by Chris Barrus
No BMW never made a convertible 7-series, but that didn’t stop this guy from cutting the roof off his car. Of particular note is the roll bar fashioned out of plain old “water grade” thin steel pipe. Sure, he might be an asshat for forging this frankencar out of a perfectly good sedan (stick-shift 7-series are rare!) but he’s going to be safe!
Well, maybe not. Should be rollover, that 2+ tons of German metal is going to obliterate that pipe onto the guy’s head. But only if we’re lucky.
The Morse Code input meme is apparently getting some steam courtesy of O’Reilly.
Somewhere out there, Charles Fort is snickering…
First up: “Flesh-eating aliens were chasing me when I caused fatal car crash”
A California man facing life in prison for crashing his car into a UPS truck will not dispute that his actions resulted in the death of the driver when his trial opens Monday in Nevada County Superior Court.
Instead, Scott Krause’s defense will argue that the defendant believed he was trying to escape man-eating subterranean beings when he ran into Drew Reynolds’ truck on Jan. 6, 2004.
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — A young mother found at the scene of a car crash near Tokyo in which her husband and infant son were killed had been dead for at least a day before the accident happened, police were quoted as saying on Sunday.
Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.
US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.
We interrupt this series of airport cafe pictures for the following…
Are you in Long Beach? If so, go directly to Provence Boulangerie in Belmont Shore. Order anything on the menu, it’s all good so you can’t go wrong. Personal favorites are the turkey brie sandwich and the tarragon chicken salad (pictured), but everything there has been superb.
Provence Boulangerie
191 Park Street
Long Beach, CA 90803
562-433-8281
This week’s visit was to the Fullerton Airport (FUL) cafe a.k.a. Tartuffles. I’ve been there dozens of times before so it wasn’t any big surprise – yummy food, direct view of the tarmac, and pretty reasonable prices (the whole breakfast was $7.00 including coffee).
This morning I woke up to the sound of goats bleating outside and, yup, the goat herder on the hillside moved the goats directly below the house. It’s all in the name of fire-prevention – the hillside is overrun with dry brush and the idea is that the goats can get into places where human brush-clearers can’t. The effectiveness is still undetermined, though after the big 1993 fire anything that reduces overall brush is a Good Thing.
Of course since it is Laguna Beach someone always has to complain.
Your weekend crank literature reading is F.W. Alden’s 1924 pamphlet “Jocko Homo-Heavenbound” a antecedent to Akron’s favorite spud boys. Read the annotated version on the web or download a PDF.
I’ve been obsessed with airport cafes lately (yeah, I know I know… “lately”) and I finally have a chance to catch up on some of the local places. First up is Nat’s Airport Cafe at Hawthorne Municipal Airport (a.k.a. Jack Northrop Field). The corned beef hash was perfunctory but amazingly inexpensive – breakfast barely cracked $5.
HHR’s terminal building is classically 1970s civic down to the zig-zag walkway shade out front and the big Saturn mural on the side. There free wi-fi if you need it and a small museum on the northwest side of the field.
Sierra Madre starred in the 1956 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, but today you would be hard pressed to find any seed pods.
However, you could argue that the Starbucks just off the city square is a precursor to more sinister Body Snatcher events (The Onion stupidly went to subscription-only for back issues so to route around damage here).
Though the coffee chain’s specific plans are not known, existing Starbucks franchises across the nation have been locked down with titanium shutters across all windows. In each coffee shop’s door hangs the familiar Starbucks logo, slightly altered to present the familiar mermaid figure as a cyclopean mermaid whose all-seeing eye forms the apex of a world-spanning pyramid. Those living near one of the closed Starbucks outlets have reported strange glowing mists, howling and/or cowering on the part of dogs that pass by, and electromagnetic effects that cause haunting, unearthly images to appear on TV and computer screens within a one-mile radius. Experts have few theories as to what may be causing the low-frequency rumblings, half-glimpsed flashes of light, and periodic electronic beeps emanating from the once-busy shops.
Supposedly there was a Sierra Madre tradition that on Halloween the downtown city square would be decorated with seed pods, but I haven’t tracked down anything further. However the nearby LA County Arboretum does invite kids to use “seed pods” in their pumpkin decorating event so apparently eternal vigilance is still needed.
On the plus side the Bean Town Coffee Bar has free wi-fi.
I’ve been driving past this “restaurant in a house” for months now and never bothered to drop in until now. Who the hell knew that it was so wonderfully kick ass? Fave dish so far is the “Sirena Plate” – a grilled chile filled with vegetables, cheese and your choice of meat. When you can’t make the drive to La Super Rica and need a worthy substitute…
La Sirena Grill
347 Mermaid
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
(949) 497-8226