Two dog pools, some hardware, and damn, you've got yourself a big yo-yo. Chris Allen, a professional yo-yoist (yes, this exists) is claiming world's biggest yo-yo status with his latest creation. It stands 35 inches across, 18 inches wide, and weighs 5.4 pounds. Watch below as Allen tests it off the roof of parking garage of the National Yo-Yo Museum in Chico, California. Previously, Yo Mama Ain't Got Nothin' on Jensen Kimmitt (AKA The Yo-Yo God)
From LAist: Meg Whitman has set a new record, having now spent more of her own money on her gubernatorial campaign than any politician has spent in US history, according to abc7.
From LAist: "A silly ad is how you get attention, right? Well, the Republican candidate for California's 36th Congressional District, which covers Venice, the South Bay, San Pedro and parts of South L.A., has certainly done that.
California native Joji Kojima's jewelry belongs in a Freddy Krueger nightmare. Evocative of death, violence and a macabre fetishism, these accessories aren't for the soft-natured.
Artist Jim Denevan works on a massive scale. He's "painted" the northern beaches of California, and etched away at the Nevada desert.
From The Huffington Post: California Democrat Maxine Waters faces a House trial this fall on three charges of ethical wrongdoing.
World's biggest skateboard. World's dumbest skateboard. Whichever you find most fitting. You pick. Crowned by the Guinness Book Of World Records as the world's biggest, Joe Ciaglia and California Skateparks' creation stands at 3 feet 7 1/2 inches tall, 8 feet 8 inches wide and 36 feet 7 inches long.
Heed the NSFW. This is some mature content. So, IF you're at work on this fine Saturday morning, you may want to hover over "minimize"...
DRUM! Magazine — the leading magazine for drummers and percussionists worldwide — has announced the biggest drumming event ever to take place in Northern California. On Friday, August 13, drummers will descend on the San Jose Repertory Theatre in the heart of Silicon Valley to witness three of the world’s most exciting drummers — extreme drumming sensation Marco Minnemann, Tower Of Power funk master David Garibaldi, and former Mars Volta wunderkind Thomas Pridgen — for an evening of mind-blow...
Kevin Mathieu of California offers this interactive ART piece for rent at kids or adult parties. Based on a US Postal Jeep, this LEGO jeep is equipped with LEGO surfaces throughout its shape to stick LEGO's to. After writing a 40 page art proposal LEGO gave Kevin 600 lbs of LEGOs, but he is still looking for more. So if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area be on the lookout for the LEGO JEEP.
GOOD, a Los Angeles-based magazine focused on doing good in the world, along with LAUSD, The USDA People’s Garden Initiative, The Environmental Media Association, The National Gardening Association, The Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, The California School Garden Network, and Mia Lehrer & Associates, is sponsoring a contest for people to help design a garden for a LAUSD school. GOOD will help build the winning garden design, and they'd like your participation, too.
Update: New Trailer (7/9/10) In July of 2008, Fawaz Al-Matrouk, director of "To Rest In Peace", brought me on to shoot his USC graduate thesis film. Two years, 3 cameras, and over 15,000 miles later, the film is in its last week of post, having completed our final color correction at Light Iron Digital in Culver City yesterday.
When you surf in Southern California, there are several challenges. The water's never warm enough, the crowds are always dense, shark sightings abundant and of course, water quality is perpetually terrible. With 15 million people living 'up-river' from our waves, it's no wonder the water is gross.
Heal the Bay does an excellent job at reporting and monitoring water quality in California. This interactive map will show you live information from their test sites down to the exact beach.
Hello World! Welcome to the place wholly devoted to the local surf of Southern California. I am like many people a transplant from the East Coast. I started surfing when I moved here for college 8 years ago.
I usually enjoy my steak grilled, but using a cut of Grade A beef as a photography still-life works, too. Clever steak-art by photographer Dominic Episcopo.
Flickr user MR38 has posted a set of photos of bumper cars made street legal, as displayed at the annual Cruisin’ Grand festival in Escondido, California. This mini cars were retrofitted with 750 cc Kawasaki motors. Cool auto mod.
Created as an advertising campaign for fashion designer Adam Kimmel, filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos and friends dressed up total-skateboarder-nuts in Kimmel's spring line... and sent them barreling down a hill in Claremont, California.
Mark Benthien (Director of Communication, Education, and Outreach, Southern California Earthquake Center ) gives expert video advice on: What are the key considerations when preparing for an earthquake? | What are the essential elements of an earthquake disaster plan? | What types of food and water should I have? | What earthquake supplies should I keep near my bed? and more... Prepare for an earthquake.
Being a true cheapskate, I've long worshiped the iconic 99¢ Only Stores and its legendary and late-blooming founder, David Gold. Gold ranked in the Forbes 400 back in 2004, but didn't launch his empire until he was well into his 50s. And just last month, his extended family and private equity firm Leonard Green offered to take the retail chain from public to private—for $1.34 billion. Curious about Gold's unorthodox road to riches, I interviewed him and his wife Sherry at Los Angeles's public...
There is going to be an annular solar eclipse on May 20th that will be visible in a narrow pathway that covers part of Eastern Asia and the Western United States. The eclipse will be seen as a partial eclipse over a much greater region of the World. I live in Redding, California, which luckily happens to be right in the center of the path, giving a perfect ring of fire effect during the peak of the eclipse.
The peak of the Lyrid meteor shower of 2012 was the night of Saturday, April 21, and I went to Whiskeytown Lake near Redding, California and took about 1,000 pictures. I used 3 Panasonic GH2s with various lenses and edited all of the shots together to make the time-lapse video below. You really have to watch it in full screen at 720p or 1080p HD in order to appreciate it. This is only my second attempt at a time-lapse video and my second attempt at filming meteors, but I was pretty happy with...
Police in Los Angeles have killed a motorist who was fleeing after a police chase on U.S. 10 in the San Fernando Valley. Eight cops fired more than 90 rounds at 19-year old Abdul Arian as he fled police after they rammed his car. The teenager was unarmed.
So, when Christopher brought up Nikola Tesla in his very first post on Fear of Lightning, it got me interested in learning more about the man behind alternating current. There is plenty of info out there on the Internet, widely available for free, but sometimes it's just nice to have a book in your hands... or on your computer or mobile device.
Luckily for Los Angeles residents, Southern California's most populated county is chock full of amazing Chinese food. Granted it's a far drive for many—the best restaurants are in Alhambra and Monterey Park, which fall within the far eastern realm of the county—but regardless, I've found more amazing Chinese restaurants in L.A. than New York City.
This short film was shot entirely on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR. It's called The Last 3 Minutes and was directed by Po Chan, and shot by cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC. The main character is a janitor, whose life is kind of mundane. At least, that's what it seems like, but as the story develops, many layers of interesting happenings are revealed. Scenes were shot in both 24 and 30fps, and they used Canon L Series prime lenses, using great depth of field. Lenses used in the making were:
Nintendo has already confirmed that the successor to the Wii will be on the market in 2012, but a lot is still unknown about Project Café, the codename given to the device. From all of the leaked information on the web, it seems like there's a significant design upgrade from the Wii, making it hard to imagine this gaming console being called or even referred to as the Wii 2.
From Fox News, the Marquis Los Cabos resort in Baja California Sur, Mexico is now offering a $1,000 Popsicle made from 24 ct. gold flakes and Tequilas Premium Clase Azul Ultra—a premium liquor that goes for $1,500 a bottle. You can enjoy the gold-laced ice pop as you're lounging by the pool.
It's remarkable that a gaming device (from Microsoft, no less) designed for geeky gamers has incited broad innovation in medicine and robotics. But that Kinect has captured the imagination of hackers-with-MBAs-in-mind is downright amazing.
If you missed our profile on photographer Sharon Beals' new book, Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them, now's the time to check it out. You have until 11:59 pm tonight to enter for a chance to win a signed copy of Beals' book, a beautiful series of photographs demonstrating the astounding self-sustainability of the avian race. To enter, you must:
This is an amazing resource put together by the Monterey Bay Aquarium called "Seafood Watch". You can look up any type of seafood on their website, and they will tell you whether that seafood is good for your body and for the environment!
A triathlon is a multi-sport endurance event involving swimming, bicycling and running. The multiple phases of this event must be completed within immediate succession of each other, and the event is timed, along with the transitions between each event.
We know it's fun to break stuff, but Santa sure isn't going to be as good to Michael Tompert next year. The San Francisco digital imaging and CGI artist destroyed a whole slew of brand-new Apple gadgets as a statement on "our relationship with fetish, fashion, freedom, and bondage."
In January of this year, I went to Kuwait with director Fawaz Al-Matrouk to complete photography for the film "To Rest In Peace". We shot the majority of the film in Southern California, duping air force bases, homes, and beaches for authentic Kuwaiti locations. Because traveling was a significant theme for the film, we went to the small, nearly deserted island of Failaka (about 20km off the mainland). Captured by the Iraqi army and deserted by its citizens almost 20 years ago, this island wa...
Wired posts a gallery of the original models of now iconic devices, with some fun tech-fetish facts. Did you know the first cell phone weighed a whopping 4.4 pounds? Or that the world's first super soaker was invented completely by accident? Examples below; click through for Wired's complete gallery.
What feature would we most like to see in the robots of tomorrow? Why, the ability to interact with human beings without crushing them to death, of course. Happily, thanks to a new pressure-sensitive synthetic skin technology, the dream is within reach:
Ok, so for this one its going to be on my friend Nathans cousin, Justin, once again. We mess with this guy sooo much ha. Read the whole prank, but it short, He thinks he's gonna be in an actual movie, but instead its a Jurassic Park themed gay porn shoot. So we're gonna tell him we're going to California to be in Jurassic Park 4(he'll believe it, trust me). On the flight we can even have a couple pages of a fake script to read. When we get there it'll be just like any other shoot or at least ...
This weekend in a jungle estuary, the DEA and local Ecuadorian police seized a prototype narco sub that may be the most sophisticated one yet. Complete with air conditioning and periscope, this 100 foot creation would have carried a more cocaine tonnage than any previously captured narco sub. To give you a perspective on the resourcefulness of these outlaws, consider this. A U.S. Navy Virginia Class attack submarine will run around $2.8 billion. But a drug lord in Cartagena would make you one...
So, apparently in our modernistic approach for child rearing "authenticity", it turns out there is a market for human breast milk. However, for a mother seeking the best for her child, it is impossible to know whether artificial milk or unidentified breast milk is healthier. The FDA certainly does not have the time or funds to step in.
