Minor league baseball team plans Eliot Spitzer promotion

SEATTLE, Washington - Minor league baseball teams are known for running wacky promotions to publicize their product - everything from Osama bin Laden bobblehead dolls to free popsicles in honor of the cryogenically frozen Ted Williams. The latest "innovation" is the planned "Eliot Spitzer Night" by the Macon Music, a minor league team in Georgia:

The Macon Music is capitalizing on the outgoing New York governor's prostitution-related downfall, by serving up a "Eliot Spitzer Night." The man once known as "Mr. Clean" is invited to throw out the first pitch at the June 13th game, although he hasn't RSVP'd.

A South Coast League official says anybody named Eliot, Spitzer or Kristen, the alleged call girl, will get $1 off admission.
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And since Spitzer was described as "Client No. 9" in FBI documents, the ninth fan will get a prize. So will the 871st fan to buy a ticket, because that's supposed to have been Spitzer's Mayflower Hotel room number.

heard on The Jim Rome Show

Two celebrity booby-blogs clashing over "ethics"

SEATTLE, Washington - It seems that there is no sphere of life that does not have some tension - even the world of T&A bloggers is having issues. In what are probably the first two posts on such blogs that don't have a celebrity or swimsuit angle, accusations of plagiarism and unethical behavior are boiling.

This started with a post on Hollywood Tuna, one of my favorites in the genre. If you read many of these blogs you see that there is a generous amount of linking to other blogs and a certain amount of duplicative posts. Still, the Tuna thinks that a competitor blog has gone too far with blatant copying of material:

Not that you guys care but when you finally come across something post worthy and then see it on another site 30 minutes later, you realize that they are ripping you off and that can piss you off. You let it slide, then you realize that day after day, that same site is still using all of your material and eventually the time comes where you have to take action...
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So today I decided to take action (which is not the first time) and call this person out by sending him an email.
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Most websites conduct themselves ethically and I pride myself on working with websites that are doing their own thing and expressing their own voice on their own content. I felt that the time has come where I need to cut ties with the negativity and move forward accordingly...

The Tuna sent an email to the offending blog, Egotastic!, and the author of Egotastic! posted a response:

I don't usually respond to childish, passive aggressive behaviour, and I don't like fanning the flames of inane online bitch wars, but this time, I'm not going to sit with my thumbs up my ass, no matter how good it might feel.
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Do we have similar content? Yes. Does every other babe-centric gossip blog have similar content? Yes. I won't apologize for posting content that I think my readers will enjoy. And I sure as heck (I wanted to use a harsher word, but the kids are watching) won't let any other site claim that I am "using all of [their] material."
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The funniest part of what was written, though, is that he puportedly conducts himself "ethically." I won't go into details about how far that is from the truth, because frankly, it's none of your business, and you don't really care, but I have never known Hollywood Tuna to act ethically.

I, for one, would like more details on the hinted-at lack of ethics on the part of Hollywood Tuna.

Trophy Cupcakes can send the consulting check to my Swiss account

SEATTLE, Washington - I went to Trophy Cupcakes this weekend to check the status of the soon-to-return Peanut Butter & Jelly cupcake. A small sign said that the cupcake was returning "on Fridays" starting March 21.

When I asked if this was the only day that the cupcake was going to be available, I was told that the cupcake would not be "special" if it was offered too often. That's exactly what I told them when they first started offering the PB&J four days a week. They blew off my warning last time, but now my warning has become official company policy.

They (and by they, I mean someone there, who may or may not be the person that commented on the post linked above) said the PB&J will be offered on a second, yet-to-be-determined day in addition to Fridays.

Mary Carter Paint has hidden its tracks

SEATTLE, Washington - I said in a previous post that I wanted to take a look at a 1976 Rolling Stone article that discussed the Mary Carter Paint company, to see if it had any new information or better-documented sources compared to what I have already read on the topic. Not only did the article contain some factual errors that I easily spotted, but the portion of the article that I cared about was retracted by Rolling Stone in 1977.

I was hoping for detailed source documentation, but instead I just got references to "CIA sources" when discussing the evolution of Mary Carter Paint:

Mary Carter Paint, according to CIA sources, was a CIA front group. It had been set up by Thomas Dewey and Allen Dulles. In 1958 Dewey and some friends bought controlling interest in the Crosby Miller Corporation with $2 million in CIA money from Dulles, who was still CIA director. A year later the Crosby Miller Corporation merged with the paint company. During the Bay of Pigs operation in 1960 and 1961, according to CIA sources, Mary Carter laundered CIA payments to the Cuban exile army.

I'm always skeptical when a relatively low-level detail like this (setting up a front company) is credited to the top guys in an organization. It reeks of name-dropping - like Bill Cooper's writings on the alien-government alliance in Behold a Pale Horse.

The article goes on to discuss how the CIA morphed Mary Carter Paint into Resorts International and it became a "conduit for hiding money it sends to counterinsurgency groups in Central in South America."

After suffering through reading this at the library on microfiche (in negative, of course), I find out that Rolling Stone retracted this portion of their story in 1977 after being sued by Resorts International:

Rolling Stone in 1977, after being legally challenged by Resorts, retracted a story that CIA Director Allen Dulles was majorly involved in the buyout. Quoting CIA sources, Kohn wrote that in 1958 Dulles gave Dewey and Thomas $2 million in CIA money to set up a front company. With it they supposedly bought Crosby-Miller Corp, which merged with Mary Carter a year later. In its retraction, Rolling Stone noted that while it respected Kohn as a researcher, Resorts International had shown the magazine persuasive evidence that Kohn had been wrong or been misled by his sources.
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During the early 70s, Resort International/Mary Carter's activities were occasionally cited in the left-wing press as evidence that it had been carrying out CIA business. When similar allegations appeared in a Las Vegas newspaper, Resorts --- as in the case of Rolling Stone --- threatened suit and won a full retraction. (source)

In addition to this retraction, I saw some very simple factual errors regarding Howard Hughes that anyone who has read 9 books about Hughes would spot immediately. The photo-reconnaissance plane Hughes was developing during WWII for the government (and in a prototype of which Hughes had his disastrous 1946 crash) was the XF-11, not the F-11 as the article states. The article calls Hughes's medical charity the "Hughes Medical Foundation"; its correct name is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, that's what it was called when it was formed in 1953 and it still exists and it's still called the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Perhaps Rolling Stone retracted these things too, but I don't want to pore over microfiche to find out.

While I'm on the topic of microfiche - perhaps the library, instead of shelling out for misused flat-screen TVs, should find some technology that lets the user view a negative microfiche in positive form. Viewing a negative is only useful when looking at pictures of the Shroud of Turin.

I'll say it again - Fabio is a great trash-talker

SEATTLE, Washington - Fabio keeps an eagle eye out for media coverage of The Fabio, and straightens out anyone who gets their facts wrong. He tracked down the Details interview of him that I discussed in January and had a few choice words for the editor of Details, Daniel Peres. This is the entire letter:

Dear Mr. Peres:

I know they say any publicity is good publicity, but I must admin that I was disappointed by the tone of your article. For the record: My teeth are not capped, my eyes are not green and the 1980's are not a blur to me. By the looks of it, I would say that the interview must have been a blur to your writer.

Sincerely,
Fabio

We assure you, the closure has nothing to do with Jesus Christ

SEATTLE, Washington -

Can you put on the Clemson-Maryland game? Why not?

SEATTLE, Washington - The Central Library in Seattle has some sweet flat-screen monitors, but apparently they're not used for sports. Instead, you get such handy information as the number of "Dewey Items" that are checked out, vs. the number of "Non-Dewey" checkouts.

Just because it's not sports doesn't mean you can't bet on it. I hear Non-Dewey is favored by 125 for Monday - if the line goes any higher, then take Dewey and the points, but if it stays there or goes lower then lay the wood.

I knew Christina Ricci was short, but holy crap

SEATTLE, Washington - All men who follow Christina Ricci know that she is spinner-sized, but a picture in this gallery at Just Jared emphasizes the fact. Even in tall heels, her neck is right about at the bottom of the window-line of a Lincoln Navigator. I walked by a Navigator last night for reference, so I have a sense of scale the next time I'm having a Christina Ricci fantasy.

Comments on various Howard Hughes books

SEATTLE, Washington - My obsessiveness in reading Howard Hughes books closely parallels the obsessions of the old man himself. Below are some notes and comments, not really reviews, of the Hughes books that I've read, in the order that I first read them. I've read most of them several times.

Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness by Donald Barlett & James Steele

I have the 1979 edition of this book, when it was called Empire. (Hughes died in 1976.) The authors are Philadelphia newspaper reporters, and the book materially and stylistically reflects this - it is fairly light on the tits and ass, and long on the business dealings. The authors are quite critical of the Mormon Mafia and are not in love with Bob Maheu either. Hughes is portrayed as almost completely incompetent in his last year or two. Written so soon after Hughes's death, certain details are missing (e.g. later developments in the estate battle, and some of the Watergate revelations.)

Best/unique things about this book: Most detailed coverage of various legal battles, including TWA, Air West, and the 1947 Senate hearings; probably the best coverage of the Glomar Explorer affair; detailed coverage of the 1975 Mell Stewart enema showdown.

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Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos, and Letters by Richard Hack

Hack is a celebrity biographer, and that's the nature of the book - heavy on the ladies, light on the litigation. Probably as breezy a read and as good of an introduction to Hughes as any of the books. Some saucy stuff, but nothing outlandish. Heavy coverage of the mid-to-late 1930s, Hughes's most active time with women, and almost no coverage of 1961-1966, when Hughes was living in Bel Air and consumed with TWA litigation. Does not fawn over Maheu even though Hack co-authored Maheu's memoir (discussed below).

Best/unique things about this book: Contains the full, nine-part, 3-page single spaced Hughes memo on how to open a can of fruit.

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Howard Hughes: The Untold Story by Peter Harry Brown and Pat Broeske

Another tits-and-ass effort by two entertainment writers. In terms of sheer volume of women discussed, this is the top book by far. The authors had access to Hughes's "security chief" (actually, more like Director of Surveilling Women) Jeff Chouinard (who, mysteriously, is not mentioned in any other book as far as I can recall,) and he provided piles of details on the chick scene from the late 1940s onward. The authors are fairly critical of Bill Gay and the Mormon Mafia. This book attributes Hughes's erratic late-life behavior to undiagnosed neurosyphilis.

Best/unique things about this book: Most detail on Hughes's marriage to Ella Rice in the 1920s; best coverage of how Hughes worked on the mothers of the young women he was pursuing.

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The Passions of Howard Hughes by Terry Moore & Jerry Rivers

Hughes staged a bogus wedding in international waters with the young starlet Moore in 1949 to get her into bed. It worked. Moore later claimed to be married to Hughes for 8 years, which is interesting because she married another guy in 1951, divorced him, and married yet another guy in 1956. This book consists of vignettes (with lots of dialogue cobbled up by Moore) on various business and sexual escapades. Much of it reads like Hustler Forum letters. But, in books like this, it's the spirit that counts, not the narrow correctness of the dialogue, and Jane Russell said that this is the only book she ever read that captures the essence of the real Hughes.

Best/unique things about this book: Attributes the following dialogue to entertainment legends:

• Billie Dove: "Get the champagne and pour it over my feet and up my legs and onto my pussy... now be a good boy, Howard, and lick it all up."
  
• Marilyn Monroe: "I dyed my pussy just for you, Howard."
  
• Bette Davis: "Or were you dreaming about my tummy and how smooth it would be, and how it would feel when you ran your hand over my stomach down to my pussy and how silky the hair would feel?" - "I'm going to show you what it's like to fuck a real woman." - "Can Katie Hepburn offer you this?" - "I'm going to show you what the word 'fuck' really means."
  

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Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness by Michael Drosnin

This book covers a narrow time period, the Vegas years (1966-1970) and the immediate aftermath, and is based largely on memos stolen from Hughes's Romaine Street headquarters (pic of the HQ that I snapped here) in 1974. Drosnin also wrote The Bible Code, that's not a good sign, but still, this book is valuable for direct, extensive quoting of Hughes memos from the relevant time frame. Many of the memos are between Hughes and Bob Maheu (see Maheu review below.) Drosnin is pretty hard on the Mormons.

Best/unique things about this book: Most detailed coverage of Watergate issues; entire chapter on Hughes's dislike of blacks; excellent coverage of Hughes's dithering regarding the party to open the Landmark casino in 1969.

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Next to Hughes by Robert Maheu and Richard Hack

Maheu first started working with Hughes in the 1950s and served as his Vegas top dog and alter-ego in the late 1960s, all without ever meeting the big guy. Maheu mixes discussion of his work with Hughes with the stuff he was doing on the side, like arranging to have his mob pals murder Fidel Castro. Maheu blasts Bill Gay, who orchestrated the ouster of Maheu from the Hughes empire in 1970-71, as being the greedy bad guy in all of this (which some claim Maheu was) and essentially "killing" Hughes through drugs and isolation. Kirkus reviews called this book the "self-servingly selective reminiscences of a world-class hustler" and "a graceless, narcissistic, score-settling apologia."

Best/unique things about this book: Actually, considering who wrote this book, it is rather light on details. The best parts are the parts only tangentially related to Hughes (like the Castro business.) Maybe this really is "selective reminiscences." I learned more about the Hughes-Maheu relationship from the Drosnin book than from the Maheu book.

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Howard Hughes: The Secret Life by Charles Higham

Prolific celebrity author Higham makes the most controversial claims of all - that Hughes was a prolific, practicing bisexual and died of AIDS or an AIDS-like disease. In addition to extensive, sordid coverage of Hughes's heterosexual action, Higham alleges homosexual action between Hughes and (among others) Jack Buetel, Tyrone Power, Randolph Scott, and Cary Grant (the last two pictured here). This book is nonjudgmental, almost to the point of apologetic, about the role of Bill Gay and the Mormons in Hughes's late life isolation and physical decline. The Hughes in this book is colder and more uncaring than in any other portrayal.

Best/unique things about this book: Best coverage of Stewart Granger's idea to murder Hughes, and the actual physical attacks Hughes suffered at the hands of Glen Davis and Oleg Cassini.

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The Asylum of Howard Hughes by Jack Real & Bill Yenne

Jack Real worked with Hughes for years when he was an executive with Lockheed, and eventually started working for Hughes himself in the last years of Hughes's life. He was the only "friend" Hughes had in his last years, the only man who regularly saw Hughes who was not a part of the Mormon Mafia. Real is vicious in his portrayal of Bill Gay and most of the Mormon aides. Interestingly, he portrays Chester Davis in a somewhat warmer light than Gay, where most writers portray Gay and Davis as being birds of a feather. Most of the book covers the post-Vegas years (1971 to 1976) and thus has almost no coverage of Hughes's sexual adventures.

Best/unique things about this book: Has coverage of some Hughes business dealings that are not covered in any other book; extensive detail on Hughes's last few piloting experiences in England in 1973; a somewhat rose-tinted view of Anastasio Somoza; details Hughes's attempt to communicate a bribe offer to Del Webb via ESP.

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The Mysterious Howard Hughes Revealed by Verl Frehner and Chuck Waldron

Chuck Waldron started working for the Hughes organization in 1957 and joined the inner inner circle of Hughes aides, controlled by Bill Gay, in 1971. He's not the aide Jack Real identified as the "good" one. Verl Frehner is just some guy, not an author, who became Waldron's neighbor in Las Vegas after Hughes's death, got to talking with Waldron about the Hughes years, and has written this book. Waldron is listed as the co-author but he's always referred to in the third person in the book. This is a strange, published-on-demand book that is written in an aw-shucks style and clearly has not been professionally edited. Gay and his Mormon troops are portrayed in the cheeriest possible light, dutifully carrying out Hughes's wishes. Hughes is portrayed as being a busy bee, wheeling and dealing up until about a month before he died, while all other authors portray a Hughes greatly slowed down in his last few years.

Best/unique things about this book: Detailed coverage of Hughes's "escape" from the Bahamas in 1972, and in general, the most detail on Hughes's moves from residence to residence in the 1970s.

Still forbidden territory

NEW YORK CITY, New York - A few months ago, I snapped a picture of this lounge at work. It was labeled the "Lactating Room" and had a leather couch inside.

It has been rebranded - it is now the "Women's Lounge" and the leather couch has been replaced with a fabric one.

I don't know if I'm now more allowed to use this room, or less allowed. There's no "Men's Lounge" but I'm not inclined to be litigious about these things.

What do papayas, hopscotch, and Ouija boards have in common?

NEW YORK CITY, New York - Answer: they're all just about as effective as multi-billion dollar antidepressant drugs in treating "depression".

The BBC is reporting on a meta-study by the University of Hull, where they dug around and acquired both published and unpublished trial data, instead of only the published data (which is apparently cherry-picked to put the greatest possible light on the "antidepressant" drugs). To summarize, the swanky, patent-encrusted SSRI drugs were deemed to be no better than a placebo for all but the most "severely depressed" patients.

The BBC article notes that new armies of therapists are being trained to provide "talking therapies", and a Financial Times article on the same study notes that "outdoor exercise" can be used to combat "depression."

If talking to someone "cures" them, then there was nothing medically wrong with them to begin with. If a bit of outdoor prancing "cures" someone, then they were not medically ill.

I hate to sound like a Scientologist on this, but even a crazy, blind Scientologist squirrel can stumble upon a nut.

Japanese fall-on-the-sword attitude good for HD-DVD buyers

SEATTLE, Washington - In case you haven't heard, the hi-res disc format war is over, and Blu-ray has won. Nobody cares, except Sony executives and those few folks that bought HD-DVD gear. It's a sunk cost for people in the US, but the shame-based cultural attitudes in Japan are so strong that one retailer is letting customers trade in their HD-DVD player for a Blu-ray player:

The Japanese electronics retailer Edion is deeply ashamed it sold its customers HD DVD gear. So ashamed they that they're allowing buyers to swap in Toshiba HD DVD boxes for Blu-ray players.

Found via Digg

Nitpicky zoning's unindicted co-conspirator - Landmarks Preservation

SEATTLE, Washington - The neighborhood busybodies and resentful bittermen of Seattle (and elsewhere) have multiple avenues available to attack property owners and casually impose their subjective style preferences on every new building in their radar range. One is zoning "design reviews", which I have discussed before; another tool on their belt is the Landmarks Preservation process.

This week's "landmark" is a building in Ballard that recently ended a 24-year run as a Denny's restaurant. The property was acquired by Benaroya Companies with the intention of tearing it down and building condos. Benaroya (in a strategy that many developers end up using) actually applied for Landmark Preservation for the property, so they could (hopefully) get landmark status rejected and out of the way before some neighborhood types file for preservation later in the process and gum things up.

The Landmarks Preservation cabal met last night and, despite Benaroya's best efforts, voted 6-3 to declare the exterior of the building to be a historical landmark. No tearing it down now; options include building condos (or other stuff) around the structure, renovating the interior and doing something else with it, sell it, or let it rot.

You can tell from reading the comments of the supporters of restrictive classifications (just as you can tell from the people that throw darts at design review meetings) that many of them just use the process as an indirect, spiteful way to oppose condos and development in general, because developers are rich and greedy and the proposed condos would not be "affordable". In fact, this building was recently slated to be torn down and turned into a station for the proposed Monorail. The Monorail project vaporized, and the land was subsequently sold to Benaroya. No one seemed to give a shit about the historical significance of the building when it was going to be replaced with a noble, politically correct mass transit project, but try to tear it down for condos that a barista can't afford and suddenly the building's a piece of Seattle, Architectural, Washington State, and World history.

I do not cater to the prurient instincts

SEATTLE, Washington - I have to draw the line somewhere, so I'm not going to provide any links or information on the Gene Simmons sex tape. You're on your own on that one.

Now that Fidel is stepping aside

SEATTLE, Washington - Time to get some real leadership in Cuba - the kind that will again turn Cuba into a tropical gambling mecca. The kind of Cuba that Hyman Roth talked about in The Godfather Part II:

These are wonderful things that we've achieved in Havana -- and there's no limit to where we can go from here. This kind of Government knows how to help business...to encourage it -- the hotels here are bigger and swankier than any of the rug joints we've put in Vegas -- and we can thank our friends in the Cuban government -- which has put up half of the cash with the Teamsters on a dollar for dollar basis -- has relaxed restrictions on imports. What I am saying now is we have what we have always needed -- real partnership with the government.

Transcript from here

Long before the Seattle cupcake wars

SEATTLE, Washington - Today, we enjoy a rainbow variety of cupcakes at our various cupcake shops in Seattle. I found an analogous variety of baked goods from the old old days in Seattle, in the photo book Vanishing Seattle.

The windmill below was the Queen Anne Hill outpost of Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery, a regional bakery chain based in California. As you can barely see in the scan below, they offered "17 Kinds of Old Dutch Coffee Cakes". Seventeen! Who needs cafe au lait or lavender cupcakes when you can get seventeen kinds of coffee cake?

The Dutch abandoned Queen Anne decades ago, but the Danes are still there; I would encourage all to visit John Nielsen's Authentic Danish Pastry on 2nd Ave. W for a very pleasant experience.

I've made the switch

SEATTLE, Washington - No, I'm not turning gay. Though, maybe I'd be happier gay, and it would certainly be easier to get sex.

No, I've changed my Linux home desktop from Gentoo to Kubuntu. For one thing, there seems to be a bit of chaos at the Gentoo Foundation; Ubuntu has what Linux needs, some corporate backing from a mad billionaire and momentum.

Beyond that, the Kubuntu graphical software installer has been a nice break from two years of compiling all software from source in Gentoo. I wasn't engaging in any optimizations that made compiling from scratch worth it.

And Kubuntu has operated more smoothly in some day-to-day tasks, like plugging in my mp3 player via USB.

Obviously, I chose Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu because GNOME is for losers.

Americans agree with me on where to move

SEATTLE, Washington - When I compiled my livability index of all 50 states, I automatically excluded the 41 states that had a state income tax. Turns out many other Americans have the same philosophy - an editorial in today's WSJ looks at the relationship between state income taxes and domestic migration. Their comments are based on this year's United Van Lines migration study, which has allegedly been fairly representative of overall migration patterns for decades.

The WSJ notes that the 7 of the 8 states without an income tax (in the contiguous 48) are ranked in the top 12 as far as inbound vs. outbound migrants. In case you were simplistically thinking/hoping that people are moving strictly to get to better weather, note that Florida was the one no-income-tax state not in the top 12, and that bad-weather states like Wyoming and New Hampshire are getting a significant influx.

North Dakota, with an income tax, is a big outflux state, while South Dakota, right next door and without an income tax, is a big influx state. I doubt that the weather explains that one.

I've been saying for a while now, your best chance of getting the government you want is not to vote for it, but to move to it. And, as the WSJ notes, the people most likely to move are the ones you probably would most like to keep around:

Our friends on the left say Americans are willing to pay more taxes to get better government services, but their migration patterns reveal the opposite. Governors would be wise to heed these interstate migration trends as they try to cope with what may be one of the worst years in recent memory for state finances. The people who tend to be the most mobile in American society are the educated and motivated -- in other words, the taxpaying class. Tax them too much, and you'll soon find they aren't there to tax at all.

Woody Allen has come a long way from the Orgasmatron

SEATTLE, Washington - Woody Allen's films seem to have hit their erotic peak way back in 1973, with the introduction of the Orgasmatron in Sleeper. The next 35 years have featured a lot of neuroses and Manhattan cocktail parties, but not much sweaty sex.

It looks like Woody is finally about to bring some good old fashioned heat to the screen in the upcoming Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The New York Post is reporting that this movie will feature a torrid lesbian sex scene with Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz. Woody can't pull his camera away from Scarlett lately.



Found via Celebslam

Georgia wants a piece of Tennessee for its water

SEATTLE, Washington - The Tennessean is reporting that there is a resolution bouncing around in the Georgia legislature that would move a boundary with Tennessee by about a mile to the north, giving Georgia more land and giving the water-hungry state access to the Nickajack Reservoir.

Georgia, of course, is not couching this as a hostile action, but as a correction of some incorrect surveying 190 years ago:

The resolution, which has passed early hurdles but has not received final passage, claims that the boundary was erroneously surveyed in 1818 and that Georgia has never accepted it. The resolution calls for the creation of a "Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission" that would perform joint surveys and change the line to the "definite and true" boundary line: exactly following the 35th parallel.

"We're not talking about sucking it dry," said Rep. Harry Geisinger, a Republican who sponsored the resolution in the Georgia House. "We're talking about augmenting some water needs, and as you know, the Tennessee has got plenty of water in it."

States getting into beefs about water is nothing new. In 1934 Arizona governor Benjamin Mouer assembled an invasion force (40 infantrymen, 20 machine gunners, and one steamer) to hinder construction of the Parker Dam, a federal project that would route water to California. The steamer broke down and ended up being towed away by a tugboat owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Israeli pilots to get jacked up with Viagra?

SEATTLE, Washington - Israeli doctors have noticed that taking erectile dysfunction drugs results in "improved performance in high altitudes" and might start having air force pilots take Viagra for flights:

"The Viagra family of drugs is considered effective in these conditions because when there is a long shortage in oxygen it leads to high blood pressure in the lungs, and the drugs help fight that," the report quoted military medical sources as saying.

Found via Reason Hit & Run

Smoking cigs results in a smoking body

SEATTLE, Washington - Hollywood Tuna recently posted a gallery of pics of Leonardo DiCaprio with his girlfriend Bar Refaeli. As you can see, she has a wonderful body and she's enjoying a cigarette.


Obviously, the cigarettes must help in maintaining a great body - but only if they're used as a part of a more comprehensive health regimen. Hollywood Tuna reported this about a year ago while discussing some pictures of Lindsay Lohan:

For all of you who were wondering how Lindsay Lohan keeps her body in such good shape, well here’s the secret: A steady diet of alcohol, partying, and afternoon jogs in her bikini and high heels while smoking seems to do the trick. Sure genetics and youth may come into play so this program may not work for everyone but give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

I want to emphasize, this was from about a year ago, before Ms Lohan went to rehab and gave up her vices.

Crying Chimp

ISSAQUAH, Washington - It's Super Bowl day today, and as usual the commercials will allegedly be the star of the show. My personal favorite SB commercial is a sentimental favorite, the combined Dotcom and Crying Indian spoof by e*Trade a couple years ago.

I would think that anyone around my age, who grew up watching Saturday morning television in the 1970s and 1980s, and was shown the Crying Indian PSA thousands of times, would have a soft spot for this ad.

Of course, the "Crying Indian" turned out to be a straight-up Sicilian dago named Espera De Corti, but let's not be distracted by that on this special day.

PB&J making return at Trophy, allegedly

SEATTLE, Washington - I have updated the post on the Trophy Cupcakes PB&J, a commenter on that post alleges to be from Trophy and says the PB&J is returning soon. With the anonymity of the internet, you just never know.

Sports-betting gene isolated

SEATTLE, Washington - My mother asked me on the phone about the current football situation. I was explaining that New England is undefeated, and she asked if any team has ever done this before. Since I was born in 1972, I said "the Miami Dolphins did it in 1972, but you were probably busy that year and didn't notice."

She said: "Yeah, you boys were too young to be watching football. And your father, he never watched a football game in his life. He bet on a lot of games, but he never watched one."