog food in your chili.” I’m no chili expert by any stretch of the imagination, but if you bought your ingredients at Petco, you can't call it chili, you should call it what it is: disgusting.

Sadly, our friend Dave let hunger get the best of him and continued to eat the chili even after we told him what was in it. Notice how empty the ramekin is. More pictures of the event here.

Some notable pictures:

• Robin's $2 Rootbeer Float
• The Girl in the Cowboy hat and platform boots that worked at the Republican stand
• Colter's burly sunburn that he got in Europe
• The chili that Beneville spilt on his own foot

Tags: Tustin, Tustin Chili Cook Off

This is a picture of Colin Farrell and my friend Mike Miner. I don't really have a reason for this post other than the fact that I thought it would be funny. I was wrong. I couldn't be any less amused.

Tags: Colin Farrell

A group of us went to one of Orange County's best wilderness parks yesterday: Caspers Park. Camping, picknicking, hiking trails, horse trails, bike trails, and plenty of room for all other sorts of general recreation stretch over 8000 square acres of land off Ortega Highway. It's pretty amazing to think that I have lived in Orange County for 25 years and only now am I finding this park.

Pictures from Casper's Park are up in the Photo Section.

UPDATE: Pictures from Huntington Beach are up as well. You really need to take the time to look at the larger version of the second to the last picture. It is pretty much amazing.

Tags: Hiking, OC, Orange County, Nature, Caspers Park, Huntington Beach

Equal Vision Records and The Fall of Troy have released the music video for F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. after months of anticipation by both the fans and ourselves (Bento Productions the peeps who made the video).

If you happen to be an unfortunate soul using a PC, you can watch the highly compressed version of the video online at Yahoo Music. However, Yahoo! videos don't play on Macs but you can download LyFOX which is an app to watch Yahoo music videos on a Mac. Just search for the video and hit play and it should work.

I have a high quality link to the video that I am hosting on my own web server that is playable on Macs or PCs. If you are interested in seeing it and I know who you are, IM me or email me and I'll send you the link. I am still unsure as to whether Equal Vision wants us to keep HQ versions of the video off the internet or not.

There are still images taken while on the shoot for the video that I have in the Photo Galleries.

Tags: Equal Vision Records, The Fall Of Troy, Music Video, FCPREMIX, Yahoo Music, LyFOX

I was driving down 17th street today off the 55 and saw this sign. I enjoyed its obvious poke at the contradicting and redundant name of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. They haven't been an LA team since 1964 so unless they somehow get California to change county borders in their favor, they should probably just go back to being the California Angels which was broad enough to at least make sense. I don't have anything against the Angels, except of course when they play the Dodgers, but I do think their misleading name is slightly ridiculous.

Tags: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Angles, Baseball, Dodgers

My friend Collin recently took part in a nationwide film competition sponsored by Scion. It was a music video competition that toured the nation and had its viewers vote on their favorite three videos out of a possible 10 finalists. He is now in the final three and needs as many votes as he can possibly get in order to win an attractive $20K prize. If you are interested in cool music videos and have a few extra minutes on your hands, follow this link and vote for the Monsters Are Waiting video: Nobody (the black and white one). Don't question it, don't affix your own opinion, just blindly follow my orders and vote with your loyalty not your heart, unless they happen to both agree with each other in which case you may do as you please. When you complete the voting process you are automatically entered into a drawing for a brand new Scion.

In other Music Video news, the video for The Fall of Troy that we (Bento Productions) finished in March, is still nowhere to be found on MTV, MTV2, Fuse, or even online. I hope Equal Vision Records didn't treat us like special ed kids and just lied about how they really liked the video when in fact they really thought our work was a few noodles short of a macaroni necklace. But we put glitter on it. Lots of glue and glitter.

Here we see a future LA Dodger getting a head start on training for interleague play. It is in the early stages of the farm system where it is critical to teach the players the importance of a good sweep much like the way the Boys in Blue handled the Anaheim Angels this weekend in the Freeway Series.

The preseason Freeway Series was about as unfulfilling as a handless hooker with no holes as the Dodgers walked away from the 3 game series with a record of 0-1 since two of the games ended in a tie. Since when did it become acceptable to end a game in a tie? Even the NHL learned their lesson. So when the Dodgers and Angels met this weekend at Chavez Ravine, there was 46 days of rivalry blue balls that needed to be settled. Friday: 16-3 Dodgers Win, Saturday: 8-4 Dodgers Win, Sunday: 7-0 Dodgers Win. We'll see you guys in late June in Anaheim.

So what's the big deal with The Da Vinci Code? Three years later and everyone still talks about it. Even after receiving so much acclaim over all these years, I never had the desire to read it. Perhaps it was the hefty price tag attached to the hardback version when it first came out. Maybe it's that juvenile thought process of: It's cool to not like the Da Vinci Code since everyone else likes it so much, very similar to the way one might act when their favorite indie band gets too big (sorry Dashboard, you'll always have a spot in my closet next to all my other skeletons). Or maybe it was simply the fact that it was a series of words collected on numerous sheets of paper to which is commonly referred to as a 'book', but I wasn't going to have anything to do with it. I wasn't going to read it.

I finally caved. Earlier this week, my dad lent me The Da Vinci Code so that I could read it before the film came out. It didn't surprise me that the book was a very fast read; everyone who reads it says that. In fact, everything that people say about the book is true. It's a great book, well written, well researched, and it keeps you hooked all the way through. I finished it in a little less than two days. I don't think I have done that since Hop on Pop and even that took nearly a week.

Yesterday I watched the movie going into it with very little expectations due to the recent reviews of the film. I definitely don't think it deserves a lower freshness rating than RV. (I haven't seen RV but I can't even begin to imagine what a nightmarish bloody turd that movie must be.) The movie doesn't live up to the novel, but what book adaptations ever do? The book is so heavily saturated with what has to be hundreds of hours of research-based information that there is no way two and a half hours of film can do it justice. If it were done in a ten-hour mini-series event starring a lesser known actor where the story and the history wouldn't have to battle it out with such an iconic actor, it would then have the proper forum to be brought to life in a manner closer to the vision of the author.

On a similar note, The Da Vinci Code is popular!!! Hey did you know that people like The Da Vinci Code!?! There seems to be dozens of TV shows out right now trying to mooch off the success of the book and movie. Every channel seems to be running a special on the real Da Vinci code, or about Leonardo Da Vinci, or the story behind the story behind the story. But it's not just television that's whoring it up. Magazines, books, anything that can have words written on it more than likely has 'Da Vinci' in big bold letters across the front. Barnes and Nobel had a whole table devoted to all things Da Vinci. I was in line at the market today and saw a food and health magazine for women that said "Take The Da Vinci Diet". What the crap is that? I'm going to start marketing a new cracker called Super Da Vincheese's and selling them to soccer moms that want their child to be the popular kid at lunch. Truth be told, all it takes is a soda can wrapped in tin foil to turn your kid into an instant schoolyard success.