This One's For Huell Howser

This One's For Huell Howser

Last week California lost a little bit of its gold at the hands of cancer. Star of television and all around amazingly kind and down to earth guy, Huell Howser passed away. And while I don't know about everyone else who didn't grow up in range of a California Public Broadcast Station, I do know that I was essentially raised by Huell.

To a great degree, he's the major driving force as to why I go out of my way to find those hidden spots of the city. Why I love going on road trips and a major reason why I'm more than happy to talk to strangers whenever I come across them. Sometimes I'm not exactly sure how to approach them, but hey, it went to show you that he could make anything enjoyable.

Huell was not born here. He was a transplant, but I dare you to find someone who is more Californian than him. He will go down as one of our most precious commodities. Mainly due to the ability to be filled with wanderlust and excitement at the slightest things. Just look at his reaction to a dog that eats avocados.



Which has to be one of my favorite moments on his productions by far. But that was just one instance of many that showed how full of joy and carefree the man was. Perhaps you should take a look at his reporting in the early days of his career.



But as much as he was on point with a lot of those, including a Clash report, nothing can beat his programs California's Gold and Visiting with... Since he died at a young age of 67 without any heirs, he decided to give Chapman University the rights to stream all of his produced content. Which is pretty impressive and is located at the Huell Howser archives.

Tomorrow (Tuesday the 15th) at Griffith Park's Observatory, a memorial will be held in honor of the man organized by Tom LaBonge. Who Huell Howser was the master of ceremonies at LaBonge's first swearing in. But yeah, to have a Sunset Salute to a man who opened the door in showing a large part of the hidden aspects of California to many of us in his own special way... well, that's the least we can do short of putting up a statue of the man.

You know what, this man was one of my heroes. He deserves more than one blog post celebrating his life. So to be continued.....

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty


While many others may see Zero Dark Thirty as something of a glorified celebration of killing Osama, I thought it was a good film in exposing the pointless nihilism of the war on terror. In the end, it's really the best lesson you can learn from it.Though I know for damn well that what I took away from the film was not the same thing others did.

I hear people talk about how it's so riveting and suspenseful - even though we all know how it ends, you know, with the death of that old CIA agent... In any case, I do think that the best way to look at it is to wonder if after all the money spent and the man power wasted and deaths on its plate, was it all worth it?

The film is very much framed through the use of a high-profile terrorist attacks - so it begins with a phone call from a woman in the twin towers after the attacks - at which point you should just accept the fact that this will pander to the American audience and pull on those heart strings.

But throughout the film we see the London bombings, an attack in Saudi Arabai, the Marriot bombing, the camp Chapman attack and so on, but the only American response we see is the final assault on Bin Laden's compound and I would argue that this reinforces the whole "America as victim" narrative that we don't really need.

They show you this huge and very long torture scene and the rest of the film we're told that they can no longer do that and how much easier it would be if they could. Seems like they just swept that whole aspect under the rug. Not more so than not ever touching on anything about drone attacks or bombings that we constantly do on their soil.

In the end I just thought the Hurt Locker was a lot better made and the point is there. This film just seems to bypass a lot of the WHY as to what is happening on screen. 

Say Goodbye To These, Michael!

Say Goodbye To These, Michael! 

In a strange turn of events, tonight's airing of the Miss America Beauty Pageant has stepped up its level of irrelevance by including a battle for life and death with someone who doesn't currently have a life or death illness.

I'm talking about Miss District of Columbia. Do they even have the ability to vote? Okay, anyhow - Win or Lose, Miss D.C. is making news as she's planning to chop off her breast after the competition in order to take preventative measures in potentially getting breast cancer.See for yourself!



Now not to be the negative Nancy in all this, but chances are that even with the decreased chances, she's still probably going to develop cancer based on the genetic disposition. Truth be told, that stance is really not

I think that her father pushing this on her at a young age is probably the biggest fucked up issue here. Telling your daughter, who only two years prior lost her mother that "You will end up dead like your mom" has to be some of the most fucked up shit possible.

"My mom would have given up every part of her body to be here for me, to watch me in the pageant," 

See, I would like to think that it would be more to the point that she not give up body parts in exchange for memories. It's really a fine line I'm doing in talking about this as any which way I can sound incredibly offensive if I lean one way or another. But to say your mother should give up, or would give up body parts if she could, well... that's even suggesting that giving up those body parts would have done any good.

What also gets me about this situation is that she is planning on doing reconstructive surgery, but said the procedure has complications and there's no guarantee that she will regain her pageant-approved bust.... Okay, let me stop you right fucking there. You know, if I had alcoholism running in my family and I made a bold prime time television statement of "Well, I'm going to give up drinking in order to prevent this from happening to me, I wouldn't be all gung-ho about speaking out on the options of near-beer/non-alcoholic variety.

I understand it's her body and her choice on the matter, but it seems like it's a big scare tactic. You don't see her going full tilt in getting her lymph nodes taken out or her lungs removed all in the name of preemptive care. And let's get another thing straight there, that's only useful for the medical industry. A bunch of unneeded surgery. It's tragic what happened to her mother, but getting a double mastectomy because your predisposed genetically is like a guy getting his balls removed because testicular cancer runs in the family.

Either way, if you're wondering, the title of the post comes from....



So hey, stare at them while you can, you objectifying average male who watches the Miss America pageant.... wait, okay, that's exactly no one. Cause, you know, football is on.

Those Crazy Liberal Gun Stealing Jews Are Taking Are Guns!

Those Crazy Liberal Gun Stealing Jews Are Taking Are Guns!


So hey, Alex Jones had a pretty big meltdown on the Piers Morgan Tonight show. I know what you're thinking. Who the fuck is Piers Morgan and why hasn't he dropped that stupid accent? The second thing you're wondering is how Alex Jones is even relevant. Well, he's really not but let's just roll with this notion that he is for the sake of seeing a crazy dude on television have a complete meltdown with conspiracy theories in full effect.





It's really sad that he's clearly mentally ill, because he does have some valid points, but his mind is so goddamned maelstrom with no clarity that you can't make heads or tails of it. He may be right about the whole danger of disarming the populous, the fact that most gun violence is committed with illegal handguns and not semi-automatic rifles. As well as the media coverage being responsible for the continuing waves of mass murders. Just look at that recent shooting in Kern River. But the whole building 7 bullshit and his demeanor is just too much of a fucking bonkers for the CNN crowd to do anything but dismiss anything he says.

I appreciate that he is trying his damnest to bring unconventional news and a differing perspective to the young, burgeoning information culture, but at the same time I think he could be more effective if he didn't stray so far into his own sort of twisted, paranoid perspective on the world. There will always be acts of conspiracy in the higher echelons of government and business, but the simple fact is that its very hard to keep secrets, even in the case of powerful organizations and 'all-knowing governments.' At the end of the day, the world-class governments and multi-national corporations are organizations of PEOPLE, and are still susceptible to the fallacies of individual human beings.

But, as always, I could be wrong. We could all be wrong. We could all be the remaining souls of aliens brought to this world trillions of years ago, and placed under volcanoes by the alien warlord Zenu to be re-birthed to live for billions of years and meant to serve L. Ron Hubbard in the Sea Org to save the world from the Thetans that congregate inside our bodies. You never know.

The Media Is Evil - Tila Explains It All

The Media Is Evil - Tila Explains It All

Say, do you have 30 minutes to kill? Well, you're reading this blog, so the answer to that is of course YES! Well, check out this out if you feel the need to have your brain melted into a puddle of mind numbing nothingness..

I present to you Tila Tequila explains the Illuminati and other shit...



Welp, my brain is completely melted and there's no point to the world anymore. Thanks Tila....

Hugo Chavez - R.I.P

Hugo Chavez - R.I.P 

It's pretty well know that Hugo Chavez is probably going to die very soon. So hey, how about we just go through a couple of the most favorite of moments this crazy socialist leader has done before he departed. How about we take a step back some and look at some of our early exposure to his madness towards America;



Who can forget that classic Bush talk with his "The Devil was here" speech at the UN. There's just something so wonderful about his acts. It's as if Chavez is criminally under-recognized for his contributions to the great art of trolling.


Hey, remember the time when Chavez gave Obama a copy of "Open Veins"? Maybe if he had written Fareed Zakaria's name on it, Obama would have actually read it.


But hey, democracy and all that stuff... I just like that he helped illustrate the moral cowardice of even the liberal-left media to me by being continually denounced as an authoritarian and a dictator despite being continually re-elected in free and fair elections. It's just a matter that your average American believe people south of the U.S. just don't have "real" democracy, as "they simply do not understand it" Or at least that's what every dipshit Secretary of State has to say on the matter.



"what would those oppressed peoples of the global south say to the american imperialist?"

"yankee imperialist, go home!"



Goodnight you sweet prince.

Learning: How To Work At Wendy's

Learning: How To Work At Wendy's

Okay, so maybe "How to work at wendy's" isn't the best description for this. I mean, you just have to settle for really shitty wages, smelling like frier grease and seeing a lot of stoners pull up at midnight after they're fucked up. This is actually a guide on how to pour drinks at Wendy's.



Yeah, apparently the workers there need a handy guide on how exactly they need to pour a cold cup of soda. This is handy info if you're planning on working at that burger joint in the coming year. Best of luck!