Oh Make Me Over

I learned a few interesting facts at the Clinique counter last night:

1. Oily skin is a sign of dehydration.

Apparently, water neutralizes oil and leaves skin healthy and blemish-free!

2. When applying concealer below your eyes, use your ring finger.

The ring finger applies the least pressure to the skin, so there's less risk of popping blood vessels.

3. Wiggling mascara onto lashes creates a natural curl.

"And will avoid that boxy shape you get from eyelash curlers," says the makeup artist. WTF is an eyelash curler?

4. The Clinique staff is psychic.

"Did you get a new job?"

Am I that predictable?

5. You don't tip the makeup artist.

Though you are expected to tip on top of a $180 haircut, or a $140 massage, you apparently do not tip the woman who spends one hour applying makeup to half your face, another 30 minutes watching you try to do what she's done to the other half, and another 15 minutes correcting your failures.

By Faith, not by Reason: Cabazon Dinosaurs

If you've ever driven to Palm Springs during daylight hours, chances are you've seen the World's Biggest Dinosaurs at a little truck stop called Cabazon.

But have you been recently? You know, since it was appropriated in 2005 by the Institute for Creation Research and turned into an intelligent design propoganda farm?


[Reggie in the mouth of a creationist T Rex]

It sneaks up on you. First, there's a suspicious sign outside asking "is evolution true?" Then, you walk into the gift shop, and notice the Jesus books among the dino lit. Then, you realize all the children's t-shirts bear the motto "By Design, Not by Chance." *Shudder*

Further investigation reveals that the gift shop is constructed around the following ideological framework:

1. Dinosaurs are simply too fucking awesome to have been generated by some chance event like natural selection; thus, they must have been designed by God

2. This one fossil of a so-called "early human" was made up; thus, all fossils of so-called "early humans" might also be made up

3. The ever-popular "God said he created every living thing in the Bible, duh, and the Bible is true because God wrote it."

Yes, and you can read it all on their website. I present, for your consideration, a passage from their online reading materials:

"The story we have all heard from movies, television, newspapers, and most magazines and textbooks is that dinosaurs “ruled the Earth” for 140 million years, died out 65 million years ago, and therefore weren’t around when Noah and company set sail on the Ark around 4,300 years ago.

However, the Bible gives a completely different view of Earth (and therefore, dinosaur) history. As God’s written Word to us, we can trust it to tell the truth about the past. (For more information about the reliability of Scripture, see Q&A: Bible.)

The Bible records the genealogies from Adam to Christ. From the ages given in these lists (and accepting that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to Earth around 2,000 years ago), we can conclude that the universe is only a few thousand years old (perhaps just 6,000), and not millions of years old (see also The earth: how old does it look? especially under Jesus and the age of the world). Thus, dinosaurs lived within the past few thousand years."

Good God in Heaven!

If only the processes of natural selection hadn't been documented. (Finches, anyone? Antibiotic-resistant bacteria?)

To conclude: The mailing address listed on the website is a P.O. Box. Creepy.

Elves in Iceland: A GBD Special Report

I am in love with Anthony Bourdain.


Too bad he's married.

During last night's No Reservations fix, Tony mentioned a peculiar fact that I'd heard before, but never believed:

That 80% of Iceland's population believes in gnomes, elves and fairies.

A Google search procured plenty of evidence to support this assertion:

Icelandic Folklore

Anecdotal Evidence

Popular Literature

Travelcasts

Authoritative Travel Guides

Newspaper Reports

[insert Bjork joke here]

When Ostriches Attack

During a road trip through Texas in 2005, my traveling companion and I stopped at Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, a drive-through safari just north of San Antonio, seven miles west of I-35. For the price of $15.50, visitors receive a bag of feed and the go-ahead to drive through a few hundred acres of wild animals with the car windows rolled down.

It was here that I learned an invaluable rule; a rule I am socially obligated to pass on to my fellow Americans in the event they find themselves on an "African Safari - Texas Style:"

Never let an ostrich approach your car while the windows are open and your passenger has a bag of feed sitting on his lap.

Because that ostrich will stick its ugly head right through that open window and nip at that bag, wherever it may lie.

Luckily, we escaped unscathed, thanks to the swift acceleration of my Ford Focus. Perhaps I would have been more cautious if I had read this Wiki first -- How to Survive an Encounter with an Ostrich.

Read. Take note.

Source of Antimatter Discovered!

What happens when the gravitational force of a nearby black hole or neutron star tears an ordinary star apart?

Antimatter is born.

[According to a research team working with data from the European Space Agency's International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL).]

Read all about it.


via

UFO Sighting: Can a Few Dozen Texans Be Wrong?

A few dozen people claim to have spotted a UFO in Stephenville, Texas.

Residents say a giant, low-flying object zoomed silently across their night sky on several different occasions in the past few weeks.

The object was reported to be a mile long and a half mile wide. Some say it was followed by fighter jets.

Can a few dozen people be wrong? Or could it just be a case of (God-fearing) mass hysteria?

Bringing Bubonic Back

The plague is back and moving to Africa.

via

The World Health Organization reports that between 1,000 and 3,000 people are infected with the plague each year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.

There are only 10 to 20 cases reported in the US each year.

The plague comes in three flavors: bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic. All are caused by the bacteria Yersinia Pestis and spread to humans by fleas in the following horrific manner:

"Bubonic plague is mainly a disease in rodents and fleas. Infection in a human occurs when a person is bitten by a flea that has been infected by biting a rodent that itself has been infected by the bite of a flea carrying the disease. The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it cannot quell its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new victim, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. Serious outbreaks of plague are usually started by other disease outbreaks in rodents, or a rise in the rodent population."

If you're bitten by a plague-vomiting flea, the bacteria will enter your tissue, and then probably travel through your lymphatic system and settle in your lymph nodes, which enlargen. Thus, bubonic plague ("bubo" means swelling of the lymph nodes in Greek).

Or, the bacteria will enter the bloodstream (septicemic plague) or the lungs (pneumonic plague). Septicemic plague and pneumonic plague have a much higher mortality rate than bubonic plague: 90% of those infected with septicemic or pneumonic plague die, compared to 60% of those infected with bubonic plague. Pneumonic plague is especially problematic because it can be spread by coughing or sneezing.

The plague killed 25 million people in Europe in the 14th century - one third of the continent's population.

Happy New Leap Year

The Earth has completed one revolution of its 93.2 million mile, 365.25 day-long orbit around the sun.

Since there are only 365 days in a calendar year, the quarter of a day we lopped off in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 will be made up on Friday, February 29, 2008.

So the heavens are giving you one more day to fulfill those resolutions, people. No excuses.


via

Yosemite National Park v2.0

As promised.

Since my birthday coincided with the adoption of a stray dog, I looked for a pet-friendly place to celebrate and settled on Yosemite National Park. After all, what dog doesn't love the great outdoors?


This one.

Thousands of trees to pee on and what does he go for? Trash cans, cable boxes, pavement.

More surprising, though, was the discovery that Yosemite is a rather dog un-friendly park. A NO PETS sign greeted us at the trialhead of Mariposa Grove, an enclave of Giant Sequoias.

But we took him anyway.

Here's what we saw:


The Grizzly Giant



Yes, those are people down below.

According to the Mariposa Grove trail guide, the Grizzly Giant is about 2,700 years old -- one of the oldest living sequoias in the world.


The Clothespin Tree

Numerous forest fires carved this hole in the Clothespin Tree.

The California Tunnel Tree





A hole was cut through this tree in 1895 for stagecoaches to pass through.

(Because going around the tree was too complicated, apparently)


The Faithful Couple

These two trees grew so close together they fused at the base.


The Fallen Monarch





As you can see, the roots of the giant sequoia are wide and shallow; their shape maximizes the amount of surface water accessible to the tree and stabilizes the tree's large trunk.


Big Dude in an even Bigger Tree




Holy shit.

This cross-section of a fallen sequoia puts the age of these trees into perspective -- the third green marker from the top indicates the size of the tree during the Civil War:



The giant sequoia, or sequoiadendron giganteum, is one of the three species of redwoods; the others are the Dawn Redwood (China) and the Coast Redwood (coastal California). Giant Sequoias are the largest living things in terms of volume (Coast Redwoods are the tallest; Bristlecone Pine is the oldest).

Forest fires are necessary for the survival of giant sequoias - they clear away brush and smaller trees that compete with the sequoias for water and sunlight. Also, fire plays a key role in the reproduction of the giant sequoias by drying out their cones and releasing seeds, which then fall to the ground.

After the Mariposa Grove, we drove into Yosemite Valley to see the park's famous rock formations:

Tunnel View


(El Capitan on the left, Half Dome on the right)

El Capitan





Half Dome




Sentinel Rock



These formations were created by glaciers, which crept through Yosemite Valley one million years ago and eroded the granite rock along its joints.

We didn't get to see Yosemite's famous waterfalls, because they're dry in the Fall.


Yosemite Falls (Dry) - the highest waterfall in America.

April and May are the best time to see them -- right after the winter snow melts.

And now, a pleasant surprise:

Should you perish on your journey through Yosemite's wildnerness, rest assured that your remains will be safe from scavengers -- Yosemite has its own cemetery!



Filled with fellow travelers who have met certain doom, such as . . .


A boy


Believed to be John Morgan Bennett. He drowned attempting to cross the Merced River by mule in 1870.

A Frenchman


May have been Etienne Manet, a "slightly demented" orchard owner who was found dead in his cabin.

Some dude from Boston


Er, George Ezra Boston, a native of Virginia, who died in 1875 in an arson fire believed to have been set by a "notorious Indian scoundrel" named Piute George.

...and a whole bunch of others, as documented in the Guide to the Yosemite Cemetery by Hank Johnston and Martha Lee, available for $3.50 from the Yosemite Bookstore, or on loan from the nearby Visitor's Center.

The cemetery was established in 1870 on the same ground used for centuries by the Miwok people to bury their dead.

Death and history kept me occupied until dusk, so we returned to the park the next day and drove to Glacier Point for a magnificent view:




We then started walking the four mile trail that leads from Glacier Point down to the Valley, but the dog started wheezing so we turned back. It was a phenomenal hike, though -- the view couldn't be captured on my measly digital camera, but I gave it a shot anyhow:



Glacier Point is 7,200 feet above sea level, and 3,200 feet above Yosemite Valley. If you're thinking about visiting, please note that the road to Glacier Point is closed in the winter (November-May).

After Glacier Point, we drove back into the valley and stayed until sunset. I'll leave you now with a random shot of Yosemite at dusk:



Nice way to end the day.

More Meteors!

Attention East Coast:

Stay up late tonight to check out the Quadrantids, which are expected to peak at 1:40 a.m. on Friday, January 4th.

The West Coast will be out of luck; the radiant (the part of the sky from which the meteors spew forth) will be too low on the northern horizon to see.

Tiger Meat

I finally have a preferred cause of death to go with my preferred method of burial:

Getting Mauled by an Escaped Tiger at the SF Zoo on Christmas

Seriously.

Les Savy Fav @ the El Rey

Things you missed at the Les Savy Fav show:

* Tim pulling an eager fan on stage to sing with him and then finger-fucking said fan in the mouth

* Tim jumping into the audience and howling like a wolf with several concertgoers

* Tim's account of the formation of the La Brea Tar Pits:

"On this day, millions of years ago, the La Brea Tar Pits were created by mammoths and sabre tooth tigers, who threw a party . . ." (before he was cut off by the band)

* Tim licking lighting equipment

* Tim licking audience members


Tim
(via Kathryn Yu, Pitchfork)

* Tim coming out for the encore in a Santa suit and throwing several gigantic stuffed bears into the audience

* The mosh pit tearing apart the bears like piranhas

* Getting tiny synthetic fibers from said bears in your eyes and mouth

* Me moshing in my finest Christmas sweater

Things you didn't miss at the 23rd Street Christmas Sweater Party:

* My Christmas sweater reeking of a hundred varities of B.O.

Bjork @ Nokia Theatre

The inside of the Nokia Theatre looked like the lovechild of the Staples Center and the El Rey.


via


But the theater was the perfect size for Bjork: Large enough for spectacle, small enough for intimacy.

The evening started with a bottle of red, a bag of gummi bears, and me yelling "Bring it, hipsters! Wow me with your math rock!" at opening band Ratatat. They brought it . . . in a very mild, underwhelming way.

Bjork, however, was out to kill me. After the flags were raised and her brass section marched out on stage and played a lovely little intro, out she came, in a shimmery golden butterfly dress. She started the set with two intensely emotional songs from Homogenic:

"Immature" (featuring some of the most precise lyrics ever written):

How could I be so immature
To think he would replace
The missing elements of me?
How extremely lazy of me

And then the terrifically heartbreaking "Unravel:"

While you are away
My heart comes undone
Slowly unravels
In a ball of yarn
The devil collects it
With a grin
Our love
In a ball of yarn
He'll never return it
So when you come back
We'll have to make new love

Whew.

She didn't stop there -- she stepped it up with "Unison," "Joga," "Hunter" (during which she suddenly shot streamers out of her fingertips, no lie), the "Pleasure is All Mine" and "Pagan Poetry" until I was completely distraught with emotion; vulnerable like a wounded animal, even. And then, at my weakest moment, she assaulted me with a pyrotechnics-infused performance of "Earth Intruders."

And an "Army of Me" full of green lasers. And an "Innocence" full of confetti. And a delightfully creepy "Cover Me" segue into a technicolor "Wanderlust."

And then - "Hyperballad." My favorite song. If you haven't heard it, it's Bjork singing very sweetly about throwing things (car parts, bottles and cutlery; even herself) off of a cliff, before rising into an exhilarating chorus of:

I go through all this/before you wake up/so i can be happier/to be safe up here with you

And then, at the end, the song breaks into an electrifying house mix. The entire audience danced like it was 1998.

She closed the set with an explosive "Pluto" and came back for an encore of "Oceania" and "Declare Independence." The lights stayed low after she walked off the stage and I think we could have gotten a second encore if we'd asked for it, but we humans typically don't ask for what we don't expect.

Bjork, the greatest human of all time.

It was the best show of 2007. Maybe the best show I've ever seen, eva.

I've maxed my Vegas quota for the year but if you haven't, you should catch her at the Pearl, tomorrow. Get in the car and go.

The Word of the Year is . . .

w00t:

a gamer's exclamation of happiness or triumph

Geminid Meteor Shower: December 13-14

A geminid meteor via.

Mark your calendars for the Geminid Meteor Shower, which is expected to peak on the Pacific Coast in the early morning hours of December 14th. Astronomers bill the Geminids as the "year's best meteor shower," with "slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs" originating from the constellation Gemini.

Sweet Potatoes v. Yams

I successfully cooked two dishes this Thanksgiving: corn casserole and butterscotch yams. The yams were a departure from my aunt's renowned sweet potatoes, and my cousin raised the question, "what's the difference?"

The answer: Everything - or nothing at all.

Though sweet potatoes are often called yams in the US, the starchy root vegetables that most consumers buy are actually sweet potatoes, and not yams, which are entirely different plants. Wikipedia clears up the confusion:

"Yams are a monocot (a plant having one embryonic seed leaf) and from the Dioscoreaceae or Yam family. Sweet Potatoes, often called ‘yams’, are a dicot (a plant having two embryonic seed leaves) and are from the Convolvulacea or morning glory family."



Yams.


Sweet potatoes.

How do you tell the difference? Yams are darker-skinned and sweeter than sweet potatoes.

Fun facts:

• Both sweet potatoes and yams grow in tropical climates. Sweet potatoes are native to the Americas; yams are native to Africa and Asia.
• "The word yam comes from African words njam, nyami, or djambi, meaning "to eat," and was first recorded in America in 1676."
• "China is the largest grower of sweet potatoes; providing about 80% of the world's supply."
• "Besides simple starches, sweet potatoes are rich in complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, beta carotene, vitamin C and vitamin B6."
• "In many societies yams are so important that one can speak of a 'yam culture'. Growing the tuber is associated with magic; the best ones must be given to the chief or king; there is a series of myths connected to a divine origin; a farmer may gain a lot of prestige by growing the largest or longest yam; etc. Here are some examples of where this applies:
  In Micronesia, see for example Pohnpei.
  In Melanesia, see for example Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea.
  In Polynesia (west Polynesia only), see Samoa, Tonga."
  

More info.

We've Moved

The move to West Hollywood is complete.

I'd like to thank Marcelo, Josh, Kyle, ZACH! and UHaul for making this dream come true.

Back on the blog . . .

Seinfeld and Joel: Genius Squared

There's always a good reason to go to Vegas; this time, it was Billy Joel at the MGM Grand. Luckily for us, there was also a Comedy Festival at Caesars Palace, and we kicked the weekend off by scoring standby tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld at the Colosseum.



Seinfeld was relentless. My eyes were watering from beginning to end. His stand up did not deviate far from "what's the deal with yadda yadda yadda;" yet every joke seemed fresh and mind-blowingly hilarious. Amazing, considering he's been running with the same schtick for 20+ years. He had some really great bits about going out, and doing nothing, and . . . oh, you get the idea. The content was predictable; the execution was extraordinary.

The opening comic, Mario Joyner, was really great, too. He's one of those "that's so TRUE!" comics, but his delivery was impeccable. My favorite was his bit about Home Depot and how any idiot can buy a nail gun (he said they might as well rename it "You're on Your Own.")Yeah, okay, you probably had to be there, but I found it especially hilarious given the impending move and my own visits to the HD. When he mentioned the DIY check out and the pigeons in the store, I realized, "hey, this guy goes to the same Home Depot I do!" No, really. The guy lives in Santa Monica and I suspect he's going to the HD on Wilshire and Union. The same HD I will be visiting today. To buy more painters' tape and brushes. *sigh*

Billy Joel


"Don't Take Any Shit From Anybody!"

Wow. What can I say. I'm pretty sure we were the youngest people there who had voluntarily bought tickets (there were a couple of preteens with their parents, and I couldn't help but think "do you know what you're about to see, you ungrateful little brats?") The show was amazing. Not only is Joel an immensely talented musician and, like, totally awesome, but he's also an exceptional showman. He played bits of Sinatra and Elvis in between his own songs. He cracked jokes about car insurance and Elton John. And he brought one of his guitar techs -- his roadie of 25 years -- onstage for his so-called "American Idol moment." Joel explained that his roadie was a really good guy and just wanted to do a religious song for us all, and invited us to be Simon Cowell or Paula Abdul (the latter of which elicited an enthusiastic "yeah!" from me). Then, "Chainsaw," a hefty roadie dressed in stage crew black, bounded onto the stage and gave us his best Bon Scott impression while the band (and Billy) tore through "Highway to Hell."

Yeah, it was awesome.

After closing the set with a rollicking "You May Be Right," Joel came back for an encore of "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," "Only the Good Die Young," and "Piano Man." Then, he bid adieu with a "Good Luck!" and a hearty "Don't take any shit from anybody!"

These two events comprised the bulk of the trip, though we did make it over to Fremont Street on Saturday afternoon, with brief stops at the Golden Nugget (to check out their aquarium-penetrating water slide) and the Girls of Glitter Gulch (where the ladies did their best Britney to "Gimme More").

If you'd like to know more about my half-dozen other pilgrimages to the Holy Land, check out my Vegas Retrospective.

Ultra Pure White

My Yosemite post has been delayed yet again because of the urgent need to repaint my apartment Ultra Pure White. So, while I've got paint on my mind, and elbows, and calves and feet, I thought it appropriate to look into the history of this liquid embellishment.

• The first paint was made by Early homosapiens out of red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal. Our ancestors used these materials to decorate their cave dwellings.

• "The first recorded paint mill in America was reportedly established in Boston in 1700 by Thomas Child. A century and a half later, in 1867, D.R. Averill of Ohio patented the first prepared or "ready mixed" paints in the United States."

• Lead, which was added to paint to speed drying, increase durability and resist moisture, can cause "nervous system damage, hearing loss, stunted growth, reduced IQ, and delayed development (in children). It can cause kidney damage and affects every organ system of the body. It also is dangerous to adults, and can cause reproductive problems in adult men." Paint containing more than .06% lead was banned for residential use in the US in 1978.

• If you're going to paint a dark wall, use primer. Seriously. Or you'll be sorry.

Yosemite National Park

I've returned from a lovely long weekend with Yosemite's giant sequioas, granite cliffs and stellar jays. I'll write a substantial post about it later this week. Until then, some pics:





Oh, the BEAUTY!