I'm sure after yesterday's snowfall, people said to themselves, Man it is time to move to Florida. But what if you could - and still stay in the great Bay State? Then just head on waaaaaaaaaaaay down Route 2 until you hit Florida, Massachusetts. This booming metropolis of 676 residents at last census take was named after Spanish Florida in the late 1700s as everybody, even people founding the new world, was obsessed with Florida at the time. At approximately 24 square miles in area and bordering both Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as the Deerfield River, there ain't much to do in Florida. Most the residents work in nearby towns and its one namesake, the Hoosac Tunnel railway through the Berkshires, doesn't even have any stops in Florida. Florida has one school - a K thru 8th - and ships his high school kids to nearby high schools in North Adams. I would go on, but that's it. Literally that's all she wrote. Florida, Massachusetts - my advice, take a photo of the absurdity of word Florida with the MA sealroad sign, and keep on trucking. 

-Reece 

Ever seen Don's Plum? You probably never will either. But it stars some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey MacGuire, as well Kevin Connelly, Amber Benson, Marissa Ribisi, and Nikki Cox. It was a low budget black and white film that was made in 1995, and released in 2001 only in non-North American markets. It never was distributed in these parts, and furthering the weird, an agreement was made between McGuire, DiCaprio, and the films' writers and producers that it would never be released in the US or Canada. Why the blacklist? Of some of few that ever saw, one critic called it the best film he saw at a Berlin festival. Another called it an "unpleasant and tedious ensemble." The movie's description is pretty vague: a group of friends make crude jokes while hanging out at a diner. What could have been so bad that they felt the need to totally hide this movie from everyone as if it never existed? Do Leo and Tobey make racial jokes? Do they make fun of incest or rape or abortion or AIDS? It can't be that terrible. We live in a day and age where movies and TV shows rountinely make fun of the some of the worst, most deplorable acts in humanity. Hell Family Guy does it weekly.  The not knowing is the killer for me. To not know why this movie is so off limits is eating me up. It's is either something so brutal that Tobey McGuire and Leo DiCaprio are afraid of some major PR hit, or maybe, the movie is just so shitty, they don't want to be associated with it. I assume it's of the latter but why the big secret?

Did you know that Salute Your Shorts was only on for 2 seasons on Nickelodeon in the 90s? I feel like it was on for literally 25 years. I started to wonder, what happened to all those lovable campers from Camp Anawanna. Obviously we know what happened to Budnick and Donkeylips - Budnick is stealing from ATMs with John Connor and hanging out in mall arcades looking for middle school puss, and Donkeylips is still large and in charge. But what about some of the other campers?

Heidi Lucas aka Dina Alexander the prissy princess and smokeshow in training actually grew up to be a full fledge smokeshow. Check her out now:

I'd definitely like to give her an Awful Waffle right in her hair. After Shorts she did a few other minor projects and even did a foray into soft core; In 1992 she appeared in the 'Fantasy Dating Game' Girls' Club. Created for the Philip's CD-I, Imagination Machine, it allowed girls to go on interactive dates with thirty of the 'coolest guys in the universe'. I don't know whether to be totally geeked out or jerk off, but whatever. She is blazin.

And how about her boyish love at Camp Anawanna - Michael? Michael vanished from the Earth. Much like his quick exit from the series after season one, he exited from the Hollywood scene and the planet as well. Even a wikipedia scoure like me couldn't dog up anything on the man whose boxers hung from the flagpole on day one. But his replacement - Pinky? Oh man he is everywhere.

The man who played Ronnie Pinksky (and also Joey The Rat on Boy Meets World) is Blake Sennett - he is now the leader singer of Rilo Kiley, a band that is  fronted by another child actor turned singer Jenny Lewis (the chick from The Wizard!). After BMW and SYS, Blake fell into the music biz, and even scored a film, which is a whole other fun fact for another time (hint it starred Tobey McGuire and Leo DiCaprio and you will NEVER see it). Together the wrote songs about the Savage brothers, why Minkis was such a prick, and how come they couldn't spend any of their money until they were 18.

And how about the tastefully named Venus DeMilo? She played Teddy aka the sassy black chick. What that's not racist - she really was sassy!

Venus moved on to the major leagues after Shorts - she had a couple year run on Family Matters as Laura's sassy friend and a run on Sister, Sister playing another sassbag in Rashelle. That was about it for Venus - her one feature was a bit part in Eddie Murphy's Life. She also got her freak on in MTV's soft-core Undressed show. Two campers - two soft cores! I love it!  Nothing too big after that. I can't say why - she is a major smokeshow now. She was even better looking than Dina back in the day - yes I said it!

And how about Sponge Harris aka Tim Eyster? Check out this badass nowadays. Hmm, somebody overcompensating for playing a speckled geek on Nickelodeon 20 years ago? Have another sleeveless Tee there, Timbo.

But you want to know who the most successful camper to graduate from Camp Anawanna? It's not even a camper - it's Ug! Thats' right - the losery head counselor Ug aka Kirk Bailey has had the most successfull career of em all.

Check out a list of his credits:
Yogi Bear
Buried
Open Season
Over the Hedge

Sure they were all voice work but hey a paycheck's a paycheck! Plus he also had roles in NYPD Blue, Pacific Blue, Melrose Place, Star Trek, 7th Heaven, and a slew of over mediocre 90s shows. That's how fuckin Ug rolls baby. All the campers made fun of him teased him, shit on him - well who's laughing now!

No, this was not the score of the last Patriots-Jets game, though it felt like, but in fact the biggest blow out win in college football history. It featured Cumberland vs Georgia Tech, and was played in 1916 in Atlanta when football was just starting to become all the rage of college sports. I don't think in Madden 99 with 15 minute quarters, at Rookie level, and playing as the St. Louis Rams versus the Cleveland Browns could you even register such a score. It was a beatdown of epic proportions. Georgia Tech recorded over 1600 yards rushing in the game (I don't think one NFL back gained 1600 yards this entire season) and did not attempts one pass. In contrast the Cumberland bums gained minus-96 yards of offensive, and lost 9 fumbles (they fumbled twice on their first two possessions). They did manage 14 yards of passing offense (on 2 of 14 passing) but also threw 6 picks. Georgia Tech also ran up 220 yards on punt returns and 220 yards on kick returns, and scored 4 defensive/special teams touchdowns.

So how did such a record annihilation even happen? Well you're not gonna believe this but the architect of this demolition was one John Heisman, the namesake of the famous Heisman trophy. Kind of thought of the Heisman stood for integrity and honor in college football? Tough to do that when dropping two hundy on a team. As for Cumberland College, their school actually had no college football program at the start of the 1916 season.  The season had been cancelled, but since Cumberland already promised to pay big bucks to GA Tech to put on a football game that season (good to see that hasn't changed in a hundred years - big programs being paid big money to come to small schools to beat down cupcake programs), they had to field a team. They basically drafted 14 random scrubs to play the game against Georgia Tech. But despite sucking enormous ass in football, Cumberland actually had a decent baseball program, and earlier that year throttled GA Tech 22-0 on the diamond. Some say GA Tech took that personally which is why the football team didn't let up on the gridiron.

It's that time of the season again and no I'm not talking about Christmas. It's the time of the season where the Bill O'Reillys of the world freak out about how our culture is losing sight of Christmas by supplanting the word "holidays" or "XMas" instead of using the proper use of Christmas. Ironically enough, I've never heard Bill O'Reilly attack the rampant and soul shattering consumerism that occurs around Christas time. And I've also never read in a christian newsletter about how maybe it's not a great idea to instill the concept in our kid's heads that buying things for someone means that you love them. Somewhere along the way, Santa Claus and Jesus became cheap shills for free market capitalism, but that's not what I'm hear to tell you about.
        This year, the term "Xmas" has taken a beating, as the clueless have opined how it takes the spirit out of the holidays. Funny how these people never think to google things. Because it turns out that the "X" in Xmas refers to the first letter in Christos, the Greek form of Christ (X is pronounced chi in the Greek alphabet). If you don't believe this, do me a favor and ask the Deli King guys.
    So, in actuality, saying Xmas is closer to the original expression than the English form of Christmas. What Americans seem to forget sometimes is that other civilizations existed before ours and that not everyone in the world is an American. The New Testament wasn't written in English considering the language wasn't created yet but I'm sure that's going to stop the same commentators from claiming that using the Greek form is somehow unAmerican (because the US has the copyright on Christmas you know). But that's for tomorrow's fun...

Guess where the annual four day Scandinavian Festival takes place? I will seriously give you one thousand guesses and you'll never get it. For the sake of argument, let's just say, "I dunno Reece, where?" Junction City, Oregon! That's right, the rip roaring Scandinavian Festival, celebrating all things Norse, Dane, and Swede, takes place in a town of 4500 residents named after a railroad track. The Festival brings in a whooping 100,000 tourists and millions of revenue for the town per year as people eat, dance, and drink away the long weekend while indulging in the custom sof the snowy Northern European regions. Wooo! Let's get Scandinavalous!

Actually the origin behind the Scandinavian Festival is pretty Americanized when you break it down. In 1961, Junction City was a dying town and the townspeople wanted to figure out a way to boost their economy, boost tourism, and basically boost everything about it before it became just another Oregon ghost town. Dr. Gale Fletchall, a local resident, searched for a rally point for the community to get behind - and what he came up with borderline absurd: a celebration of the city’s very real but very dormant Scandinavian heritage. The amount of raging Scanadinavian activity in Junction City at the time was pretty low; an Irish fest in the North End probably would have been more popular. But Dr. Fletchall convinced the town's older Danish residents to get on board, and the community launched the first Scando Fest with some food and craft booths opened in the downtown, along with dancers and entertainment. The town expected maybe half the population to show up - over 25,000 showed that first year.

Today, the event has ballooned - with hundreds of tousands of visitors. It is one of Oregon's most popular events. Some of the activity that take place include Viking marches, puppet shows, retellings of Hans Christian Andersen's tales, folk music and folk dancing troupes, and a shit ton of Scandinavian food.

Here is the nerd that started it all. The X-Files, V, Star Trek, Independence Day - here is the guy that started the whole UFO gravy train. Kenneth Arnold is widely considered the the father of UFO sightings as he is believed to have made the first recorded UFO sighting in Mount Rainer, Washington in 1947. A successful businessman, volunteer, and aviator in his spare time, Arnold was making a solo flight on business in Washington when he heard of a $500 reward by the US military for the discovery of a US Marine trasnport plane that had crashed somewhere near Mount Rainer. Adjusting his flight, he detoured his trip to his business meeting to try and spot the wreckage, when he allegedly saw what would make him infamous. At first he saw a bright flashing light; afraid it was another close by plane, he cannned the skies but could see no other aircrafts. Following this first light, he saw a distinct pattern of nine objects streaking past him. Too fast to be birds and too thin to be other aircraft, he observed them sail past him; he later reported they were crescent shaped and looked like "saucers skipping on the water."

When Arnold landed back in Washington, he naturally told anyone he met what he saw in the skies. Newspapers flocked for first hand account from Arnold, and this is where the term "flying saucer" was coined, as Arnold's description caught wind and headlines boasted of flying saucers in papers all over the country. As for the US government response, here's a weird response: they actually believed him. Here is the statement by the interviewing officer after speaking with Arnold in July:

"It is the present opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold actually saw what he stated he saw. It is difficult to believe that a man of [his] character and apparent integrity would state that he saw objects and write up a report to the extent that he did if he did not see them."
-Lt. Frank Brown and Capt. William Davidson (US military)

But the Air Force later stated that what Arnold saw was a mirage. Hey at least they didn't call it a fuckin weather balloon!

As you can imagine, Arnold's story brought out the crazies. In the weeks that followed Arnold's story, at least several hundred reports of similar sightings flooded in from the U.S. and around the world — most of which described saucer-shaped objects. That year there were 853 flying disc sightings from 140 newspapers in Canada nearly every US state. It even prompted the US Air Force to begin an unofficial project to look into the UFO phenomenom, called Project: Sign. My advice to get super baked and click on that link - you won't be disappointed. And as for Kenneth Arnold, after his UFO sighting, Arnold became a minor celebrity, and became involved in interviewing other UFO witnesses or contactees. He began to move away from the UFO world by the 1960s, and died in 1984, still convinced what he saw was of extra-terrestrial origin.

You may have seen the new trailer for Battle: Los Angeles that we featured in our Talkin Trailers entertainment report, but do you know why it was called that? In 1942, less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when American paranoia and war fears were at an all time high, a very strange occurence happened in Los Angeles where the American military thought they were under attack from unknown entities. In the middle of the night on February 24th, strange lights and flares were reported off the coast of Los Angeles. Since the entire country had the frayed nerves of a ninety year old woman on Zanax, military defenses were immediately mobilized and anti-aircraft artillery was readied in response to what was believed to be an impending attack. But strange enough - the radar actually did pick up mysterious objects whcih would immediately "vanish" from sight, making everyone even more freaked out then they already were. At some point around 3am, somebody lost their shit and ordered a counter strike, and the Los Angeles sky light up like the Fourh of July as anti-aircaft artillery opened fire at the sky. For a straight hour our coastal defenses shot at the sky, but when the smoke cleared, the only targets that had been hit were our own; shell fragements hit several buildings in LA and there were four reported deaths. Nice job, coastal defenses. Who was in charge that operation, Sargent Magoo?

After the air raid, the US government released a statement that the entire operation was a false alarm. Their official press release - found here - laid the blame on, what else, weather balloons! I'm sorry, but are you fucking kidding! Weather fucking balloons! Everytime time some shady shit happens in the sky - the first thing out of any type of authority or government figure's mouth is "weather balloons." How out of control and dangerous looking are these weather balloons thatrthey are constantly mistakenly for UFOs or attacking war planes? Of course, even today UFO enthusiasts are calling shennaigans on the military's explanation. I agree -
chalk this one to absolute bullshit. Something weird happened on February 24th 1942.

The World Beard and Moustaches Championships is an annual event held in various locations worldwide, where men travel far and wide displaying lengthy and styled facial hair to entertain the masses. Beginning in 1990, the World Beard and Moustache Championshops began as a small scale event in Germany, but as of 2007, it had exploded to a  full stage Woodstockian events, featuring comedy performers, celebrity moustache impersonators, and musical acts. The latest event will be held in Norway in 2011. The contests themsleves judge hairy particpants in several categories and groups. There are 4 brackets of facial hair: Moustache, Sideburn, Partial Beard and Full Beard. Each bracket is then broken into individual categories:

The category of Moustache has several features, and includes:

-Natural moustache
-English moustache (narrow, slightly curled; end pointed slightly upward)
-Dali (in the style of Salvatore Dali)
-Imperial Moustache (also known as a Handlebar)
-Hungarian (the Walrus)
-Freestyle (anything goes)

The Partial and Full Beard brackets also have some wild categories. Some of these styles sound like sex moves. The Alaskan Whaler is all beard with no moustache. The Imperial is hair to be grown only on cheeks and upper lip. The Cleveland Steamer is of course taking a dump on someone with the facial stylings of Bernie Kosar. Ok that one I made up, but you get the idea.

All in all, it looks like a hell of a time the World Beard and Moustache Championships looks like a fun time. I mean, these guys are no jokes. We have our shits and giggles stashes in the US, but we can't hold a candle to some of these European rockstars. I mean look at this shit. These guys ahve been growing mustaches and beards for hundred and hundreds of years. They're like Jason Voorhees - they don't die! They just regenerate facial hair!

Did you know that in the 1940s, Japan wanted to create a Super Asian empire of nations that included itself, China, Manchukuo and several island nations in Southeast Asia. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a concept developed by the empire of Japan in 1940 in an effort to unite East Asian nations under one umbrella of their own tasty Asian goodness. The motto of the Sphere was "a new international order seeking co prosperity for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination." Their goals also included total naval dominance in the Indian Ocean, the isloation of Australia, and oh yeah, the complete occupation of all Far East Asian nations. Yikes. Yeah that one was a tough sell. Japan used the concept of the Sphere in order to justify their agression in the early days leading up to WWII, and with each nation being "absorbed" (ie conquerored) into the Sphere, Japan would establish a puppet government to further tehir agenda. The Sphere outline developed by Japan stretched all across the Far East, into French Indochina, and as far west to some areas of South America and the Carribean. Fun fact within a fact - Japan had no plans to move into any Russian territory - that's how bad ass the Ruskies were back then; even Japan's plans for a complete eastern hemisphere domination avoided any conflict with the Reds.

Fortunately for the world, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere failed. While they suceeded in absorbing many nations, multiple obstacles - most significantly resistance by Chinse Muslims (yes they do exist!) - ultimately caused the Sphere expansion to fail. The Sphere influence failed to reach other nations as Japan's influence began to overshadow a spirit of a traditional Asian values and spirit; people were cool with the idea of a Super Asian nation, but once Japan started Japanese-ing everything, people began to realize the Sphere existed was only serve Japan's interest, not all of Asia's. And it is probably a good idea too - if the Sphere had worked and all of Asian became unified under the empire of Japan, we could have been screwed in WWII. Imagine having a billion Chinese on board fighting us as well as the Axis Powers. If things had gone differently, we'd all be eating Japanese food by now.

Wait aren't we already?