Daily Double: Exorcism and Afterlife

Let's Go Surfin'!

Garrett McNamara rides a wave off Praia do Norte beach in Nazare, Portugal on January 28, 2013.
McNamara is said to have broken his own world record for the largest wave surfed when
he caught this wave reported to be around 100ft.(To Mane/Nazare Qualifica/Associated Press)

Zapata Racing - Watersport Insanity

News Flash: China Polluted*

"Pretend you are trapped in a box of communist oppression."

But air pollution in Fuyang, China, doesn't deter students from attending their outdoor mime class, "Marceau in the Park".
More: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/01/chinas_skies_toxic_levels_of_p.html

*: Tip of the sarcastic hat to Reuters.

Glen Campbell: A Better Place

I wept away my morning under a broad, gray, godless sky - a world that doesn't care about anyone, or anything - all too aware that I'm powerless to help my friend, Stoner, in his battle against cancer. Then I stumbled upon this pathos-rich Glen Campbell video. [Note: Campbell, aged 76, is struggling with Alzheimer's disease.] The brief, autobiographical lyrics contend that "the world's been good" to him, but the results have been a mixed bag. He looks forward to "a better place" - Heaven, one presumes, as Campbell is Baptist and he directly addresses the Lord here - as his illness hobbles his ability to live fully and independently.

On most any other day I would likely enjoy this song's melody and lovely guitar and then quickly move along to something less spiritually cloying. Today, however, I'm seized by its poignancy. While every one of us will one day leave this world, Stoner's journey is imminent and, in all likelihood, ahead of mine. And as I contemplate a world in which I'll no longer enjoy his pithy wit, his scholarship in so many subjects, and his camaraderie, I can't help but wonder if Christianity would be a comfort to me today, as it has been to Stoner, Campbell, and others, had I taken that path. To see each other again, in a place away from pain and suffering, even if that means I'd be contending with Stoner's periodic yammering about baseball and jazz, sounds pretty good right now.* Merely entertaining that notion was the cognitive bootstrap I needed to lift myself off the sofa.

Thanks, Glen, for boosting me up a little on this dark day.



* I suppose, however, these topics would be forbidden in "a place away from pain and suffering".

BMX Carnage

Stoner's Plumbing Problem

Kudos to the excellent staff at UM Hospital, especially Dr. Narasimham Dasika, and to Stoner's friends and family who were so generous and compassionate and loving through these last few weeks. Pictured are the critically-wounded (yet somehow still devilishly handsome) Stoner, his angelic R.N. Chelsea, and dedicated friends Jill and Jen.
...

Uh-Oh

Blue Ribbon Bacon Tour! In Keystone, CO, June 24-26

Cancel your other plans and book a flight to Colorado for "access to over 3,000 pounds of delicious bacon and bacon inspired treats from a variety of bacon purveyors. The weekend-long event will also feature the BRBF’s famous bacon lecture series delivered by some of the nation’s most brilliant bacon minds."

Mark Mathews, Executive Director of KNC, explains, “The Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival is highly regarded as the leader in providing bacon enthusiasts with the opportunity to explore and express their love for bacon in a fun, imaginative and supportive atmosphere. We’re excited about this new partnership and can’t wait to play host to thousands of bacon lovers from across the mountain states.”

Brooks Reynolds, co-founder of the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, adds, “As far as I’m concerned, if you haven’t sampled a variety of bacon at 9,000 feet above sea level, you haven’t lived.”

In response to the announcement, bacon aficionado Neil Pederson of Golden, CO was overwhelmed with emotion, “If words could only describe how I’m feeling right now. As a native Iowan, I miss the many different types of bacon available at local meat lockers and pig farms. At times, I long for an applewood smoked bacon from a pure bred Duroc pig. Or a few slices of dry-cured bacon from a true Berkshire breed. A tear comes to my eye, just thinking about the opportunity that lies before me. OHHHH, BACON!”

A limited number of Blue Ribbon Bacon Packages are available for $30 online now, while supplies last. Click here to buy your tickets. The package entitles the holder to admission to the three-day event, a commemorative hat, a free beer, a beer koozie, bacon samples at the Bacon Showcase, live music, and bacon educational lectures.
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Maeklong Market, Thailand

Sad tale

But, on the bright side: new Nick Lowe song in the works?

Yvette Vickers, an actress best known as the femme fatale in two late 1950s cult horror films, "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches," was found dead Wednesday at her Benedict Canyon home. She was 82.

The body's mummified state suggests that she could have been dead for close to a year, police said.

Twins, The Early Years

I've come up with an idea for a sequel to the classic Schwartzenegger and DeVito film, Twins - it's along the same lines as the no-stars Dumb & Dumberer leeching off... er, I mean building on... the success of Dumb & Dumber. Here are (fingers crossed!) the starring players (contracts pending):





I'm looking for savvy investors (such as yourself!) for this can't-lose venture. Have your girl call my girl.
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South Korea Strikes Back!

Yo, Yo, Yo, I got your jingle bells right here, Kim Young!

In response to provocations from nuclear power North Korea, South Korea does the unthinkable -- they erect a Christmas tree within sight of their mutual border!

"North Korea, officially atheist and with only a handful of sanctioned churches in Pyongyang with services for foreigners, warned that lighting the tree would constitute a 'dangerous, rash act' with the potential to trigger a war.

The tree is "... a sign that South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak's administration is serious about countering the North's aggression with measures of its own in the wake of an artillery attack that killed four South Koreans last month."

"The brightly lit, 100-foot-tall steel tree — with a cross on top — stood in stark relief to North Korea, where electricity is limited... the tree lighting at Aegibong is a signal that the South is ready to play hardball until it sees real change from the North."

Read more: S. Koreans light controversial tree - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_16916483#ixzz18zjF6zB7

Innovation!

Salt and battering at the State Fair of Texas

Joel De La Rosa is a CNN Senior Photojournalist. He is based in Dallas.

"Fried beer! Fried beer! Get your fried beer here!"

The minute you enter the food court at the 2010 State Fair of Texas in Dallas, the call cuts through the crowds of people and the smell of cotton candy and roasted corn. Booth vendors shout the choice of foods, "Fried beer...fried club salad...fried caviar!"

Every year the State Fair of Texas holds the Big Tex Choice Awards contest.

The Texas Fried Frito Pie won 2010’s top prize Best Taste award; it's a mix of chili, cheese and fritos that is battered then fried. "It is oowee goowee goodness," says Nick Bert, owner of Bert’s Burgers and Fries. "Everything just taste better fried."

Pushing a stroller already carrying other fried items,Valerie Boscacci from Bedford Texas stopped to try the Frito pie. "It taste like Frito Pie but you don’t have to use a fork," Valerie said, eagerly waiting to get a mouthful.

This year’s Most Creative award went to Fried Beer - a pretzel pocket filled with beer then fried and served with melted cheddar cheese. "It tastes like ravioli with a shot of beer!" said a female fairgoer. "It's like eating nachos and beer at the same time."

Another Big Tex Choice award went to Deep Fried S’mores Pop-Tart. "First we start with a regular Pop-Tart, we batter it, roll it a peanut butter concoction and fry it” explained Issac Rousso of Taste of Cuba. Then he covers it with powdered sugar, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles. "At the end what you got is a Deep Fried Pop-Tart," Issac said with a proud smile.

Among the other fried items featured this year are Deep Fried Frozen Margarita, Fried Lemonade, Fried Chocolate, Fried Texas Caviar and Fried Club Salad. For those fair-goers not daring enough or enticed to try these fried items this year, the traditional fan favorite, Fletcher’s Corny Dog is available.

The State Fair of Texas 2010 runs from Sept. 24th -Oct 17th.

Picher, OK

The following may read like excerpts from The Road but they are, in fact, from a WIRED article about a Superfund site in Oklahoma:

Mounds of fine white grit called chat—leftover minerals from mining operations—loom over the town, 200 feet high... By September 2009, the police force had disbanded and the government dissolved. Picher was a dead city... a few people refused to leave. They call themselves chat rats, a loose and increasingly self-reliant colony armed with cell phones and Wi-Fi for communication and guns for driving off scrap-metal scavengers. It’s a life bordering on squalid—on the way out of the Gorillas Cage, Roberts spots shovel marks around the base of the burned-out signpost, the beginning of an attempt to steal it. Across the street, a former auction-house parking lot has become a dumping ground for tires. On the drive back out of town, he passes the abandoned high school and notices that the arts and crafts building has burned down. A man appears to be helping himself to bookshelves from an open classroom.
The water pumps were shut off when the mines closed; their subterranean chambers refilled with groundwater and leaked acid into nearby Tar Creek, threatening the town’s drinking water. Sinkholes opened under streets and houses. Heavy metal dust from chat piles choked the air. Kids started coming home from swimming in ponds near the mines complaining of what they thought were sunburns, never realizing that the pools were full of caustic chemicals. And most of the mining companies that might have been held responsible were either bankrupt or disbanded.
In 2000, frustrated by a lack of progress, then-governor Frank Keating appointed a task force to assess the long-term prospects of the area. The final report: The place was unlivable. The town needed to be evacuated.
Six years later, the Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that more than a third of the homes in Picher were undermined by massive voids and that the town was in danger of catastrophic subsidence. In other words, the earth was going to swallow it up.
And then—never say that it can’t get worse—on May 10, 2008, a tornado with 175-mile-per-hour winds touched down near a western chat pile and whirled east through the south part of town. The storm leveled buildings, flipped cars, and debarked trees, killing six people and destroying 114 homes. No one opted to rebuild—it was almost like the land itself wanted them out. A year later, the school system and city services shut down completely. The end was nigh.
Back at the chat piles, Garner produces a .40-caliber subcompact pistol—the kind that is extremely loud and launches Vienna- sausage-sized bullets. He aims at an old lawn mower starter far out in the sand and pulls the trigger. Blam!The starter explodes in a shower of metal. “There is now a Make My Day law,” he proclaims. “Mess with my shit and I’ll blow your ass off.”
Afterward, Garner tours his domain. It includes an abandoned picnic area, where he and his now-wife took pictures after their prom, and the charred husks of former houses—at least 13 have been mysteriously torched. In another neighborhood, an entire subdivision is spray-painted with orange X’s, indicating that the homes are to be torn down. Abandoned dogs wander the streets. At an old church with a missing bell, Roberts caught an indie film company shooting slasher erotica.
Not too far away, on the northwest side of town, Jean Henson, on disability for asthma, emphysema, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lives in a leaky 1968 Heritage single-wide that smells somewhat sour. She’s strung a network of hoses and extension cords to her son’s RV next door, the one with the Confederate flag in the window, so he can get water and power. Down the road, barefooted 70-year-old Tommy Thomas keeps a dozen Labradors and Chihuahuas. On a recent morning he kicks a discarded deer jawbone in his front yard, scanning for rat, raccoon, or possum tracks. He says he’ll eat anything he can kill—or find fresh enough to take back home. “Got a deer just the other day,” Thomas says cryptically. “And you can eat anything with scales.”
The only business still open—though its owner lives out of town—is Ole Miners Pharmacy. Many customers are former residents who come back to pick up their medications, trying to sustain generations-old connections to the area. (Two men in their fifties compare ailments at the counter. Final tally: eight heart attacks, nine stents, and a pacemaker between them.)

Ride the Rockies

Unloading boxed bicycles; Campsite at Mesa College; CO Nat Monument; Ditto










CO Nat Monument; The first rain; The "pack"; Paraplegic's hand-powered bicycle










Palisade, CO; Foreboding mountains; Camp Ouray; Our mainstay diet










Panda-brand bamboo-framed bike; Biergarten ID bracelet collection; Iggy Pop (just kidding, lady!)













Very tall cyclist (and bike); Humbling bus ride; Old-timey facade; The highlight of Alamosa; The end

Icelandic Music Break

This one's for Feral Boy... actually, it's for all.

Godspeed, Ernie Harwell

DETROIT — Fans lined the sidewalk outside Comerica Park in downtown Detroit Thursday to pay their final respects to cherished broadcaster Ernie Harwell, who many Tigers fans consider the eternal voice of summer.

Hundreds of fans lined up overnight to view an open casket bearing Harwell — wearing his signature fedora — that was positioned behind metal barriers just inside the stadium's front gate.

The casket was placed near a life-sized statue of the Hall of Fame broadcaster, microphone in hand, with the inscription, "The Tigers' broadcasting legend and masterful storyteller for 42 seasons." Several large portraits and memorial bouquets also were set in place.

Harwell died Tuesday of cancer at age 92.

Ski Porn

A short video of some amazing stunts, from Warren Miller

People Who Died

Jim Carroll had a heart attack at age 60. He was a young hero of mine. He died.