Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Monday, March 26, 2007

10 Strange Facts About "Honorary Valley Jew" Albert Einstein

The smartest Jew ever, besides Solomon and Larry David, was also a fat baby with a large head. Learn this and other surprising insights into Albert Einstein, the best mascot a religion could ever have.



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Cool Rap Video With Found Photos

Meanest Man Contest "Sexy Rap Proposition" video utilizes photos to celebrate the good times from the '30s-'80s.



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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Why Bergman is Our Greatest Living Artist

He can admit that as a young person he had an attraction to Nazism. He was only turned off when he learned of the horror behind the shiny, black veneer. Now, he has the balls to admit that you aren't able to kill 11 million civilians without a pretty sharp act. We need to admit the universal tendency toward power before we can speak to the truth of life.



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The Valley Jews

Top 10 Home Buyer Surnames
Los Angeles County (2000)

1. Garcia
2. Lee
3. Rodriguez
4. Kim
5. Hernandez
6. Lopez
7. Gonzales
8. Martinez
9. Smith
10. Perez

Source: California Association of REALTORS;
Cited in “The Changing Face of the San Fernando Valley” by Joel Kotkin and Erika Ozuna


For my mom, the escape was narrow.

“The gangs have just gotten out of control. They will there too, one day. But not yet,” she whispered confidently. Her phone was certainly nestled deep into her shoulder as she used her two hands to play video Poker on a little digital machine while the local news blared on in front of her.

I agreed. I’ve been trained to condone my mom’s old world perspective on a finite number of issues, especially when she is in a good mood. And she was. It was her last night as a resident of the San Fernando Valley after over forty years in domestic exile. In the morning, she and a freight company would move her life from one of the smaller models of a freshly paved gated community at the top of The Valley to one of the smaller models of a freshly paved gated community east of Palm Springs.

She hadn’t called me to mark the occasion. She called because the TV said my suburb of San Francisco was the epicenter of a small but newsworthy earthquake. That meant for a moment I understood peril, narrow escapes and the importance of location, location, location.

Worry is my mother’s version of love. And not worry about the real things —the car crashes, the secondhand scorn and the trans-fats— that kill most people. She’s invested in distressing over the disasters of largess. If something is going to take something away from her, it is something huge: a small-scale tsunami, a Biblical riot of Philistines, a crazed, ethnic sniper. Something notable that the local news would tease on newsbreaks, possibly even preempt programming for. Then she’ll call for the details, leaving a concerned message on my voice mail, “I hope you aren’t dead.”

Her worrying occasionally brings us together and mostly keeps us apart. She’s fine as long as neither of us is about to be swallowed by ever-present menaces that target me because she’s so good at worrying about them.

It’s from below her cloud of persistent, disjointed, hazy fear that I see the northern corner of the San Fernando Valley where I grew up in the 1980s. It really was one of the safest places in the world for a pre-adolescent Jew to wander aimlessly. A contained world of two-car families living in grandiose one-family homes, built in no particular style except “suburban.” Property lines clearly delineated and similarly landscaped. The aberration of a basketball hoop or an open garage every few blocks reminded you that people did live inside. It was a world contained by gray walls of concrete block that no human could see over unless they were up on tiptoes or got a boost from a fellow gang member. A world so safe that if anything terrible happened to a child it ended up on TV. And that all appeased my mom, slightly, even though danger was just outside every cul-de-sac. “Why is that gate open?” she’d ask whenever she drove by, aloud and to no one.

And the escape was always narrow; they were always closing in fast. Ask her. Just down Parthenia Street, just past the movie theater, that’s the projects. It’s worse than Tijuana in there. That’s what the police say on TV.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Buy the Sneakmove Minicomp 2

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I'd love to have a bi-racial baby.

The best Craigslist Ad ever was just taken down:

The husband cheated and paybacks a bitch - w4m (fremont / union city / newark) 26yr
Today, 09:00 AM
My husband cheated on me with some bimbo. I found out he got her pregnant and she had an abortion. I want to repay the favor minus the abortion. I've stopped taking birth control and am looking for a guy with healthy swimmers who wants to plant his seed. Let's have some hot and sweaty baby-making, revenge sex. Put a bun in my oven and we can go our seperate ways. My husband won't be happy about it but he'll raise your child as his own. I am white, clean, slim and cute. I prefer guys over 40, and black or hispanic guys are great. I'd love to have a bi-racial baby. Read more…

Officials Call For 'Graffiti Free Zone' In San Fernando Valley

Rosie v. Elizabeth. This episode: Torture.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Friday, March 16, 2007

Man Relieves Himself in Air Sickness Bag

SkyWest Airlines apologized to a passenger who said he wasn't allowed to use the restroom during a one-hour flight and ended up urinating in an air-sickness bag after two "really big beers."



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Mikey Teuetul is Openly Gay



I enjoy American Chopper, but I had no idea that Mikey, the jokey and not really useful younger brother, is gay until the NASA episode when he goes to the toy store with his "partner."

And Wikipedia confirms it, "Mikey is the only openly gay member of the Teutul family." I hope they deal with his coming out and other issues at some point. Or maybe it's better they don't; that he blends in with all the macho posturing makes me like the show even more.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Taking Oxytocin Improves Empathy

This seems like an exciting development, until you remember Rush Limbaugh.



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New Rock Album by an Honorary Valley Jew

Josh Arce, Chatsworth High Prom King 1993, and his band Addison have released their debut EP If It Hurts, It's Good. It hurts so good in a hurtful way, etc. Good stuff.

Buy it on iTunes.

Read my review.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

What Should Be Taught in School

Here's a pretty good take on the skills that are needed in the real world and completely neglected in the educational world. Check them out and consider that there should be a class on credit cards everyone should have to take before they get one.



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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

It's hard to believe

There someone as good looking as Jim Morrison ever really existed.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Do a Quick Spring Cleaning

Seth Godin reminds you to use DST to make a few smart moves. From your smoke alarms to your credit cards, here are some smart things you can do right now.



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Friday, March 09, 2007

Over 90 Papers Keep Ann Coulter's Column. Here's Why.

Apparently, she's fine as long as she doesn't WRITE that John Edwards is a faggot. Hey, it's a joke, people! She's like Jonathan Swift, but hateful and not funny.



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Intelligence is "Worse Off Than It Was Before 9/11"

The man who basically predicted 9/11 in his 1998 movie The Siege and dissected the disaster in his award-winning book The Looming Tower believes that we know less now than we did in 2001. Is there another Looming Tower in America that we should be aware of?



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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Here's How I'll Be Doing it In Five Years

Monday, March 05, 2007

A Major Victory in the War on Sperm

It's been a dirty little secret in the prostitution community for years that most spermicidal lubrication irritates the vagina creating abrasions that make both sexy people more vulnerable for disease. "Our molecules don't rip open the membrane to exert their action," says a sperm scientist. That's science talk for: Stop worrying; Start humping!



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Sunday, March 04, 2007

When Ann Coulter Called John Edwards "a faggot" The Crowd Cheered

Make every one of these respectable Conservatives apologize for abiding such hatred.



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Better than Prozac: Sneakmove's Song of the Day

To be safe, your gotta get your music and your drugs from someone you can trust. And that's Sneakmove. Every day they post a song that takes you higher. From slept-on Outkast, late 60s Laura Nyro to the original version of "The Tide is High" from the 50s, Sneakmove's SOTD releases more positive chemicals daily than a quart of St. John's Wort. Trust me.



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Saturday, March 03, 2007

Museum Finds New Species of Dinosaur

This one had yard-long horns just above its eyebrows. Who knew that dinosaurs had eyebrows!



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Friday, March 02, 2007

Key Figures About Iraq Since War Began

Confirmed U.S. deaths as of March 1, 2007: 3,159. U.S. wounded as of March 1, 2007: 23,677. Iraqi civilian deaths: Estimated at more than 57,000, with one controversial study contending as many as 655,000.



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Researchers Prove Auto Industry Can Do Better

New mini-van would reduce greenhouse gases by 40%.



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Thursday, March 01, 2007

It's Almost Purim, Y'all!

Watch out, streets.