Christmas At Ground Zero

Still the best Christmas song ever, especially now!  Take her away, Weird Al!




Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Sunday Long Read: Flair Apparent

The long-running joke behind restaurant chain T.G.I.Friday's is of course, the flair (and if you've ever seen the excellent 1999 comedy Office Space, you know exactly what I mean.)  But what happens to all the little doodads and collectible items that crowd the walls of your favorite casual dining watering hole when the chain finally decides to go twenty-teens minimalist?

Tall windows flood the vast dining room with natural light, illuminating a minimalist mix of rectangular and round tables—each ringed by tasteful, Modernist chairs—beneath a grid of industrial light fixtures and exposed wooden beams. Is this the city’s hottest new restaurant that everyone’s been talking about, the one with the locally sourced ingredients served on artfully presented plates? No, it’s the new T.G.I. Friday’s.



That’s right, Friday’s, the once-popular singles bars and burger joints found in the parking lots of many a suburban mall. In March 2016, the famously clutter-filled chain introduced the first prototype for its spartan new design concept in Corpus Christi, Texas. The most startling aspect of this otherwise inoffensive space is the complete lack of Friday’s characteristic kitsch. No tin signs or pedal cars adorn the walls; there’s no dark wood or Tiffany-style lamps; there are no chipper red-and-white stripes to be found anywhere.

If you live or work in San Francisco, as I do, this bare, open look has become as cliché and unremarkable as Teslas and luxury condos. The new Millennial-approved restaurant aesthetic, which Friday’s is attempting to replicate in Corpus Christi, has become the beige-linen wall covering of choice, papering over the scruffier textures of the city’s quirky saloons, galleries, bookstores, and mom-and-pop shops. Suddenly, everything is “nice,” and the steep prices, which well-paid techies can easily afford, are guaranteed to keep the riffraff out.

For the past 40-plus years, casual-dining chain restaurants have dominated the suburban landscape. Friday’s and its ilk have served as cozy sanctums for Baby Boomer collectors and other nostalgia junkies, filled to the brim with mostly authentic antiques, which ranged from low-value, easy-to-find items to rare, high-dollar picks. Now that the sterile, clutter-free look has infected T.G.I. Friday’s—it will soon spread to each of its 900 restaurants around the globe—2010s urban Modernism is about to go suburban. FourTaco Bell prototypes in Southern California suggest that the upscale minimalist look is spiraling rapidly down-market.

Truth told, restaurant kitsch has been dying a slow death for the last decade. There are exceptions, of course—the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store brand depends on folksy nostalgia to appeal to its long-standing customer base. But less-rural restaurants felt the sting when 1999 movie “Office Space” mocked the typical chipper casual-dining atmosphere and its myriad “pieces of flair.” In 2005, Friday’s went through the first of a series of make-unders, removing the fake Tiffany lamps and reducing the number of vintage tchotchkes on its walls. In 2007, Friday’s competitor Ruby Tuesday jettisoned its Tiffany-style lamps and flea-market mementos for a more sophisticated look while offering more expensive fare. Five years later, Chili’s Bar and Grill debuted its remodeled prototype in Mesquite, Texas, replacing its jumble of Southwest kitsch with Modernist furniture in natural woods and a few well-appointed antiques like framed sepia-toned photographs.

The new Corpus Christi Friday’s, however, is the first time the restaurant has completely severed itself from its original retro, candy-striped image. Jeff Walsh, president of Hospitality Solutions Design, spent decades adorning casual-dining spots with memorabilia. After starting his career as an antiques picker 35 years ago, Walsh launched his Beverly, Massachusetts-based interior design group, which has worked with Friday’s, Chili’s, Applebee’s, Bennigan’s, and Chevy’s, among others. Today, he says, restaurant owners are asking for a completely different style.

As something of a signage history junkie (Cincinnati is home to the American Sign Museum, a absolute must-visit if you come to town) this is a pretty fascinating story here at Collector's Weekly, detailing the history of how the kitschy restaurant got started and where all that stuff comes from. Enjoy.

And as always, tip your server.

Sunday Long Read: Gold Fever

This week's Sunday Long Read is a good old fashioned treasure hunt mystery, as a Colorado man named Randy Bilyeu was convinced he was on track to find a fortune in gold and jewels hidden in the deserts near Santa Fe, a belief that eventually led to his disappearance and death.

One night early this year, Randy Bilyeu was on the phone with his best friend. He wanted to share some good news: After more than two years of searching Colorado and New Mexico for a hidden treasure chest filled with gold and jewels, he thought he’d finally discovered its location. It wasn’t too far from Santa Fe. Now he just needed to go get it.

Bilyeu was looking for the celebrated Fenn treasure—a 12th-century Romanesque chest hidden by an eccentric arts and antiquities collector that’s said to be packed with 42 pounds of gold coins, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, ancient jade carvings, pre-Columbian bracelets, and gold nuggets. Between 2014 and 2015, Bilyeu made nearly a dozen trips from his Broomfield apartment to Santa Fe in search of the chest. During his hunts, Bilyeu, who was 54 years old and twice divorced, had sent photos to his two adult daughters and to a dwindling number of close confidants, most of whom worried about his safety during his excursions and had become skeptical of the fortune’s existence.

Among them was Tom Martino, a longtime friend in Orlando, Florida, who talked to Bilyeu on January 4. The stash, Bilyeu said, was near the Rio Grande, in a place called Frijoles Canyon on Bandelier National Monument land between Santa Fe and Los Alamos. It would be difficult to get, though. In early January, temperatures, especially at night, would fall far below freezing. He’d been near the spot in the past month, and Bilyeu knew he would need a raft to move down the river and deliver him to a sandy patch from which he could begin his search. Further complicating matters was the fact that Bilyeu wanted to bring his traveling companion, Leo, a nine-year-old poodle-terrier mix. Bilyeu had never piloted a raft, and Leo was afraid of water. “It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard,” Martino says of Bilyeu’s plan. He told Bilyeu the search seemed risky. Bilyeu agreed: It was too cold and the weather was too dangerous to make a hasty search. Even still, he wanted to try.

In fact, he was already close. Bilyeu had driven the roughly 400 miles from Broomfield to Santa Fe with Leo, he explained to Martino. He was staying in a Motel 6 outside downtown. He’d purchased an $89 raft from a local sporting goods store, and he had waders, a wet suit, a backpack, maps, and his phone. Bilyeu sounded impatient. The Rio Grande was fewer than two dozen miles away. Bilyeu would drive there, inflate the raft, and begin his search despite his misgivings about the dangers he might face.

The next morning, a light dusting of snow covered the ground. Bilyeu backed his 2011 Nissan Murano into a space near a well field just off the Rio Grande. A thick cottonwood tree, its bare branches exposed to the elements, stood almost directly in front of him. The river was at least 50 yards wide and likely barely above freezing. Leo wore a miniature white sweater to protect him from the chill.

Bilyeu inflated his new blue-and-gray raft, then loaded the dog, two metal oars, and a manual air pump into it. His phone was turned off, perhaps to conserve battery power. Bilyeu finally lowered himself into the raft and shoved off. Within seconds, he and Leo began moving down the Rio Grande. A few minutes later, they disappeared into the canyon.

Bilyeu's body was found only a few weeks ago and identified last week, but the story of what led him to the Rio Grande canyons of New Mexico is a definite page-turner, the legendary Fenn treasure, worth millions, hidden by a reclusive author.  It's the stuff dreams are made of, even when those dreams become a nightmare that can claim lives.

Full-Blown Art Attack

Some days in life you trip and fall and just have to pick yourself up.  Other times, you trip and fall and put your hand through a million-and-a-half dollar painting.

A 12-year-old tripped at a museum in Taiwan this weekend; luckily a $1.5 million painting was there to break his fall. The kid is reportedly fine, the $1.5 million painting, not so much: according to reports, it now has a kid-sized hole in it.

And this is why art restoration experts exist.

According to the Telegraph, the boy was “nervous” he’d be held financially responsible—lol, duh—but by the grace of god, his family reportedly won’t have to pay any restoration costs for the 17th century Paolo Porpora oil painting, titled “Flowers.”

Life happens.  For everything else, there's insurance.

But you might want to fix those barriers, guys.

The Truth About Thad

So if you remember the ugly campaign for the re-election of Mississippi GOP Sen. Thad Cochran last year, you're not alone.  The Tea Party resorted to all kinds of horrible tricks to go after Cochran, including going after his bed-ridden wife suffering from Alzheimer's dementia, which resulted in his primary opponent, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, refusing to concede last year's primary for months before forced to by the courts and accusing everyone he could find (Republicans, Democrats, and especially Mississippi's black voters) of a massive conspiracy to make him lose.

The whole thing, you may recall, started over rumors that Cochran was pulling a Newt Gingrich and cheating on his sick wife.  Rose Cochran died six months ago, and now it appears that there may have been truth to those rumors as Cochran has married the long-time aide he was allegedly cheating with.

U.S. Senator Thad Cochran married his longtime aide Kay Webber in a private family ceremony in Gulfport on Saturday, according to a one-sentence statement released by his office Monday.

Cochran's relationship with Webber became the topic of much speculation and intrigue during last year's Republican U.S. Senate primary. Supporters of challenger Chris McDaniel accused Cochran of carrying on an affair with Webber. Cochran's office denied any kind of affair.

Rumors of a possible marriage between Cochran and Webber surfaced earlier in May; however, multiple Cochran staffers denied any knowledge of a possible wedding as recently as last week.

Senate and campaign staff defended the relationship between Cochran and Webber during last year's campaign in light of news detailing travel overseas and back to the district that included Cochran and Webber. A campaign spokesperson at the time said Webber "is a member of the staff and a trusted aide, and any other suggestion is silly gossip."

Cochran spokesman Chris Gallegos said Monday that Webber would remain on the senator's staff.

So in the end, the Tea Party bloggers going after Cochran were probably right, and he was cheating on his wife. The Washington Post is more than a little unhappy.

Over the past 12 years, records showed that Webber had joined Cochran on more than 30 publicly funded international trips costing more than $150,000, the Clarion-Ledger reported in 2014.

Critics also pointed to records that showed the six-term senator rented the basement apartment of Webber’s $1.6 million Washington rowhouse as proof of an untoward relationship.

Cochran’s Senate and campaign staff defended Webber’s involvement in the travel and apartment as “strictly professional” and “perfectly appropriate” for a senior staff member.

Webber, who makes about $140,000 a year, was said to attend official meetings and social functions, help the senator maintain his travel schedule and organize constituent events, his office said.

Cochran spokesman Jordan Russell told the Clarion-Ledger a year ago that Webber “is a member of the staff and a trusted aide, and any other suggestion is silly gossip.”

Rumors of the couple’s marriage had begun to swirl earlier this month, the Mississippi newspaper reported Monday, though Cochran staffers denied knowing of any wedding as recently as last week.

And so it goes, Republican values voters.

Black Guy Time Machine

Time travel may be fun in movies, novels, and games, but in reality it just doesn't happen.  One African-American physicist however is at least giving it the ol' college try.

When he received his doctorate in 1973, [Ron] Mallett was one of only 79 black Ph.D. physicists among about 20,000 in the U.S., he says. While he detects more tolerance in the profession now, the discrimination — the idea that a black man can’t be this smart — has not disappeared. 

Mallett says he kept his work on time travel secret for years partly because colleagues would conclude he was a crackpot unfit for tenure. If he worked openly and with others, he also worried white physicists would get all the credit. 

“I’m afraid that’s how it would work,” Mallett says. 

He built his first time machine in the basement of the Altoona, Pennsylvania, home where his mother moved him and three younger siblings from the Bronx after their father’s death plunged the family into poverty. He was 11 and had just read “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells. The odds and ends he slapped together didn’t work. He knew he would need the science. 

He was miserable much of the time growing up, depressed and isolated. He was an average student. Electronics, English and math were the exceptions.

Mallet says he owes everything to his father, and he wants to give his theoretical equations a chance to be put into practice, maybe to see him again.  There's a lot more to this story than just temporal physics, and hell, I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, he's got this figured out.

Snake And Onions For Breakfast

Dear Canada, what the hell is going on up there anyway?

After a dispute over diced onions on a breakfast sandwich, two men threw a snake over a counter towards an employee of a Saskatoon Tim Hortons. 

According to Saskatoon police, staff members “fled the store in fear” after the incident, which took place Monday around 7:30 a.m. at the Tim Hortons in the 600 block of 22nd Street West. 

“I’ve never heard of a snake being thrown at an employee by a customer … It was definitely a little chaotic,” said Saskatoon police spokeswoman Alyson Edwards.
“The staff was shocked and afraid and fled the store.” 

Staff told police that two male customers were arguing with an employee about their breakfast order – specifically that they wanted their onions diced. When the argument escalated, one of the men reached into the pocket of the other man, pulled out a garter snake and threw it behind the counter. 

No one was injured, said police. 

Officers quickly found the snake and determined it was not poisonous, said Edwards. Police found a temporary home for the snake until it can be released into the wild in the spring.

Now, I have questions about this series of events.  Specifically, how the two guys decided "I will win this argument over diced onions by throwing this garter snake I happen to have, even though it's December in Saskatoon."

I want to know, because I can't figure out of it's complete genius or the end of Canada.

Flights Of Fancy

The mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is now getting very, very weird.

Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday.

Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe, said sources familiar with investigations into the Boeing 777's disappearance.

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast.

This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said.

The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.

Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.

A third source familiar with the investigation said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight.

People just don't hijack planes anymore, but that appears to be what has happened.  Where the plane was flown to and why, we don't know.  But nobody seems to know where the flight went to, whether it landed safely or if it crashed, or what.  If it went way off course and then crashed without giving off any transponder signal, planet Earth is a pretty big place to lose something.

We'll see.

Last Call For The Banana Splits

I got nothin'.

KBMT

A Beaumont man was cited by police after riling up motorists by standing at an intersection carrying an AK-47 while dressed as a banana. 

Derek Poe, owner of Golden Triangle Tactical gun shop, said the stunt was part of the store's grand opening after moving locations. 

Poe said the man in the banana suit was holding an AK-47 across his back with the barrel pointing down and holding a sign with an arrow pointing toward the store. 

He said this idea was to attract customers to the store. 

A Beaumont police spokesperson said officers temporarily detained the 18-year-old and found he had the rifle with a drum magazine attached with at least a 50-round capacity. 

The spokesperson said the teen was cited for violating a city ordinance that prohibits soliciting in and alongside roadways.

Nope.  Nothin'.  Not a gorram thing.

Last Call For High-Way Robbery

Nothing I can say can improve on this tweet.

People kept stealing the 420 mile marker in Colorado. This was CDOT's solution. pic.twitter.com/xDsZkTe0Fv
— StuffJournalistsLike (@JournalistsLike) January 10, 2014

Never change, Colorado.

Last Call To Reach Out And Touch Someone

Thank you, MIT. This almost makes up for graduating Tom Massie.

Last Call For The Fire And The Flames

This is a really depressing story even for shutdown crazy Washington DC.

What has already been a strange and scary work week in the nation's capital, came to a close with a shocking incident on the National Mall: For reasons we don't yet know, witnesses say a man doused himself with gasoline and then set himself on fire. 

D.C. fire department spokesman Tim Wilson tells the AP the man suffered life-threatening injures. The wire service reports:

"He was standing by himself at Seventh Street and Madison Drive, in the center portion of the Mall, when he emptied the contents of a red gas can on himself and set himself on fire moments later, said Katy Scheflen, who witnessed it as she walked through the Mall. 

"She said passing joggers took off their shirts in an effort to help douse the flames, and the man was clearly alive as the flames spread. A police department spokesman said he was conscious and breathing at the scene. MedStar Washington Hospital Center tweeted that the man was taken there but had no condition update." 

Images posted on social media sites showed a rescue helicopter landing on the lawn, the iconic Washington Memorial in the background. They showed police descending upon the scene on a clear, sunny day in Washington with the Capitol building in full view.

One of those tragic stories that makes you think about perspective, and how all this affects our basic, daily humanity.  What would drive a person to do this?  It's bizarre as hell.

Then again, so are government shutdowns.

Two All Vat-Grown Patties...

The first taste test of British lab-grown beef was...interesting.  From a clinical perspective, anyway.

The world's first laboratory-grown beef burger was flipped out of a petri dish and into a frying pan on Monday, with food tasters declaring it tasted "close to meat".

Grown in-vitro from cattle stem cells at a cost of 250,000 euros ($332,000), the burger was cooked and eaten in front of television cameras to gain the greatest media coverage for the culmination of a five-year science experiment.

Resembling a standard circular-shaped red meat patty, it was created by knitting together 20,000 strands of laboratory-grown protein, combined with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron were added to give it color.

The two food tasters were reserved in their judgment, perhaps keen not to offend their host at the London event, noting the burger's "absence of fat".

Pressed for a more detailed description of the flavor, food writer Josh Schonwald said the cultured beef had an "animal protein cake" like quality to it, adding that he would like to try it with some of the extras often served with traditional burgers - salt, pepper, ketchup and jalapenos.

Even the scientist behind the burger's creation, vascular biologist Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, was relatively muted in his praise of its flavor.

"It's a very good start," he told the hundreds of reporters who had gathered to watch the meat being cooked and served.

At some point if we can just get the process down to, you know, not costing several hundred thousand dollars, maybe we can dispense with the whole "slaughtering of animals for their tasty, tasty meat" part and go straight to the good stuff.

But hey, even McDonald's had to start somewhere.  I'm betting in your lifetime we'll have commercially available grown meat (hopefully without the obscene amounts of anti-biotics, steroids, growth hormone, and small crates for animals.)

Thank the stars for rooster sauce and pickles, that'll work on anything.  Even lab meat.

Last Call

For Bon, a giant rubber duck story.




Because GIANT RUBBER DUCK.

Last Call

This should be the point where I post some elaborate April Fools' joke about me selling the blog to raise money to go to New York and profess my undying love for Jennifer Rubin or something, but I got nothing right now other than I hope you didn't buy your kids baby animals for Easter.

Pet horror stories are a staple of the post-Easter season in the United States, day animal control and rescue officials. The Easter holiday brings out the duckling, chick, and baby bunny lovers in people. They make an impulse buy, the recipient goes wild with joy for a day, but the honeymoon soon ends and parents scramble to surrender the animals.

Animal rescue staff, traditionally inundated with calls from regretful parents following Easter, are asking consumers to stop and think before buying an animal for Easter, and with good reason.

If, and it’s a big if, the animal doesn’t die from all that Easter excitement, now there’s a growing and soon-to-be mature duck, chicken (worse, a rooster), and rabbit on your hands.

A pubescent rabbit is not one to cuddle. Females are prone to running in circles, lunging, and grunting, says Anne Martin, shelter director for House Rabbit Society’s headquarters in Richmond, Calif. And if you purchased a male? “The boys will spray urine ... all over the place,” says Ms. Martin, who owns six rabbits and adds that a mature rabbit is a fantastic pet. But they can be quite alarming for a new pet owner whose supplier did not warn them.

Suppliers are also known for selling bunnies that have been taken away from their mothers too soon, says Mary Cotter, vice president of the House Rabbit Society.    

Ducklings and chicks have their own drawbacks, says Susie Coston director of the Farm Sanctuary shelter.

Like bunnies, ducklings and chicks are extremely fragile. If a child plays with them like a toy instead of fine china, they are likely to die from over-handling, Ms. Coston says.

And that's not a joke.

Enjoying The Northern Lights

When it comes to light bulbs in the 21st century, it may be time to look to that world-famous bastion of technological innovation...

...Canada.

A trio of Canadians claimed Wednesday to have invented the world’s most energy-efficient bulb: a 12-watt LED light that shines as bright as a 100-watt incandescent one.

Product developer Gimmy Chu told AFP the NanoLight design consists of a circuit board dotted with LED lights and folded into the shape of a bulb that plugs into a regular light fixture.

“We needed the light to shine in all directions to mimic a traditional incandescent light bulb,” said Chu, who with pals Tom Rodinger and Christian Yan launched a company last year to market the product after working on it for three years.

The idea has raised more than $100,000 on a US crowdfunding website and generated pre-orders for more than 3,000 bulbs in the last month, according to Chu.

The best thing about the NanoLight is the fact it's a Kickstarter project.

The NanoLight is still dealing with an issue common to LED lightbulb replacements: cost. A 100W equivalent NanoLight will set you back a $45 pledge. If you want the super-bright white version that outputs 1800 lumens, it will cost you $100. Depending on the cost of electricity in your area, you may be able to recover the investment over time, especially considering the expected longevity of the LEDs.

Interest in the NanoLight has been pretty intense. With 44 days left to go on the project, it has already nearly quadrupled the original $20,000 funding goal. Kickstarter may well be giving us an early glimpse into the future of household LED lighting.

Indeed, looking at the page this morning, the NanoLight has left that $20,000 goal in the dust and is over 150 grand with a month to go still.   Considering the success of Kickstarter tech projects like the Pebble watch as full-fledged tech start-ups these days, it's nice to see that Thomas Edison's Menlo Park digs lives on here on the net, with a global reach.

And yeah, I just might drop a couple bucks on a light bulb with corners.

In California, Road Forks You!

Jim Grant of Carlsbad, California?  I salute you, because you are awesome.

"I actually laughed out loud in my truck and just knew I had to get some shots of this urban art before some city employee takes it down or it is vandalized," he said. He shot some photos Tuesday afternoon, posted them on CNN iReport and left a Post-it note on the sculpture in hopes of finding the artist.

The literal fork in the road was short-lived. A city crew pulled it out of the concrete Wednesday morning, saying in a statement that "although the fork in the road remains, the literal fork was removed this morning. We appreciate the creativity, but it's not legal or safe to put objects like this on public streets or medians."

CNN affiliate KFMB filmed the fork being taken away. 

It's too bad, because the guy behind the fork just rocks.

Before the fork was ripped out, Grant's Post-it note made its way to the artist, who explained he was a retired teacher who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of getting fined or sued by the city.

The 62-year-old retired math and physics teacher said he has wanted to make a fork for that island ever since he saw "The Muppet Movie" in 1979, in which Kermit tells Fozzie Bear, on their way to Hollywood, to bear left if he comes to a fork in the road. A moment later, a giant upside-down fork appears in the road.

That was more than 30 years ago, but he never had the time to work on the project until he retired in June. He spent the summer on it, laminating pieces of wood together until they resembled the kitchen utensil. He bought a can of chrome paint and sprayed the fork until the can was empty. His brother, a middle-school wood shop teacher in El Cajon, helped him smooth out the edges.

"I'm not an artist. I have no talent, but I'm not afraid to try, and I'm quite surprised that the fork came out as good as it did," he said.

With his 32-year-old son's help, they mounted it in the street on Tuesday morning.

Put the fork back, Carlsbad!

Josh Romney Is Coming For Your Soul

Josh Romney is the most frightening man on Earth.  He's sitting next to his mother, Ann.

He is coming for your soul.

Your soul.  You, America.  YOU.

AND NOW IT'S TOO LATE HE HAS YOUR SOUL.

Last Call

And this right here is a Syfy movie of the week.

A softball-sized eyeball from an unknown creature has washed up on a beach in Florida. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Gino Covacci was taking a morning walk along Pompano Beach when he spotted the blue orb bobbing in the tide.

Placing it in a plastic bag, he walked home and put it into the refrigerator, figuring that it was something unusual.

“It was very, very fresh,” he told the Sentinel. “It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag.”

Covacci contacted police, who directed him to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who were also stymied as to what animal the eye could have come from.

Wildlife Commission spokesperson Carli Segelson said that wildlife officials packed the eye in ice and forwarded it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.

And then whatever it came from shows up and it has 13 more of them.  Only Dean Cain and Kari Wuhrer have any chance against it, because if they fail, humanity is next on the menu!

Yeah, we're boned.

Celebrity Chopped Sure Has Gone To Hell

(Via Mitt's lunch trip on Tuesday at a Denver Chipotle)

...I got nothin'.  But the guy on the right?  My new hero.