Balls the Size of Pumpkins

My previous blog post had some sick video footage of stunt driving in a video game, but now I found a video of stunt driving, though this time it's REAL - and no less amazing.

This is literally stunning - it starts off a bit slow, but be sure to stick with it.





Also, I really, REALLY hope that this is real-life, actual security cam footage and not something staged.

These Guys Must Have Fulfilled, Enriching Lives

Check out this sick video I found on YouTube of some wild stunts in the new 'Grand Theft Auto IV' game.



This leads me to a couple of questions:

• Didn't this game just get released like a week ago? How did these guys find all of these little locations and places to pull those shenanigans already?
• My favorite one is when the guy dives out of the helicopter at like two thousand feet and plunges into a swimming pool. It looks like he aimed for the pool on purpose - how is that possible?
• Odds that the person who made this video has ever been out on a date with a live person? I'm going to say Infinity-to-1 against.

---JohnnyU

I Need This...

I have a mortal fear of being buried alive, so you can probably guess that I didn't love the scene in 'Kill Bill, Volume 2' where Uma Thurman is buried in a coffin and has to dig her way out.

I suppose there are plenty of other people like me. Apparently, premature burial was George Washington's greatest fear, and is quoted as saying:

"Have me decently buried, but do not let my body be put into a vault in less than two days after I am dead."

Shoot, Edgar Allen Poe practically made a living out of writing grotesque stories featuring premature burial ("The Premature Burial", "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado")

It was only a matter of time, then, that this idea cropped up:
A cemetery in Santiago, Chile, is offering its clients coffins with sensors that detect any movement inside after they have been buried. According to a spokesperson for the cemetery, ‘We want to be pioneers and avoid catalepsy cases, in which a person gets completely paralyzed for a few hours and ends up buried as if they were dead. We want families to rest assured that if a case like this ever happens, their loved ones will be immediately rescued.

All I have to say about this is: I'm looking into possibly moving to Santiago, Chile.

Some People are Dain-Bramaged

FOUND ON REAL-LIFE WARNING LABELS:

• On a can of insect spray: “Harmful to bees.”
• On a motorcycle mirror: “Objects in the mirror are actually behind you.”
• On a bag of peanuts: “This product contains nuts.”
• On a mattress: “Do not attempt to swallow.”
• On a TV remote control: “Not dishwasher safe.”
• On an iron: “Never iron clothes on the body.”
• On a wristwatch: “This is not underwear. Do not put in pants.”
• On a life-saving device: “This is not a life-saving device.”

Are real people *actually* this stupid? I find it hard to believe that anyone would do any of these things (Except for the wristwatch one - because I always wear my watch in my pants).

This reminds me of the time, when I was a kid and my dad got me a bike for Christmas (which came in pieces that you had to put together), and the box the bike was shipped in had a large warning label stuck on the side that read:

"WARNING! Assemble before use."


---JohnnyU

Sam Grizzle is a Sick Man

Charles Barkley has been getting plenty of unwanted attention in the last couple of days, surrounding his outstanding $400k gambling debt, so I'm not going to focus on that because it's already been done to death, but I'll stay in the same vein with a gambling story.

I thought this was amazing (not in a good way) - though a little off the beaten path, so bear with me.

Sam Grizzle is a Las Vegas gambler, infamous for his degenerate tendencies. Possessed of some amount of talent for poker, Sam is nonetheless constantly broke and having to borrow money from people. He has a perfectly apt last name - seeing as he is a grizzled, leather-assed old gambler who seems miserable ninety percent of the time.

This one particular anecdote I'm about to excerpt - which seems to neatly encapsulate the guy - was from an article written by Todd Brunson for CardPlayer magazine.

"About 14 years ago, I was playing in a $150-$300 hold'em game at Commerce Casino. Early in the morning, Sam Grizzle walks in and starts commenting on how good the game is. When asked why he's not playing, he pulls out his bankroll ($2) and sarcastically asks how much the buy-in is.

He leaves, and after talking to Puggy Pearson, comes back with $10,000 and starts to play. Now, after about an hour, Sam and Puggy get into an argument (about what, I can't remember offhand), and Puggy picks up his $10,000 and half of what Sam was winning, leaving Sam with about $400, far short of the required buy-in. Fortunately for Sam, no one says anything. Sam goes all in five or six times right away, and in about four hours, he is winning around $40,000.

If this isn't amazing enough, Sam quits the game, announcing that he's going to do us a big favor and go play the tournament, allowing us to keep what money we had left. (He also told us how smart he was and dumb we were, of course.) You can guess what happened next: Sam the genius wins the tournament and another $120,000 to go with the $40,000 he won from us earlier that morning; not bad for a guy who showed up at the casino with $2 in his pocket.

It's now 6 a.m. and he's been in the Commerce Casino for exactly 24 hours. It's time to get some sleep; that is, if he were a normal human, but Sam's far from that. He comes up to the top section, where there's a tough $800-$1,600 Razz (lowball) game in progress. Sam stumbles over and bellies up to the table, losing his entire $160,000 in a fairly short period of time.

Instead of becoming upset, Sam simply told everyone how dumb they were, shook his head, and walked out of the casino with the exact same $2 he had showed up with the day before. Just another day in the life of a gambler."

---JohnnyU

Discovering a Future President of the United States

Some news stories just seem too crazy to be made up, and this story definitely falls into that category.

A 13-year old kid named Ralph from Texas won a big World of Warcraft tournament (there are World of Warcraft tournaments?) and boosted his dad's credit card to run up a $30,000 spending spree that included paying $1,000/night prostitutes to play HALO 3 with them.

Awesome.

Or the worst thing I've ever heard.

One or the other.

The best part is the final line of the article: "Ralph's ambition is to one day become a politician."



---JohnnyU

The Scales of Justice

Plaintiff: Gregory Roach and Gordon Falkner

Defendant: Para-Chem Co.

Lawsuit: In 1998 the plaintiffs, carpet installers, decided to use an all-weather outdoor adhesive inside a client’s home, ignoring the warning on the label: “Do not use indoors because of flammability.” When a hot water tank clicked on, the fumes from the adhesive ignited, exploding the three-gallon container. Burned over most of their bodies, Roach and Falkner sued the adhesive manufacturer, Para-Chem, for $35 million.

Can you guess the result?


Verdict: Five of the eight jurors initially sided with the defendant, Para-Chem, but the judge ordered deliberations to continue until at least six jurors agreed on the verdict. When the jury returned, the tally was 6-2 in favor of the plaintiffs. They got $8 million.

[source: Page-a-Day Calendars]


This kind of stuff irritates me to no end. The only thing that pisses me off more are the lawsuits where the burglar sues the person who owns the home they were trying to burgle, because the felon falls down the stair and breaks his leg or something.

If I could ever meet these jurors I would give all of them a slap with a pair of gloves.


---JohnnyU

What Were They Thinking?

Mix equal parts stupidity and foolishness, and toss in a dash of idiocy... and then maybe a soupcon of pure luck, and voila! (or is that 'viola'?)

Hilarity ensues...

I guess my question is, how is it possible that a camcorder happened to be on hand to capture every single one of these moments? What's noteworthy about a woman getting out of a cab? Or in half of these examples, for that matter?

If these people were any dumber, they'd be the mutant offspring of Gomer Pyle and Jethro Clampett.

Karate Kid, Part IV - Ralph Macchio Returns?

I don't know how much you would have to pay me to square off against a chimpanzee, but the figure would definitely have at least one comma in it.




I've heard it said that chimps are roughly ten times stronger than an adult human, so you can best believe I'm not messing with one in a boxing ring or a karate dojo.


---JohnnyU

Paul Pierce Ain't No Gangsta

I did not see the game in question, but the Boston Herald is reporting that Paul Pierce of the Celtics has been fined $25,000 by the NBA for a hand gesture he made toward the Atlanta Hawks' bench during Boston's Game 3 loss on Saturday. It was identified as a possible Blood gang sign, and the league termed it a 'menacing gesture' and so they hit him with a fine.

I only have one question about this: how does *anyone* in the NBA league office know what gang signs look like? Is David Stern or Rod Thorn that well-versed in the street that they're able to identify and then categorize a gang sign? I'm fascinated by this.

Of course, Pierce denies it and says it's something he's been doing all year as a dedication to the team's 'blood, sweat and tears'. Celts head coach Doc Rivers got off this terrific quote that made me chuckle:

“I just don’t know how you interpret what something means if you don’t know what it means.”

I anxiously await Dan Shaughnessey, the uber-white Boston newspaper columnist (Shaughnessey is so white, he makes Vanilla Ice look like Flava Flav), breaking this all down for us.


---JohnnyU

Benny Hill Woulda Loved It

In the UK this week, Her Majesty's Treasury - called the Office of Government Commerce - got embarrassed when their new logo was unveiled and it was met with unintended guffaws.
I suppose no one designing the logo thought to turn it on its side, but the employees at the unveiling spotted it immediately.

What a boneheaded decision that turned out to be.

I'm Confused

This story, off of FanNation, reports that a league source is saying Brian Urlacher's agents have asked the team if they could explore a trade. Another says Urlacher is threatening to retire because of neck and back problems, a move in which he wouldn't have to repay any portion of the $13 million signing bonus he received in 2003, when he received a nine-year, $56.65 million deal.

So which is it?

Is he hurt so badly that he needs to retire? Or he wants a trade? Those two things seem to be quite mutually exclusive, if you ask me (which you didn't).

Brian Urlacher has always seemed like a fairly good guy, except for those murky circumstances around him getting involved (briefly, of course) with Paris Hilton - shortly thereafter his wife moved out, taking their 3-year old daughter with her.

"Well, the front fell off, for a start..."

I have no idea if this video is real, or if it's some kind of Australian version of a Monty Python sketch or something.

All I know is that it's frickin' funny, and I'd prefer to think that it's real.

How Does Paris Hilton Not Fall Down More?

It wasn't a secret that Paris Hilton is one of the dumbest human beings on the planet - if not THE dumbest, then certainly in the bottom-five - but this story today from the New York Daily News still surprised me nonetheless.

Paris Hilton kept the locals amused during her recent visit to South Africa, where she accompanied her Good Charlotte boyfriend, Benji Madden.

The couple stayed at the ultra-luxe Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town, along with the Kaiser Chiefs and Korn, who were also in town for the My Coke Fest music event. (Apparently, calling a rock festival My Coke Fest isn't ironic in South Africa.)

A hotel spy tells us: "Every time Paris saw something she liked, like a woman's dress, she would ask how much it was. That included a cheetah she saw at an animal park. She asked how much it was and said, 'If I bought a cheetah, would it run away from me or could I keep it?'"

Perhaps Paris could take one home and feed it with her leftover Chihuahuas.

Seriously, she is borderline mentally-challenged. I'm not even kidding.

I think my favorite Paris Hilton story came from the time that she had testify in court for some crime or another that she had committed (drunk driving, perhaps? without a license?). Anyway, she was asked to recall the name of someone with whom she had interacted, and she couldn't do it, but explained her memory lapse by saying, "I know a lot of people. I don't even know some of my friends' names."

And she drives a Bentley.

Kill me now.

Matt Leinart is Handsome and Likes Beer, Ladies and Hot Tubs

It seems like there are a lot of people all atwitter over Matt Leinart's shenanigans over the weekend. Dude had a rager at his house in Arizona and he and his wingman Nick Lachey hosted a bevy of underage honeys.

Turns out that his coach, Ken Whisenhunt, wasn't too stoked about Matt partying like it was Nineteen Ninety-Nine with nineteen-year-olds.

I think it was the picture of Matt holding up the beer bong for the young lady. Hey, he was just being a gentleman. And they say chivalry is dead these days.


Listen, if you were 24 years old, a millionaire, and looked like Matt Leinart, would you not be acting the exact same way he is?

Asking him not to use the tools he's been given would be like telling cavemen, "Look, I know you think that spear works well for killing the bear. But you should really just keep trying to kill them with your bare hands."

Matt Leinart Looks Happy

I would very much like it if someone could please explain to me what Matt Leinart is doing in this photo:

And, I should mention that Dude apparently doesn't know how to knot a tie; yet, somehow I still don't think Leinart has a lot of trouble getting ladies' attention.

Regardless, that photo makes about as much sense as this one:



---JohnnyU

Dracula's Castle For Sale?

If you've got a spare $77 million lying around in your couch cushions, you may want to check into buying Vlad the Impaler's original castle, dating from the 14th century. It turns out the castle is for sale by the real Dracula's distant descendants.

I think living in a tourist attraction that not only brings in nearly a half-million visitors a year, but is also a place that's more than 600 years old, might present some unique challenges.

It might be a good place for Brad and Angelina to raise their burgeoning brood. I'll drop their agents a quick note. Come to think of it, they probably read my blog.


---JohnnyU

This Pilot is a Friggin' Stud

No idea how the pilot of this A320 Airbus in Hamburg managed to keep this thing from rolling over from the vicious crosswind, but this is one of the sickest things I've ever seen.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ddb_1204404185

Can Someone Please Help Me?

Because I am confused...

Best? Prank? Ever?

Any time someone says that something is the best prank ever, I usually reach for a can of Pringles and disdainfully close my ears.

But this thing here? It's a whole different can of Pringles.