Look at Keana Texeira's new music video "Another Little Piece of You" featuring jewelry made by a good friend of mine for a great cause!

Melissa Lew, a very dear friend and unbelievably talented artisan in the craft of custom jewelry, just sent along word that Keana Texeira's new video for her song "Another Little Piece of You" has just gone live! Not only that but Keana is wearing some of the work that Melissa created as part of jem.lew: the love project!

Here's the music video...

So what is jem.lew: the love project, you ask? Here's the statement from Melissa and Jennifer's website:

The love project is a collaborative, charitable line from DC designers Jennifer Elizabeth Miller (The JEM Collection) and Melissa Lew; it will be officially launched at the exclusive Secret Room’s MTV Movie Award’s Gifting Suite at the end of May 2012. A percentage of each piece sold will be donated to various charities, such as Becky’s Fund, DC Central Kitchen, and Miriam’s Kitchen.

The love project is a line of eco-friendly, socially conscious jewelry made from bamboo (sustainable plant) and stainless steel (100% recyclable) and features the project’s 4 heart logo, each hand painted with a splash of color. Each eye-catching necklace comes with a 24″ stainless steel ball chain that can easily be resized by cutting excess chain with pliers/cutter. An informational card is also included with each piece and is printed on FSC-Certified paper stock with soy ink.

Great work, ladies! And congrats on your work getting some high-profile notice :-)

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Still got the right stuff...

How perfectly fitting, that on the same day that Felix Baumgartner took his 24-mile high skydive, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier in freefall with only a high-tech suit for protection...

...retired Air Force Brigadier General Charles "Chuck" Yeager celebrated the 65th anniversary of the very first supersonic flight - which Yeager accomplished in the X-1 - by flying faster than sound again at the age of 89.

There ain't enough accomplishments of daring these days, it sadly seems. Reading stuff like this, gives me great hope.

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Just saw THE WALKING DEAD Season 3 premiere

It aired last night on AMC and due to some crazy circumstance Kristen and I are only now reeling from the shock of it.

And if "Seed", the season premiere episode of The Walking Dead is any indication, we are in for a hella scary ride rife with high-tension drama, and thankfully bereft of last season's lingering too much around Hershel's farm. The production values also seem much higher 'cuz this episode cost an arm and a leg.

(Did you see what I just did?! Did you see that?? Haaah that's all I got...)

Okay, so how long has it been since the events of Season 2? Because Lori's little bun in the oven is looking like a full-baked poundcake. I'm guessing that the producers are allowing much bigger spans of time to elapse so as to accommodate the imminent growth spurt of Chandler Riggs (the young actor playing Carl). Speaking of which, looks like Carl is gonna be turned loose a bunch more to break bad on the walkers this season. Hopefully that'll save Rick from screaming "CAAAAAAARL!" all the time (yah I'm looking at you Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse).

Loved the prison: this is gonna be a crazy good setting for the coming season. And Michonne was just onscreen enough to satisfy our wanting to get our first good look at her without unloading the full bore of her katana-wielding finesse.

A very, very strong opening for a new season of The Walking Dead. One that might well draw in a horde of new viewers. Looking forward to next week's episode... and the eventual introduction of the Governor into this already insane mix.

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We'll all go a little mad for the HITCHCOCK trailer!

This. Looks. INCREDIBLE.

Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren should just go ahead and make more room on their respective mantles for all the awards they're no doubt gonna get from their work in this movie.

Hitchcock opens in limited release on November 23rd. Here's hoping and praying that it'll opened wide not long afterward!

And if you want this trailer in gloriously full HD Quicktime then slash here!

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A question about "affirmative action"

The United States Supreme Court is hearing the case today brought before it by Abigail Fisher, who is asserting that because of race-preferential policies at the University of Texas at Austin, she was denied enrollment at because she is white.

I want to put a question out there, because I think it's more than valid:

If a member of a racial minority can easily become the President of the United States, then what use is there for academic admission or job-hiring practices that are based on racial preference?

Come to think of it, what use is there for the NAACP? I mean, seems like it's pretty hard to advance much further than the White House. For anybody regardless of ethnicity, for that matter...

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For the children: "trashcan cameras" and location-tracking chips

In the wake of American schoolkids rebelling against the federal government's new school lunch rules, a school district in Florida is considering installing video cameras on its school cafeteria trashcans so it can monitor and determine if students are throwing away their vegetables.

Meanwhile the students of Northside Independent School District in Texas are being told to wear ID badges containing location-tracking radio chips on penalty of "suspension, fines, or being involuntary transferred".

Here's an idea: the students should go ahead and wear the badges, but only after putting them in their microwave ovens for a minute or two. THAT oughtta scramble the innards enough to make them useless!

Some good commentary by Fred Reed - the Internet's finest curmudgeon - about the growing "Eye of Sauron" over us, which you can read here.

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Calvin as the Doctor

I'm trying to determine who came up with this 'cuz it deserves proper attribution.

But this is way too good not to share in the meantime. I found this on Facebook on the Doctor Who and the Tardis by Craig Hurle page...

It's definitely embiggenable so click and save away! No doubt to become wallpaper for your desktop or your iPad :-)

Here's the pic's link on Facebook. I like what one person commented: "Brings new meaning to the phrase 'Madman with a Box!'"

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Man dies after roach-eating contest (but he won!)

Renfield had the right idea at least: if you're gonna eat bugs, give it some variety!

Edward Archbold, age 32, is dead after eating "dozens of roaches and worms" in a pet store's contest in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

From the article at The Smoking Gun...

Investigators reported that Archbold "wasn’t feeling well and began to regurgitate" shortly after the contest's conclusion. "He had consumed dozens of roaches and worms," a sheriff’s spokesman noted.

Archbold was pronounced dead after being transported to an area hospital. An autopsy was conducted, and the Broward County medical examiner is awaiting test results to determined Archbold's cause of death.

The roach eating contest was part of the reptile store's October 5 "Midnight Madness" sale. Contestants had four minutes to devour the most discoid roaches, which can grow up to three inches long. "Oh yeah, any vomiting is an automatic DQ," the store cautioned in a Facebook post prior to the revolting competition.The roach eating contest was part of the reptile store's October 5 "Midnight Madness" sale. Contestants had four minutes to devour the most discoid roaches, which can grow up to three inches long. "Oh yeah, any vomiting is an automatic DQ," the store cautioned in a Facebook post prior to the revolting competition.

However, Archbold did win the contest. The grand prize was a live python.

Wouldn't surprise me if this pet shop got hit with a lawsuit of some kind. And if it's not liable, well... I just can't see eating even one roach for anything, much less an exotic snake.

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Maine Republicans make WORLD OF WARCRAFT a political scandal

The Republican Party has for decades struggled with a public image - an inaccurate and even slanderous one, I will note - that it is an organization bent against the rights of minorities, women, pretty much anyone not Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

And then the Maine Republican Party messes it all up by coming out as anti-Orc Assassins.

Maine state Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz is being accused by Maine Republicans in an official campaign release as leading a "bizarre double life" as Santiaga: a cutthroat with green skin, mohawk and fangs.

The thing is, "Santiaga" is Lachowicz's avatar in the crazy popular online game World of Warcraft.

Here is the mailing that the Maine GOP has sent out across the state:

So now attacking a candidate's hobbies is considered an acceptable political tactic? This is a whole new low, one that the Republican Party should not only be ashamed of but thoroughly ridiculed for.

Read more at Politico.com.

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"Attention all personnel, INCOMING WOUNDED!"

Last night the Rockingham Community College Foundation held its annual fundraising dinner at Reidsville Country Club. Every year it's a different theme and this time it was the television series M*A*S*H. It also serves as an acronym for More Academic and Scholarship Help. Anyway, they went totally all-out in doing a M*A*S*H theme: right down to having a real jeep, the signpost, Klinger's female wardrobe, the Swamp (complete with still) and "Rosie's Bar" (serving real booze!)...

To add further atmosphere, several members of the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County volunteered to be in costume as various characters from the show. We had Mike Davis as Hawkeye and Eric Smith as Trapper (each carrying around a martini glass), Tyler Walker as Klinger (who went through three costume changes including a wedding dress), and Tanya Rimmer Willis as Hotlips.

And as Corporal "Radar" O'Reilly, it's Yours Truly!

And they even set up Radar's desk complete with period typewriter and radio gear!

We all had a lot of fun helping with a great cause. Although it's now twenty-four hours later and my throat is still a tad sore from all that running around screaming "INCOMING WOUNDED!" :-)

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Lots of Christian music from my college days

In retrospect of the long and curious journey of my spiritual life, I can see now how my seeking after God has been a quest that has taken the majority of my years on this Earth. But it was only sixteen years ago when that seeking coalesced and crystallized into a choice to follow after Christ.

As with many things however, those first few years were, well... interesting, to put it mildly. Downright strange and bizarre in fact. Yeah bizarre even by my own standards...

But the Lord provides. And He sustains. Always. Sometimes in ways that we can't fully appreciate until a long time later, and that is certainly what I have found in recent years especially.

Something that was an encouragement for me during those first few years were the brothers and sisters at Elon College's InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Every Tuesday night was an evening of praise and worship and for some reason or another they even tolerated a fallen and frail guy like me. Helped me, even. A lot. Well, there was a bunch of singing those nights, and waaaay back in 1998 there was a whole night's "recording session" of those songs. Over the years the tapes were converted into MP3 files for digital dispersal among friends. I've been carrying them around on my iPod for more than six years now. When I went through an especially rough patch two years ago, these songs became one of the few things that helped me hold onto God's promise that the darkness would end. So, I can readily attest that there's some uplifting material here.

Geoff Gentry, not just a true brother in the Lord but an all-around kewl dude and techno-wunderkind, has made ALL of those recordings available on his website! There are two zipped-up files to download: one is the "main" body of 29 songs and then there's a "bonus" archive with 6 songs. My voice is somewhere in the larger collection but it's (thankfully) drowned out by those of much better singers. Anyhoo, these have been a blessing to me over the years and if you need something uplifting, maybe they can be a blessing to you too.

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It's the first clip ever from STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS!

Last night during Conan O'Brien's show on TBS, J.J. Abrams was a guest and he brought along the very first bit of footage from Star Trek Into Darkness that Paramount allowed him to show the public!

Want to see? Here it is!

Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to 2009's Star Trek, warps into theaters on May 17th 2013. Until then, this clip will have to tide us over for the next seven months.

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This winter brings the wrath of Khan

Ever breaking the boundaries of meteorology, The Weather Channel has announced that just as organized tropical storm systems have names, major winter storms will now be named too!

Here is the list of storm names for Winter 2012-2013:

What the...?!?

"Draco"? "Gandolf"? "Khan"? "Q"? "Rocky"?

"Orko"?!?!

To the left you see Orko, the Trollan magician/court jester from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. That is what people mostly think of when they hear "Orko". But according to The Weather Channel the name "Orko" was chosen because it's "the thunder god in Basque mythology". Yes, The Weather Channel went to a region of Spain to look for an obscure deity to be on their winter storm list. And they expect us to buh-leeeve that?

Jason Samenow writes some thoughts about this on the Washington Post's website. And make sure to stock up on plenty of bread and milk before we get slammed by Yogi.

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Popcorn Sutton: The Airplane!

That is the most awesome aircraft in history, and infinitely cooler than the Stealth Bomber.

(Okay, the SR-71 Blackbird will always be the greatest aircraft ever, but this is at least a very close second.)

I'm not sure if this is one person's private aircraft or something official with Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey, but it's got "93 Proof" printed on the fuselage and flies high and fast! 'Course it's been said that Popcorn's likker would make you fly high and fast without a plane, but anyhoo...

I wonder if we'll ever see a NASCAR driver sponsored by Popcorn Sutton's moonshine. Now that would be a beast of a hot-looking car!

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My girlfriend's performances at Spring Showcase 2012!

This is Kristen Bradford, the girl who I am more blessed than I possibly deserve to have in my life, along with her instructor Jay Henderson at this past weekend's Spring Showcase in Roanoke, Virginia...

(Photo credit goes to Ryan Kegel, who along with his wife Sarah were two of the many who came to cheer Kristen on :-)

Showcase is a twice-annual event hosted by the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Roanoke, Virginia. It's a formal/gala event at the Hotel Roanoke where the students perform before a large audience. This was the third one that I have been at since we've been dating and it was easily the most electrifying one yet!

Okay, 'nuff from me. Y'all want to see Kristen dance. And I'm gonna happily oblige ya!

First up was a "graduation ceremony" of sorts. Ballroom dancing has different levels of skill and competition. At this Showcase, Kristen is moving up from Bronze III to IV. Here are the routines that she performed...

Then followed a series of "mini-matches": four couples on the floor at the same time, with the crowd calling out the numbers pinned to the male partner's backs when that couple does something especially good. Here are the first three mini-matches Kristen did...

Kristen Bradford Mini-Match #1

Kristen Bradford Mini-Match #2

Kristen Bradford Mini-Match #3

Following the first half of Showcase there was a thirty-minute break. And during this time I had a little fun with the trusty iPad. Here is Kristen and Jay starring in "The Dancing Damsel!"

Following the break, Kristen returned to solo with a Samba...

Kristen had two more mini-matches for the evening...

Kristen Bradford Mini-Match #4

Kristen Bradford Mini-Match #5

And then, later on during Showcase, came a performance that I heard many say was perhaps the finest of the event. I certainly loved it!

Accompanying the song "Lady in Red", here is Kristen and Jay dancing Bolero...

Someday, I pray that I might be able to dance even half as good as Jay... because I would seriously love to be a serious enough a partner for Kristen :-)

After Showcase finished up, there was the fine dinner and night of dancing ahead of us. And yes, Yours Truly did hit the floor with mostly some Waltz and Rumba. I even did a fancy turn somewhere in there.

But I definitely gotta show y'all these guys. Nick Manzo and Laura Cotton came to Showcase all the way from the Arthur Murray studio in Arrowhead, Arizona! They are two of the top-ranked dance instructors anywhere in the world... and here you'll see why:

By this point the evening was getting long, and after all that dancing Kristen was feeling a bit exhausted.

And then Nick asked her for a dance! Here they are, having fun with a Hustle along with Sister Sledge's "We Are Family":

That was more than enough to put a few more times on the dance floor into her :-)

Everyone from the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Roanoke did a remarkable job! I'm looking at taking classes there sometime in the near future. Hey, maybe there's hope yet for a guy with two left feet :-)

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"The Angels Take Manhattan": Chris is increasingly conflicted about Amy and Rory's departure from DOCTOR WHO

"Spoilers"? I doubt it. By the night it aired everyone and their tin dog knew all too well that "The Angels Take Manhattan" would be the episode that saw wife-and-husband companions Amy and Rory (Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill) taking their bows from Doctor Who.

So what did this blogger think of the second Doctor Who story that the BBC has filmed in the United States?

I think that writer and showrunner Steven Moffat gave Amy and Rory a fine and fitting close to their part in the Doctor's epic mythology, with as much happiness as two people in love with each other could possibly have. At the same time, with more and more time passing since watching it I can't help but think that this story felt too fast-paced and blurring, especially toward an event which by every measure should be forever burned into the gestalt consciousness of the Whoniverse.

And then there is the point which will probably have people jumping flunky on me from all quarters: I honestly think that of the stories to date featuring the Weeping Angels, this was certainly the weakest.

Look folks, I am madly in love with the Weeping Angels so far as Doctor Who enemies are concerned! In a television show that has become as famous for its monsters as it has for its hero, the Weeping Angels stand as the most original and absolutely the most horrifying of the lot. Far more so than the Daleks and the Cybermen, even. In fact, I'd dare say that the Weeping Angels are the most frightening creatures in any modern fiction, period. They're such a terrifying and unique concept that I'm even attempting to write a fan-fiction story about them, so don't anybody say that I don't appreciate them!

But in "The Angels Take Manhattan", well... the Weeping Angels also came across as rushed, to the point of being - dare I say it - underwhelming.

Maybe it's a consequence of how this season is being structured. Moffat has stated a few times that Season 7 (or 33 depending on what you're incrementing from) would be a solid slate of one-episode stories. Based on the season so far, I'm beginning to suspect that wasn't a wise decision. "Asylum of the Daleks" and "A Town Called Mercy" definitely worked without having to span multiple chapters. But then there have been "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" and last week's "The Power of Three": stories that perhaps had potential but were shoehorned into less space than they deserved (okay, I don't know if anything could have helped "The Power of Three"). "The Angels Take Manhattan" is now the most glaring example of this problem, especially when one considers how last year's amazing "The Impossible Astronaut"/"The Day of the Moon" worked as the first Doctor Who story made on American soil. In retrospect it seems that selling-point was the biggest thing "The Angels Take Manhattan" had going for it... and gimmicks like that, however well intended, should never trump plot or pacing.

I'm not even going to begin to touch upon this episode's inordinately considerable amount of plotholes and inconsistencies. And just how does the Statue of Liberty go missing without anyone noticing it? Did illusionist David Copperfield have an uncredited cameo where his swimsuit-clad assistants hoisted a black curtain to hide the Statue from observation so it could go stomping off to Winter Quay? And how does a copper and steel colossus with hollow innards become a Weeping Angel, anyway?

River Song, with the ever-enjoyable Alex Kingston in the role, seems like a tacked-on addition to the episode. For someone who is the Doctor's wife and with such a major change-up at hand, River Song deserved better.

I'm gonna have to say that "The Angels Take Manhattan" fulfilled its mission of giving Amy and Rory a proper send-off. But the lead-up to that moment could have been immensely more memorable... and far less confusing.

"The Angels Take Manhattan" gets Three Sonic Screwdrivers from this blogger: not a bad episode, but not overwhelmingly "great" either.

And with that, Doctor Who returns with the now-traditional Christmas special airing December 25th!

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Bad Moon Rising: British cop's call for backup leads to luna-tickling mistake

A police officer in Great Britain is weathering international ribbing after calling in for reinforcements to help with a potentially dangerous situation... that turned out to be nothing more than the light of the silvery moon!

From the story at The Inquisitr:

According to Independent Online News, the story was originally picked up by Police magazine, which brought the cop’s startling encounter with the moon to the masses. In the article, the officer in question didn’t realize his mistake until after he’d told his co-workers that he might require backup.

“While single-crewed on night duty in Worcestershire a PC called up his sergeant letting him know that he was going up into the Clent Hills to investigate a ‘suspicious bright light’ that he could see shining from the other side of the hills,” the magazine revealed. “The call was for safety reasons as he might need back-up once he found the source. Twenty minutes later the PC called his sergeant back to reassure him that everything was ok and that he had found the source of the light.”

Fortunately, the mysterious light was nothing more than the moon hanging out in the heavens. All kidding aside, at least the cop was doing his job. Had the light turned out to be some sort of threat to the fine residents of Worcestershire, the poor guy would have been a hero. Sadly, he’s just the butt of a joke.

Personally, I don't think this guy should be ridiculed at all. Astral phenomenon has a long, long history of playing tricks with light on human visual acuity. I mean, the planet Venus has been mistaken for everything from distant volcanic eruptions to flying saucers. It's not the first time that somebody has been fooled by natural lights in the sky, and it won't be the last.

This policeman wasn't wrong to call for help if he thought there was legitimate reason for it. But still, all in all... it is a rather funny story :-)

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