Thoughts on Christmas

I. Lakers got their asses kicked by the Miami Heat on Christmas Day. At LA. 96-80, but it wasn't even that close. Love it. The only thing better than watching the Lakers lose is watching them lose at home, in a Nationally-televised game, in a manner so crushing and embarrassing that their horrid "fans" (worst in the NBA) head for the exits with 5 minutes to go without even bothering to boo their own team (as they typically do)

Thank you, Santa.

To me, the coolest celebrity in LA is Charlize Theron, not because of her infinite gorgeousness but, rather, because she's a Clippers fan. I don't see anybody else from Hollywood watching my favorite NBA team, The Clippers, who are a very exiting team but have one of the worst records in the NBA. All the rest want to be seen at Lakers games.

II. I've had about 100,000 miles in my United (aka "Untied") FF account for 5 or 6 years now, but I rarely fly United. Didn't really want to lose the miles, so I got a United Mastercard and once a year I charge a Slurpee or something on the card so that United can't take back my miles. This year I checked my account and I noticed United has a pretty good miles-for-goods shopping web site. I looked around for a while and spent about 25,000 on a new toy, an Olympus Sp-800UZ digital camera.

Why that one?

1. 30x zoom. My current digital camera only has maybe 4x zoom, which is frequently inadequate because usually I'm stuck up in a timing tower or batcave somewhere, and I take a lot of photos at full zoom. In addition, I work in a lot of really huge venues (Kitzbuhel, for example) where 4x zoom just doesn't cut it. One of the coolest things about the downhill course at Kitzbuhel is the finish area is one of the best natural amphitheatres in sports. There are 4 or 5 places to die within sight of the 80,000-odd fans in the finish area.

2. It was out of the question to buy anything made by Nikon, since their Ashton Kutcher adverts are SO fucking annoying.

Well, sports fans.....when they say this thing zooms, they mean IT ZOOMS. WOW.

No Zoom:
About 25% Zoom:
About 75%

Max zoom:
The camera is the size of about 3 hockey pucks because the lens is so big, so it's not one of those cigarette-pack form factors you can stick in your coat and forget about it.

But I like.

Restoring Sanity To Airport Security?

http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2010/12/21/airport_security_checks/index.html

To anybody who flies more than 4 times a year, I highly recommend Patrick Smith's column Ask The Pilot on Salon.com.

This new IATA plan Smith describes sounds great to me. As the owner of not one but two biometric passports (retinal scan for Nexus and fingerprints for Global Entry), I think the IATA plan is just peachy. But the key question, of course, is the one Smith asks in the article's subtitle:

Will the TSA bullies go for it?

Two Biggest Whores in Modern Society

I'm currently thinking the two biggest whores in US society are currently most organized religions ("tithe me a piece of your income and we'll allow you to feel good about yourself") and the current leadership of the Republican Party ("we don't care what's good for the US, we only care about what's good for The Republican Party").

If you want proof about the Republicans, simply watch Fox News for 5 minutes, read anything Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, or John Boehner have ever said in their entire political lives, or even check out C-SPAN (the total moral bankruptcy of the Republican leadership is so obvious that even a complete idiot doesn't need Sean Hannity or Glen Beck to explain it to him/her). For proof about the Catholic / Scientologist / whatever Church, well.....

I Love MegaCuts

I've Got A Bad Feeling About This

Don Draper does "WHAT?"

Get Out of There!

It's Gonna Blow!

No!

Let It Not Be Said That the United States Has Nothing Useful To Export.....

Hooters. Tokyo.

LINK


I would pay significant money to see the faces of these girls when my gaijin friend The Big Guy walks in.

Fucking Frogs, chapter 9,456,213,709,101

Of course, the Frogs' own failure to recognize a design flaw in a pattern of many dozen similar tire blowouts was not recognized in this verdict. Instead, they single out an hourly-wage welder (who is NOT French) as the predominantly guilty party.

link <-link

'Metzner swiftly said the US airline [Continental] would appeal the verdict, slamming a ruling that "only protects French interests".

Ya THINK?

Absurd, xenophobic, typical Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys.

Remember That Old Expression "Up To Your Ass In Alligators"?

After a day at IDS in JAX discussing AKI stuff, I took Tomas to The Alligator Farm in St Augustine. I was, almost literally, up to my ass in alligators.

Tomas is one of those rare European characters who actually enjoys & appreciates US kitsch, US culture, and American humour. He loved The Alligator Farm. A typical Euro (especially a frog) would have sniffed something snarky like "well, WE have The Louvre and the Vienna Opera House". Afterwards we watched the return of LeBron to Cleveland (Heat vs Cavaliers) on an 80-inch TV at my friend's house. THAT's an American day of leisure: The Alligator farm, an NBA game, and a couple of big meals.

Hadn't been to the IDS mothership in about 10 years. Saw all kinds of familiar shady characters: Slaw, Benjy, Dingo, Leroy, Marco (why doesn't Marco have a nickname?), Croc, Mitch, Boris, Gars. Unfortunately, several of the shadiest of the shady were out of town - Cockroach, The Big Guy, and SpongeMarkSquareHands. Also had dinner w/Leroy and Dommie Sue at Slider's in Neptune Beach, which was really fun (tasty too).

Good thing It Wasn't A Jack Daniels Distillery

This one's for you, Trampass:

link

You never know what your bees are going to stick their little stingers into.

EARTHQUAKE!

Big honker of an earthquake here, around midnight Eastern time. 4.6 on the Richter scale. Must have lasted 20 seconds or so. Then an aftershock about 15 minutes later.

Wheeeeee!

I Don't Like The TSA

LINK

Catchy tune. And the subject, of course, is poignant.

I do not, however, agree with these guys:

LINK

One of the most infuriating things (in my estimation) about the whole ridiculous TSA Barefoot Kabuki Dance is that it just takes so fucking long. In this age of science and technology, in which iPhones and Android and noise-canceling Bluetooth headsets can literally change our lives (for the better) overnight, I simply can't believe that Google or Apple or Dean Kamen can't invent a machine which we can walk through, fully clothed, with our laptops in our rollaboards, which will accomplish "security". These new "porno-scanners" may not be perfect, but to me they're a step in right direction, toward what I described in my previous sentence. I really don't give a shit if some Wackenhut-reject knuckle-dragging moron can see my junk or the roll of fat around my beltline. I just want to get through their hoops as quickly as possible and get to the Admiral's Club.

When leaving Hawaii for the mainland, you are scanned TWICE at the airport for FRUIT. I shit you not. You are scanned three times - once by the TSA and twice by THE FDA. I guess Osama must be sitting in his filthy, stinky cave in the mountains of Pakistan plotting to blow up LAX with an orange. It's way more infuriating than the TSA bullshit.

Both are carbuncles on the butt cheek of our society.

You Look Like Shit

Guaranteed. This will be the funniest thing you see all day.

link

Double Rainbow

Time: Thursday morning.
Place: My office window.
This is one seriously vivid-ass rainbow.

Actually it's a double rainbow.
We regularly see even triple rainbows around here. The absolute coolest is when you get a double MOONbow. The air is so clear here, and hence the moon is so bright, rainbows are visible at night.

Hangin' Wit Da Monk Seals

What a spectacular day here today. Last night, what NOAA calls an "Extra-Large-To-Giant" swell hit the Hawaiian Islands. So big that the North Shore was completely closed out, "Condition Red". Unsurfable, although those with the ability and equipment could tow in.

The waves were so huge that they wrapped completely around the island to Kihei, so I threw my board on the car, drove over to a spot called Guard Rails near Lahaina, and rode glassy little head-high waves all morning. Blue sky, glassy waves, and a couple of big fat lazy Monk seals dozing in the sun on the beach. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.




Monk seals are like housecats. They eat and they sleep, that's about it. They even have whiskers like housecats.

I topped off a great surf session by climbing into my hammock, making like a Monk seal, and dozing most of the afternoon away. A few more days like this one and I just may recover from 3 weeks without sleep at the World Equestrian Games.

From Pat Caldwell's O'ahu Surf Forecast:

The NNW component was generated by fetch starting late last Friday over 1200 nm long and 900 nm wide stretching from near Kamchatka to about 40°N latitude NNW of Hawaii, or about 1000 nm out, by mid Sunday. The winds in the 325-345 degree band ranged from gales to storm-force, with the strongest winds toward the eastern side of the Hawaii swell window. The jason altimeter on Sunday validated wave model expectations of seas over 40 feet in the patch aimed NE of Hawaii. For seas pointed toward Hawaii, heights were to 30 feet in an area about 1000 nm away late Sunday. Long period swell of 14-19 seconds from this source is expected to fill in locally Monday night, peak on Tuesday, and slowly drop on Wednesday.

PGA Grand Slam of Golf

Greetings from the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, Port Royal Golf Course, Southampton, Bermuda.

Enjoy the view.

The Whale Bay Battery is adjacent to the 15th Fairway. Originally built in the early 1600's, refurbished for modern guns in 1870.
Amongst the 4 Majors champions, Oosthuizen and Mickelsen bailed, so David Toms and Ernie Els are filling in. Nice gig to sub, as you're guaranteed $200K just to show.


The Rolex clocks are the same type as the ones used at the World Equestrian Games. NOTHING ELSE, however, is similar to ANYTHING in Kentucky.
Purdy.

Tomorrow the tee times have been moved up from 10:30 to 9:00, as bad weather is expected in the afternoon. After the first day, David Toms leads Els by one stroke.

Sleepblogging

Since my last post I've returned from the World Equestrian Games, slept about 15 hours a day for 4 days (being careful to stay on Eastern Time), and now in a few hours I'm out the door to the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda.

Will post a few pikkies from the gorgeous Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton when I get a chance.

The only bummer about this trip is I change planes at DFW before Smoothie King opens. :=(

Funny how these gigs have social continuity (i.e. the same cast of characters). Johnny P and John R from Bexel occupied the office right next to mine at WEG; they packed up and headed to BDA directly from Lexington. I came home for a few days and will be working right alongside them on Saturday. Different sport, different country, different network, same week. Fortunately, those two particular fellas are great guys and super-talented at what they do, so working with them again in Southampton is something to look forward to.

HD World

I apologize, loyal readers, for the dearth of material from the World Equestrian Games. I have been working around the clock, and have been lucky to get a few hours of sleep each night.

This morning I got here before 6 and none of the trucks were open, so I trotted up to the top of Rolex Stadium and snapped a few pre-dawn photos of my world:

Carr-Hughes / NBC compound.
Who's who in the zoo.
Don't forget The Bee!
Office space.

And the end result is.......this.

FEI HONORS THE SKUNK!

Jump #3 in the opening Speed Class at the World Equestrian Games...


FEI HONORS THE SKUNK.


I guess it would be more correct to write "FEI honors the skunk". It is not a case of "FEI honors The Skunk". In other words, nobody outside of the FEI TV office knows me from Ted Koppel.