From our friends at cnn.com:

Sharp exchanges in Blake jury selection
Ex-actor faces civil suit after acquital on charges of killing wife

Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Posted: 11:41 a.m. EDT (15:41 GMT)
BURBANK, California (AP) -- Jury selection in the civil wrongful death case against Robert Blake moved forward Tuesday after one prospective juror verbally attacked the lawyer who filed the lawsuit.
Several other prospective panelists expressed strong disapproval of the actor's acquittal on charges of murdering his wife.
Superior Court Judge David M. Schacter granted challenges to remove some of the prospective jurors who were the most outspoken during the first two days of questioning, and he and lawyers in the case estimated that a jury would be seated Wednesday morning, followed by opening statements in the afternoon.
The judge dismissed nine people for cause and lawyers then removed five people with peremptory challenges. He also excused a man who was injured in a bar fight Monday night and couldn't return to court Tuesday.
Blake was acquitted in March of killing Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, who was shot in his car outside a restaurant in 2001. He and former handyman Earle Caldwell are now the target of a lawsuit filed by attorney Eric Dubin on behalf of Bakley's two adult and two minor children.
Blake has said that he re-entered the restaurant briefly and found his wife shot when he returned to the car.
An unusually acrimonious tone that was set during jury selection on Monday persisted Tuesday, with one prospective juror lashing out at Dubin.
"I have a rather highly tuned ... detector and it's been going off big time since you started" the questioning, the man said. "If I were sitting next to you, I would not want you to be representing me."
Dubin appeared taken aback.
"Wow," he said. "Do you think your dislike for me could affect the children I represent?"
The man said it would not, but Dubin followed up: "Have you ever hated a lawyer as much as me?"
"No," the man said.
The man went on to assert that the lawsuit was "a second swing at Mr. Blake" and to suggest that Blake was not being given a chance to confront his accusers because Bakley's children were not present.
Ultimately, that man was excused. Also excused were a man who protested that Blake should not be forced to endure a second trial; a retired sheriff's spokesman who had helped organize the Sheriff's Department's responses on the Blake criminal case; and several prospects who objected to the civil trial on grounds it was double jeopardy.
The prospective panelists were identified in court only by number.
The suit was brought on behalf of Glen Gawron, 25, Holly Gawron, 24, Jerri Lee Lewis, 12, and 4-year-old Rosie Blake, who is Blake's offspring.

---
I saw this and it made me laugh. I would figure that a guy get in bar fights is the type of crazy bastard that the Black lawyers would want on the jury. I think a guy in a bar fight would be more likely to let Blake get off out of this lawsuit like he got out of the murder rap.

Short weekend review

Okay here’s an update from this weekend quick and clean with some UFC PPV ramblings. Saturday saw the 40 Year Old Virgin, funny stuff.
Saturday night was the UFC PPV with Chuck Liddell vs Jeremy Horn as the main event.

James Irvin b Terry Martin-this match was pretty much dominated by Terry Martin the first round he had no problem taking Irvin down. Then the second round starts Martin goes for Irvin legs ducks a little bit and wham! Martin get labeled with a flying knee. Martin fell like a sack of potatoes he got totally KO’d

Trevor Prangley b Travis Lutter-they only showed highlights of this one on the PPVMatt

Lindland b Joe Doerksen-Lindland fought his regular fight and won by decision. Lindland is a good fighter but his fights are a little boring since he does a lot of wrestling. Lindland is sort of getting cocky and wants a title shot and will probably get one against Matt Hughes.

George St. Pierre b Frank-Trigg Trigg who I really like because he talks a lot of trash looked like an idiot here. St Pierre caught Trigg in the rear naked choke (looks like a sleeper hold you wrestling marks) and dominated the match. I think it was over in like 2:00 if I remember right. Trigg has lost to the rear naked choke three times now twice to Matt Hughes and now to St Pierre. Hughes is from Illinois and looks like the most unassuming boy next door but he’s a tough dude. I guess this sets up a Hughes/St Pierre match up. St Pierre is a fighter from Canada which is where quite a number of fighters are coming from to the UFC now.

Diego Sanchez b. Brian Gassaway- Diego won in the second round nothing spectacular. Went on to call himself an “the uncrowned champion” in the post fight interview. I would LOVE to see him get his ass handed to him by a real MMA fighter instead of some buster. He also has a bad moustache/goatee combo now, think “7th grader experimenting with facial hair look”.

Randy Couture b. Mike Van Arsdale- Couture is a friggin stud. Sure he lost to Liddell but a guy who is 42 and in the shape he is in has got to be a stud. Randy won with a taop out on a choke they kept calling a gator roll but I saw it called something else somewhere. Couture is friggin incredible you can tell he’s a bad ass because he has those fighter cauliflower ears.

Tim Sylvia b. Tra Telligman-These two went toe to toe for a round and then Sylvia hit Telligman with a wicked kick to the side of the head. They brought in the backboard to take Telligman out, no joke. Sylvia I don’t know he’s a big guy and all but I don’t think he’s that great, from what I’ve seen I don’t know how much ground work he has I’ve just seen him hang and band with guys.

Liddell b. Horn-Horn was one of the guys that Liddell lost to like 6 years ago. Liddell pretty much hit Horn whenever he wanted to and really rocked him almost each of the four rounds before it was stopped. There were a few times when Horn’s legs were totally spaghetti. It was funny because every time Horn got knocked down he thought that Liddell would be on him but Liddell wanted him to stand back up. It was like Clubber Lang saying to Rocky, “Come on Balboa!”

What?

I was in the crapper at work (trust me its a nightmare) and noticed the can of Oust air sanitizer on the sink. I saw that the scent was "Outdoor Scent" it made me wonder what outdoor scent it is. Is it like Gary Indiana scent or the middle of nowhere Montana scent. I ask these questions so you don't have to . Check it out here: http://www.drugstore.com/qxp79855_333181_sespider/oust/air_sanitizer_outdoor_scent.htm

"Mmmm Mom this Oust Gary Indiana outdoor scent smells just like creeping death!"

Update on Chimps Gone Wild Story

THis happened six months ago and the guy finally got out of the hospital. Here's the original story:
http://kevinsramblings.blogspot.com/2005/04/more-chimps-gone-wild.html

Chimp attack victim returns home
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A 62-year-old Los Angeles area man has returned home after nearly a 6-month hospital stay to treat wounds sustained in an attack by two chimpanzees.
The treatment included multiple reconstructive surgeries. St. James Davis also spent weeks in a coma, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

"He's come a long way," said his wife LaDonna. "In reality, when this first happened, I thought this would take longer than six months."

Davis and his wife were attacked March 3 while visiting the couple's pet chimp Moe at an animal haven to celebrate Moe's 39th birthday.

As the two stood with a birthday cake, two other male chimps escaped from their cages and attacked them, the report said.

The animals chewed off most of St. James Davis' face and fingers from both hands, and tore off his foot. He lost his right eye. LaDonna Davis' left thumb was bitten off, the report said.

St. James Davis will continue to undergo rehabilitation treatments and counseling.

The attack has not changed the couple's devotion to Moe, according to the wife. She said her husband also has no ill feelings toward the chimps that attacked him.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved

I heard in some reports that they guy actaully got his testicles ripped off by the chimps....seriously.

THE F#@K-O LIST

Look who's lucky...you two posts in one day.

My XM radio pals Opie & Anthony are adding a few new shows to their channel and making lists of who they would like on the channel. They also have a list of shows by guys who they aren’t exactly fans of or who suck and they call it the F#@k-O list. Well I now have my personal F#@k-O for companies I know suck. Here’s the first batch of companies on the F#@k-O list and reasons they are on the list:

1) Rockenbach Chevrolet- Grayslake IL- They appear on the F#@k-O list because when the we (the former wife and myself) were looking for a car they flat out lied to us. We told them we were going to come in we agreed on how much her trade in would be worth and were all set to go. The ex test drove the new Malibu she was going to buy and then we get ready to fill out the paperwork. This is when we found out the sales guy had decided to change the amount they were going to give us on the paperwork. We got back to the final signing paperwork stages (the dealership was closed by now) and the numbers didn’t work out since they screwed with the trade in value. I told the finance guy what happened and they were trying to give us the run around. We got up and left as we were walking to the door the salesman (a sleazy guy no less) comes up behind us and it goes something like this:

Sleazy salesguy (SS): Hey guys why are you leaving I thought the deal was all ready to go.
Me: No it was ready to go until you changed the amount you were going to give us on the trade in after we agreed to it. Then you changed the paperwork and thought we wouldn’t figure it out

SS: Well I stayed late to help out a friend.

Me: Well you should have gone home earlier and maybe you could have made a better deal! (I yelled this at the guy as we were walking out the dealership, I seriously thought I was going to have to punch the guy. I haven’t been that pissed in a long time. Except at a Brewers game one time but you probably already know that story)

We get out to the car and the guy had already taken the license plate off of the car and put it on the new one. I had to go in and yell at the guy again to get them to put the plate back on her car. The cherry on the top of this sundae that Nate was probably 4 years old at the time and still remembers and asks sometimes if I remember when I almost punched that guy at Rockenbach Chevrolet. Trust me stay away from this dealership they are a bunch of snakes.

2) Craphole One (a.k.a Capital One)-Some crap town out east. These guys are on here because my mom had a loan on the house for some like tiny amount way back before my dad died, probably like 15 years ago. The loan was entirely paid off a bunch of years ago but for some reason Capital One doesn’t show a record of it being paid off even though there is no balance due on the mortgage of the house. Basically they show the home as being paid off but they don’t have paperwork on some piddle ass little loan and therefore my mom couldn’t get a loan and use the house as collateral even though the f-ing this is paid off. My mom has gotten lawyers to get Craphole One to clear this up but they are totally screwed up and have no clue what one department is doing versus another one. I’m truly glad that my mom is alive and retired to deal with this shit. Because if she had died and we had to try and clear this up to sell the house I would have went to the Craphole One headquarters and gone medieval on their asses with a pair of pliers and blow torch.
Plus if you ever over paid your credit card and are trying to get money back from them to even the account get ready to jump through friggin hoops it’s a nightmare. Welcome to the F#@k-O list Craphole One

3) MBNA-some crap town out east- They are on the list for the same reason Craphole One is on the list. A pain in the ass to get money back from just not as big of a pain. Welcome to the F#@k-O list MBNA.

Uneventful weekend...sort of

Saturday I had the Natester for a bit since his mom had to go to a baby shower. He ended up cracking himself in the head with a wooden swing across the street. I don’t think that it was entirely his fault but when I asked him he started to cry. He was worried about having to go to the emergency room to get glued up (yeah they really don’t stick anymore for small cuts) so he was a little weird about it. He was lucky that the cut wasn’t deeper because if it was we would have had to take him. This occurred at the house that Jason use to live in back in the day. Since the folks moved in (what 10 years ago) it has been in steady steady decline. The house is so bad that Jason’s mom won’t even go by the house anymore. When Jason lived there they took real good care of the house and stuff….the folks that live there now not so much. Then Saturday night went with Jason down to the Ring of Honor show in Chicago Ridge. CM Punk who is a local indy guy wrestled his last match for ROH since he signed a development deal with WWE. I’ve never been like a huge fan of the guy but it was kind of cool to see a Chicago guy get his props. Lord knows there are other guys in the Chicagoland area who could head straight for the WWE with their current look and gimmick and be money. I’m interested to see how the will use Punk once he gets to the big show. Best wishes to the Punkster. The ROH fans gave him a real good send off and he was obviously emotional as he came to the ring. The show was pretty good from top to bottom nothing really really terrible on the card. Sat with my current favorite indy ref Phil and BS’ed throughout the show. When I win the lottery and become a money mark with my own fed Phil is my head referee. The guy sells stuff in the ring the best of any indy ref around here. It really adds to a match he’s in.
On the way home from the show Saturday night I was screwing around with my contact about three blocks from the house and dropped my contact in the car. I actually saw it had it in my fingers when I got home and then it got dropped again to be lost forever. Now I have to wear glasses until I go to the optometrist this weekend. The pair I had in was my last pair so I was forced to go that route.
Next Saturday is the UFC PPV with Lidell/Horn as the main event. I’m sort of looking forward to that one. I really want to see Diego Sanchez who won Ultimate Fighter get beat but don’t know if it will happen. Ultimate Fighter 2 is starting soon and has the bigger guys this time around. Well I guess that is all for now…stay classy.

Oh wait one last thing I have this program running behind the scenes that tells me where folks come from to get to the site. I’ll write something about that next time, its pretty interesting because there is stuff I don’t even remember writing that is getting hits.

President Bush gives "The Shocker"

If you don't know what "the shocker" is ask your mom.

Someone's got some Photoshop skills.

I'm really a simple man

One of the joys in my life now is every morning waking up to DMX "Where the Hood At".

I'm so street and you know it.

I usually don't do this

because if there are any ladies out there reading who wants to read my thoughs on sports? Anyway a short note here.

If you have a chance take a look at Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams beard. It is the worst beard in the history of sports no contest. On the right side of his face there's a massive patch of hair that didn't grow in. It looks like a beard that a 90 year old guy would have.

The Death of Reality TV?

Rock Star: INXS is a reality show on CBS where popular 90’s rock band INXS is looking for a new lead singer to replace Michael Hutchence who hung himself in a hotel room a while back. My guess he was doing something else (no not drugs) before he actually hung himself, but that’s a story for another time. They bring these singers into LA and have your standard run of the mill competition to name a new lead singer. I’ve never seen a minute of the show until last night when I was flipping around the channels and caught a peek at in on a rerun on VH1. First to set up the singers that are left had a competition where they were interviewed by Time Magazine. One of the guys (well call him Guy A) said something bad about anther one of the guys and he felt bad about it. I have no idea who the first guy is but the guy who may have killed reality TV is this guy, JD. You can see JD right here: http://www.cbs.com/primetime/rock_star/performers/jd/ JD has a lot of tattoos and on one forearm he has the word “HUMAN” tattooed from his elbow down to his wrist. On the other forearm he has “BEINGS” tattooed from his elbow down to his wrist. They are on the back part of his arms so if you were walking behind him you could read it. Okay that set up is to describe this scene that may have killed reality TV. Imagine they are sitting next to a pool after having some drinks just the two guys.

Guy A: When we were interviewed by Time Magazine today they asked me some questions that I felt bad about answering

JD: Yeah so what happened?

Guy A: Well they asked if I had any problems with any people who were living in the house and I said that JD can be pretty hard to live with.

JD: That’s nothing big so what?

Guy A: I don’t know I feel like such a Judas now.
(Here’s where it gets good)

JD: “Well you know we spend so much time in our lives”
*raises forearms in front of him so that the tattoo “Being” is on top of the “Human” tattoo*
“Being human” that things get in the way.”
*As he says “Being human” he moves his forearms ever so slightly for dramatic effect*
“And we should really spend more time as just”
*puts his two fist together so you can see both tattoos*
"human beings.”

Its easily one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on TV it was so corny and the tattoos of this on the guys forearms only made it only that much cheesier. I have no idea what number episode it was on but it was so off the unintentional comedy scale its scary. Swear to God I was smiling but it was so so bad.

Weekend wrap up quick & dirty

Friday not much

Saturday went with Nate Dogg to see Fantastic 4, it wasn't bed but not as good as the Spiderman movies or Batman Returns. Everytime I was Michael Chiklis in it I couldn't help but think of Lil Jimmy Norton from O&A since they sort of look alike. My favorite newsbabe and # 6 on the Top 25 list Anna Davlantes has added some brown to her hair. It actually looks better....I notice this because I care.

Sunday went down to Lisle (I pronounce it Listle) to see The Chicago Bandits play. They are a fastpitch softball team and Jennie Finch (#7 on the Top 25 list) is on the team and it was poster day. Nate said he was going to hook me up with a Jennie Finch autograph but yet again no Jennie. Odd that she wasn't there and she was the poster they were giving away. Oh well. That was about it for the weekend and my bad sunburn peeling from Cali has pretty much subsided thankfully.

Kev Swag/Top 25 update

As you may know anytime a celebrity goes to generally any kind of awards show, gets nominated for an award, or goes to a premiere there is a gift bag as a bonus. There are companies that give the various baubles for free just so by chance a celebrity will be photographed wearing of using one. Its really a vicious circle since by the time most people have gained a level of fame they no longer need to receive all this swag.
This got me thinking what if I, Average Joe American, wrote to various companies that produce the products that I use on a regular basis and request swag from them. I can entice them that I will always use the brand name whenever I refer to a product and certain items will be seen on a regular basis by those who I work with. I came up with a standard format email pitching my idea to the different companies. I will let you know the outcome from theses emails along with the companies that I send them to. Is this a stupid idea probably yes but what’s a little jab at corporate America? I'll elt you know if I hear anything back from the companies I contact.

Just sharing a thought that Anthony of the Opie & Anthony show on XM satellite radio channel 202 (see I can be a corporate whore and I didn't even get the XM for free) had on a replay this morning about marriage. Why is is when you get married license its sort of considered a life long thing? You couldn't get a fishing license for life so why a marriage license? Anthony suggested that you should be able to renew the marriage license every year if things are going well. Sounds like a good idea to me.

I’ve also updated the Top 25 list as I made some dumb omissions on the list and some closer to the top have tumbled to the bottom half of the countdown:

25. ???
24. ???
23. ???
22. ???
21. Chely wright
20. Lauren Graham
19. Aishwarya Rai-took a tumble from towards the top
18. Victoria
17. Vanessa Marcil
16. Trish Straus
15. Heather Graham
14. Nancy O'Dell
13. Carmen Electra
12. Molly Sims
11. Jennifer Love Hewitt
10. Brooke Burke-can't believe I also left her off the list for so long
9. Kristen Davis
8. Halle Berry
7. Jennie Finch- climbing up the rankings
6. Anna Davlantes
5. Jenny McCarthy-can't believe I left her off the list for so long
4. Charlize Theron
3. Veronica Varekova
2. Catherine Zeta-Jones
1. Kate Hudson

The California Adventure -or- The Beach Boys are full of it

Not really sure where to so I guess I’ll have a title for each day and a few random thoughts about the day. First off let me say the weather out there is beautiful. Even me the old sweaty one didn’t break a sweat the entire time. As long as you are near the coast it doesn’t get much hotter than 75 degrees ever.

Tuesday…Get Away Day -or- My lone brush with fame
We (me, Nate, my mom, who is the official family latcher on) had the first flight out to LA on Tuesday morning so we had to wake up real early to get out there. Getting through security was really no big deal. I did see a girl on the plane reading a book that Clay Aiken had written a book. I can’t imagine what could be in there the story of how he became an androgynous pseudo pop star? I was in full on Passenger 57 mode by the time I got on the plane thanks to flying in a post 9/11 world. Nate watched the movie Sahara on the way out there and I just read a little and took a little snooze. Once we got to LA and got our bags we had to go out to catch the shuttle to the LAX Radisson. While we were walking to the place to get the bus I had my lone brush with fame. As we were walking I saw this dude with like freakishly huge arms. Then I looked at his face and though, “Hey I think that’s someone famous.” Then I turn around again and notice a tattoo he has on his forearm and I know the guy is WWE wrestler Chris “The Masterpiece” Masters. http://www.wwe.com/superstars/raw/chrismasters/profile/ He’s like a mid-carder guy and he was flying back from Cleveland where they had Raw the night before. Anyway I got a picture with him (forgot the autograph what can I say I’m slipping) and BS for a little bit. He says that he lives out there and was heading home. I wonder how many times he gets noticed since wrestling isn’t as big as it was a few years ago. Then once we get to the hotel and get the car we decide to head to Hollywood and do the Walk of Fame and the Chinese Theater.
The whole Walk of Fame is a little skanky, not really a bad part of town or anything just dirtier than you would expect it. There were a lot of gimmick shops and lots of tattoo parlors. In front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater there are a ton of tourists and others pushing their wares. There was a guy in a Spiderman suit who Nate ripped into because the guy had regular gym shoes on. Admittedly it was a pretty shitty looking Spiderman. Hearing an 8 year old rip on a pseudo-Spiderman is just funny. I only took pictures of two stars on the walk. Kevin Costner and Ted (Bushwood!) Knight, there are a ton of folks on the walk who I had no idea who they were. Never saw the Elvis star though…did see a crappy Elvis impersonator though. Something I found funny was there was a guy dressed as Superman and he was talking to this lady and the guy knew his entire acting resume. He was telling her he’d been in 14 films and so on and so forth…..yeah and now you are trying to get folks to give you a couple buck to take a picture of you in your Superman costume.
Apparently Scientology is HUGE out there. I saw two Scientology buildings on the walk and took a picture of one of them. Maybe they like the seediness of the Walk of Fame. Well I can’t comment anymore on this or Tom Cruise will accuse me of being glib. I did take a picture of one of the buildings and on the way back past the building they were handing out flyers.
There was also a guy handing out bottles of cold water on the Walk and his deal had something to do with religion. All I could think is who in their right mind would take a bottle of some random guy on the street. Who knows maybe its just me.

Wednesday...San Diego and Nate the Pest
Wednesday morning we head down south to go to the Padres/Cardinals game on Wednesday night. On the way to San Diego the highway patrol had stopped traffic on the freeway and was swerving slowly back and forth across the 6 lanes slowing traffic. Come to find out they were repairing part of the freeway. Weird stuff since they were only repairing small little cracks in the pavement for about 250 feet.
Once we got by the highway patrol, we stopped at this roadside rest stop that looked over the Pacific and got out about 35 miles north of San Diego. When we got out we saw these animals that looked like squirrels except they were a little smaller and the tails were shorter and not as bushy. We were talking about there creatures and then my mom asked this guy if he knew what kind of animals they were. The guy says “beach squirrels”, I know they were really squirrels but you had to believe they were because this guy said it so matter of factly.
We stop in Oceanside which is right by Camp Pendelton so we can go in the Pacific and screw around for a while before we get to San Diego and the game. Oceanside is really nice and had a real good beach and was pretty clean. We played in the ocean for a while and then headed to San D for the game. Its day 2 in Cali and still haven’t seen any “California Girls “, damn you Brian Wilson damn you.
When we get to San Diego we are waiting outside the ballpark to get in some San Diego news station was there and I asked Nate if he wanted to be on TV. I told him to wait until the light on the camera went on and go behind the girl and to hold the sign he brought with up behind the lady. The sign said something like “All the way from Chicago to see the Cardinals.” Nate then takes his position waiting for his chance to get on TV like he’s hunting something down. The lady does her live shot and he runs up and who knows if he got on TV. The reporter then wanted to film some stuff for the later newscasts because she was talking to random people hanging outside the ballpark…..and of course Nate was trying to get in the picture everytime she tried to talk to someone. She talked to one lady and then another guy and Nate got behind the guy and actually said “woo hoo!” The reporter then was trying to get Nate to leave her alone so she walked down the block away from where we were standing. In all Nate provided some entertainment for the people waiting to get in the game and a San Diego news personality got rattled by an 8 year old. I tried to find the name of the reporter off their website but couldn’t locate it. I can tell you she was with KFMB the CBS affiliate down there.
Petco Park where the Padres play is pretty nice by all accounts, its got a cool whiffle ball field out in right field where Nate played a bit. They also have a sand box in center field and from their gift shop you can step out right beyond the left field fence and see the game. For whatever reason they didn’t have too much stuff with the Friar logo on it and that peeved me a bit. Nate did get his picture with the Friar mascot though after chasing the Friar around for a few innings.

Here’s my thought from Wednesday-California’s freeway system is in better shape than the Illinois tollway system yet it costs nothing to drive on it. Sure they don’t have the winter weather to tear up the road and need repair but they are free to drive on.

Thursday…Santa Monica and the human circus
Thursday we decided to hit the beach circuit north of LA and go to both Santa Monica and Venice Beach. Before we hit the beach in Santa Monica we walked around their little shopping area which was nothing spectacular The beach at Santa Monica has a nice boardwalk with a little amusement park on it. The water in Santa Monica had more vegetation in it than the Oceanside beach for whatever reason. At the Santa Monica beach we rented a board so that Nate and I could do some boogie boarding like we did in Florida. Nate seemed to catch better waves closer to the shore than I did a little farther out. Now Nate is the family boogie boarding champion. Venice Beach is like a human circus. There are a lot of different folks out there along the beach front selling almost anything, there are also Hare Krishnas too. The same gimmick shops that they had on the Walk of Fame are also on Venice Beach. Seems you can get a tattoo where ever you want to in California. Venice Beach is also famous in my mind because back in the day Hulk Hogan said he would “hang and bang…brother!” on Muscle Beach which is part of Venice Beach. I had to pick up shirts for fellow wrestling marks Jason and Joey because they were so over the top. There are a lot of homeless people in both Santa Monica and Venice. I guess if you are homeless there are worst places to be.

Friday…Chinatown and back through H’wood
We decided to stop in China town because its generally an interesting place to check out. They had a few places that sold black market stuff and Nate was happy he could get the entire family from the Incredibles movie for only $8. They are actually pretty good looking knock-offs of the licensed Disney stuff. We saw the standard fake Louis Vitton bags and a so forth. What was one of the highlights of the day for me was seeing a store with a gigantic white cock on the top of it, it was a live poultry store. We also saw a fresh fish store with a whole ton of live fish you could buy. We were unable to find the store that was selling Gremlins though. After Chinatown we rolled through Hollywood and Rodeo drive just to see if anything was going on.

There’s a weather guy in LA named Johnny Mountain. I wish I was making this up, check this out. http://cbs2.com/bios/local_bio_136211938.html/ I sort of wish he was an Indian and his forecasts could be like this, “Johnny Mountain feel LA valley need much rain. Me do rain dance and rain fall on San Fernando valley.”

On Friday night I found the most entertaining news cast I’ve ever seen. KCOP http://www.upn13.com/ which is the UPN affiliate out there has a news cast for adults with ADD or those with a love of filler stories from other news casts. First off the channel had the hottest news anchors of any LA news station (there a 5 different networks with news casts ABC,NBC, CBS, UPN, and Fox). The anchors didn’t have a desk and delivered the entire news standing up. The guy anchor was in a suit and the female anchors were in things they could have worn out to a club later in the evening. Every story had a running time of I’d say one minute to a minute and a half before they moved onto another story. This was like news for the incredibly stupid or for those who have attention deficit disorder. On the half hour news they did real news for about five minutes and the rest of the 30 minutes seemed to be those stories that normal news uses as filler at the end of the news. They had a story about a wolf with a toothache and a rhinos birthday 15 minutes into the newscast! Into the first break of the newscast they played Avril Lavigne which should make anyone sick.
They do this thing on the newscast where they read a story and then “Stamp It”. They would stamp stories controversial, cool, amazing, or something along those lines. I couldn’t find any pictures of the two anchors besides the one on the UPN link about. The chicks names are Maria Quiban and Liz Habib. I wish they had a newscast like this in Chicago because it would be without a doubt good for some laughs. Chicago still has better anchor chicks than LA does as a whole.

Saturday…Dodger Stadium
Saturday we went to the Dodgers/Cards game which the Cards won. Nate didn’t get to hassle any news crews unfortunately. Nate really really wants to make it on the big screen at a sporting event. The kid can dance as well as his dear old dad…..almost. He’s got the butter churn down pretty well and busted it out at the game. Dodger Stadium considering how long its been open is in pretty damn good shape. From watching games on TV it seems that the stadium is far from LA but its just one little hill from the freeway so its deceiving on TV. We saw the set ups for the upcoming X Games at the Staples Center on the way to the Dodger game and purchased some black market knock off Dodgers hats before we got inside the stadium. LA loves black market merchandise!

http://www.airtahitinui-usa.com/ has hot stewardesses. They must have a deal with the Radisson we were staying in because I saw them pretty much every day we were there. They speak French so its not like I could (or would even try to) talk to them but they were for sure hot.

Sunday…the reason the rest of the world hates us
We headed up to Malibu which is north of LA and from my observation the whitest place on earth. The entire time we were in Malibu we saw two people that weren’t white. First off we went to this outdoor art festival in town. Lots of paintings, glass blown stuff (lucky glass), and jewelry. Then we decided to head to a car show that we saw a sign for and check it out. We didn’t get robbed in LA until we got to this car show. We get in line to go in and $60 ($25 for adults & $10 for kids) we were in the place. This car show was obviously a high brow affair if the admission didn’t tell you already. Just a massive display of people who get into pissing matches as to who can spend the most money on a vehicle. I did see a Maybach though which was cool. The folks at this car show were everything that I hate about people. I told Nate if he ever becomes like the people at the car show I’d disown him. What a bunch of phoniness that was happening there. Made me want to go home and wash the filth off of me. In one day we say the whitest place on earth and the reason the rest of the world hates us! We stopped at this little roadside greasy spoon and I was going to get a shirt with the emblem of Malibu on it and put “The Whitest Place on Earth” under it but they didn’t have my size. Then we head back to the hotel to get ready to head home.

What did I learn on this journey?:
1. The abundance of hot chicks in Cali is way overstated so the Beach Boys are obviously full of it. The hottest female I saw the entire time I was there was a LA cop working at the security checkpoint at the United terminal

2. I need to wear sun block more often. I got friggin grilled in the two days that I was in the sun full on.

3. California is a little phony as a whole

4. In N Out Burger rules.

5. San Diego news folks can’t take an 8 year old hassling them.