The Soullessness Of Charity Videos
Okay, so this is the latest feel-good viral video making its way around the inter-web. I’m all for virtual charity, but why these kids are being applauded is a bit confusing. The scene It stars three German students and a homeless guy. Student #1 shimmies over to him and asks if he can borrow his bucket, which he uses as a drum to generate interest from random people and show off his mediocre music skills. Once student #1 has shown off and made the homeless chap feel…
Ocean Beach – Anchovy Surprise
A large posse’ of anchovies is working its way along the Southern California stretch at the moment. It’s nothing to get worked up about – they’re too small to attract sharks. But it does a bit eerie to paddle over a bed made from the shimmering bodies of a bazillion little fish, while hundreds of birds are dive bombing the water, trying to eat as many as they can while the feast is around. Yesterday there were flocks of them in the water and depressingly…
Song For Monday – Elliot Smith ‘Stupidity Tries’
An Open Letter To Television, Re: Mid Season Finales
To the makers of television shows (HBO, Showtime, FX) and whoever else this may concern, I’d like to start by congratulating you on a superb new era of T.V. Well done. The last time I got so obsessed with fictional characters was in 1988, when I was five and wore my Batman PJ’s until they grew mould on them and ordered teachers not to tell my parents that I was secretly killing baddies in my spare time. It seems like the whole world is obsessed with…
10 Things That Make Your First Car Memorable
The car – a symbol of both freedom and privilege. Owning your first one is an amazing experience, loaded with micro-lessons that you’ll reflect on for the rest of your life. Or maybe not. Here’s 10 things of them, anyways. 10. A Sense Of Pride First cars are generally full of quirks. Common problems include indicator lights that don’t work, windshield wipers that flail around like beetle antennae and a radio that only picks up one station when you’re turning left. None of that matters, though. Even if the only thing…
Man Jumps Onto Great White Shark
I don’t know if this is fake. Could be, I guess. But I hope it’s not. I hope this guy really faced a Great White in Sydney Harbor and made it back to dry land unscathed, with a rad story to tell his grandkids around the camp fire one day. This is definitely in my Top 10 Scariest Scenarios Imaginable. Well played.
GoPro madness – Barrel POV Namibia
This is just too sick not to share… I wonder if Benji Brand went in and had a little boogie before paddling pack out. Sheer madness at Skeleton Bay, Namibia.
Five Ways To Feel Better When Life Seems Terrible
Sometimes you wake up fresh on a Monday morning, ready to knee-slide towards Friday without a single problem along the way. Your bio-rythyms are in synch and you’re like a sexy magnet that attracts positive energy. You won’t struggle to find parking, work will go smoothly, people will send you happy, enthusiastic e-mails with jokes in them and you’ll find the forty bucks you thought you lost at the bar in a pair of pants you never wear. Things will simply fall into place. High-five.…
Sixto Rodriguez At The North Park Theatre, San Diego
Last night Sixto Rodriguez played the second of two sold out shows at the North Park Theatre in San Diego. I don’t know what he’s been putting in his coffee for the last 40+ years, but I want whatever it is. At 71, he sounds f#$king superb and looks like he’s having the time of his life. There’s a weird irony to him still being in such pristine condition, despite decades of hard labor, financial troubles and general failure lying in the trenches between recording…
Childhood Fears #1 The Kreepy Krauly
When I was six, my parents bought a house with a pool in the back yard. What a glorious day. Even though we moved there in middle of winter, my brothers and I swam day and night. It didn’t matter that it was freezing and miserable outside – we stayed until our lips turned blue, our hair turned green and our eyelids started scabbing over from all the chlorine exposure. But after a while it got too cold. Like dangerously so. So we were barred until…