In a recent high profile row, Ralph Lauren took flack for blatant outrageous Photoshopping of models.   But this has not reformed the industry.   Instead, magazines like W have simply decided to jam more false images of how people look down our throats.  After all, who is to stop them?Check out what it appears to be 36 year old Anja Rubik's superimposed body... scratch that - her body was attached to Demi Moores for the sake of a better cover image.    You have to wonder, did Demi even wear the same Balmain dress?There has to be an extreme effort to put forth to take a woman that is 47 and make her look like a woman much younger.   The answer may be beyond Photoshop, it could very well be full body replacement with the use of Photoshop.  Representatives from W claim 'nothing unusual' was done but of course that means nothing because Photoshopping is standard practice in the industry.  The blogsphere has gone nuts questioning if the photo is retouched.   This writer asserts the photo is both retouched with other significant changes.The story is evolving by the minute.  Demi being the high-tech tweeter has joined the fray and insists in a tweet:  Here is the original image people my hips were not touched don't let these  people bullxxxx you!I've always been a big Demi Moore fan.  I mean no disrespect in any way, there seems to be a great body evidence (no pun intended) that the body in her photo is not her.  Offering up a photo she received from W magazine isn't the same as the original photo before any staffer touched it.  Perhaps she can clarify this and put he matter to rest.  Until then, a lot of speculation will continue.  If nothing else people are ...   more »

Are you taking care of your man? Well, here is a chance to show him how much you appreciate him. Why? Because November 19th is International Men's Day.

In the spirit of equality and less gender discrimination against men, the idea is somewhat new. In 1999 the day was launched posthumously in Trinidad and Tobago.

International Men's day is meant to showcase the unheralded achievements of men such as being good husbands, or fathers. The United Nations has gotten behind the event to offer gender balance, celebrate mens achievements and promote an anti-sexist environment.



Folks ...If you know me. I think these days are mostly a crock.  See my previous article where I take issue and I complain about International Woman's Day.  BUT and this is a big BUT, (not butt) if we are going to promote an International Woman's Day, then it's good that men get one too. What's next? International Short ...    more »

And if you're listening up there... you could consider this a prayer...

Once again Paddy McCloon thoughtfully protests to God in heaven.  But for me, when this song came out I had a blast with it.  I was married.  My eldest son was just a little one, and my youngest - just a baby.   My wife would come in and one would be upset and the other started balling.  I'd laugh.  She'd be stressed but I'd be amused.  The words to this song came to mind and I'd just blurt them out in laughter...  "Once more the sound of crying - is number one across the Earth!"

So as you listen to this tune.  Imagine if you have kids how when they cry, you just have tell them.  "Once more the sound of crying is number one across the Earth."  Because if you are a parent, you gotta know, sometimes the tears just come.  Usually because a little one has decided they want something they can't have or just want a bottle.  Call me silly.  It's just how I handled it.  Hey, my kids don't cry now. I think they turned out just fine. ;) 

As for the song.... Great message too.   I wonder if God hears all of Paddy's commentary in music. 



Bonus Vid: If you Don't love me...
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I think when we are single we hope to meet someone ...we envision meeting someone that makes us trip over our own thoughts.   To meet that person, we need to somehow jump into an environment that takes us outside our own comfort zone.  Somewhere that despite how great we may think we are, that person we want to meet is so much better.  Heaven forbid we actually accomplish this, because really - few of us ever do.   But if we should accomplish meeting that person in that environment we would doom ourselves because we would trip over own own thoughts. 

I'll get to the answer soon.  Let me digress.

Hey you are reading this so let's just assume you are cool with getting deep on you at the moment.  After all, for me today is a special day.   Nope. I'm a jack-ass I won't tell you why.  But let me just tell you that it's a day that's made me think about mortality and the reason why people ...   more »

We've all made a paper airplane, usually we have two choices.  The long jet, or the short stunt plane.  Neither flies all that great.  What if you could combine the two for a snub nosed paper airplane that actually flies GREAT!

(Aside from the instructional video below - the Sky King Instructional Diagram of at right is larger file, right click and save if you want larger printable image)

That's just what Takuo Toda of Japan did April 11th 2009.  His origami paper airplane design combines the best of various designs into a super airplane known as the Sky King. His invention was recognized in 2009 by Time Magazine as one of the year's top 50 inventions.  Toda  knows a lot about inventing a great paper airplane, after all he's chairman of the Japan Origami Airplane Association. "Since I was about 4 years old, I’ve been able to make really good paper planes and commit the steps to memory."  His ambition has resulted in the Sky King (a.k.a. the Toda Fold), a paper airplane which in April 2009 was flown for a record 27.9 seconds at a competition in Hiroshima. "I'd been trying to break the record for 11 years," said Toda, 52. "I finally got it." It's not Toda's only plane design, he has over 700 in his resume.  He's even got various paper airplane instructional books published.   He hopes one day to reach a flight time of 35 seconds which he has accomplished in practice.

Anyone that has ever tossed a hand glider paper airplane has hoped for longer flight time.  People have tossed paper airplanes off the anything they could climb.  As a kid who hasn't stood on a balcony or roof of their house and tossed a plane? Adults have thrown them off tall buildings.  There is an unconfirmed story in paper airplane circles that in the U.S. a paper airplane was thrown off a mountain.  The person drove drove a half an hour downhill to a lower parking lot and the paper airplane landed at the same time he arrived.  

Takuo Toda's greater goal is to drop an airplane from orbit in space and NASA has approved it.  Still, Toda has some stiff competition in that area as Andy Chipling, president of the Paper Aircraft Association has already dropped a paper airplane from 7,000 feet which was performed from a hot air balloon high over Kenya in Africa.  He and the balloon operator were already at 5,000 feet above sea level so in reality they were 2,000 feet up.  Perhaps his toss from a para glider may have been more monumental.  What makes it special is those planes have survived the drop.  No one knows if a the planes dropped from the International Space Station will survive even though they'll be treated with a special glass coating to protect them in re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

Like the paper airplane you made as a kid, the Sky King is made of a single sheet of paper, which can be a your basic oblong notebook sheet or copy sheet (8.5 x 11).    You won't need any tape or glue either.



Fly it inside and you'll think, nice.  But since you won't have a flight-hanger to toss yours in, you may not get the same results as Mr Toda.  You may even think the Sky King is not much different than other paper airplanes.  Take it outside and it will really impress you.  You'll get long flight time results.   Here is a video of how to make the Sky King courtesy of Wired...   more »

Sometimes great movies hide outside our orbit. The studios released Moon in limited release in the usual places, L.A. & N.Y. Moon has won various awards, Best Euro Fantasy Film, Best Film at Sitges International Film Festival, Best New British Feature, Silver Hitchcock from Dinard Film Festival and Golden Athena from Athens International Film Festival.  So why didn't the savvy theater-goers of these two great cities give Moon enough buzz for wider release? 

The reality is Moon is a pensive and thoughtful film. It's hard to market sci-fi films in the first place unless they are action related. Sure it's a sci-fi with a twist, but it is more of an intellectual journey with appropriate special effects to support the story. Moon was destined to miss the big screen. Don't miss it on the small screen!

Moon is a one man show; unless you count the moon-base computer guide, GERTY portrayed by Kevin Spacey a second man. Yet as the story unfolds and other characters are exposed we come back to the same point, Moon is a one man show. Now I hate to give away plot points in reviews because - and especially in this case, it would make the story less enjoyable for you if you are looking to peel back the layers of what you see for the first time on your own.

The premise is simple. A man (Sam Bell) is working on the moon alone. Similar to Robinson Carouse in that he is stranded for a period of time and yearns to be with his family again.  Sam has a wife and child and does all he can to fill his time in an effort to finish his three year contract and return to Earth to be with them.  His days are filled with repetition so ultimately he does everything almost like a machine despite his outward enthusiasm which he uses to mask his ever-growing longing to go home to his wife. It becomes evident Sam feels no joy in any task...    more »

She holds his hand and it breaks his heart.

Now you tell me what is wrong with that sentence?  What's wrong with that thought?  Yet it is true. 

500 Days of Summer is not a love story.  It is.  It is that story that every guy has buried inside his soul where we all think that only we know romance.  It's that story of how we think we are all so special and more unique than anyone else.  It's the story about how we believe the myth our mother told us that one day we will find true love.

It's a story about true love.  The problem is it's about the truth of love. 

Have you seen Casablanca?  No... 500 Days of Summer is not Casablanca.  It is however a story that delivers the truth of love in the same way Casablanca does.  It gives you that kick in the teeth twist that only real life could deliver.  It gives you that obvious answer you can't see because you are too busy seeing things the way you want them to be, not as how they really are.  It's delicately told story with some hard hitting truth.   Oh... did I mention this is classified a 'romantic comedy'?

Hollywood can be evil. Songs can be evil, books and stories... so evil.  They all indoctrinate us to believe that each one of us is going to find that one special person that above all others will not forsake us, and make us feel loved.  500 Days of Summer is a reminder that the harder you search for that true love, the harder it is to see what love is. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a compelling leading man.  He plays Tom Hansen a young twenty-something that has for all his life felt that regardless of his ...   more »

Some free advice to those of you thinking that only you know suffering.  Only you have it hard.  Life sucks, blah blah blah.  Your girl left, you lost your job, or whatever it is, you have resolved to have forgotten how to enjoy the simple concept of breathing in and out.

Here is the answer.

While you are living in that dark place, life is passing you by.   Each moment, each minute each day that you live in your bête noire the world around you leaves you behind.  You can be a part of it, or miss out on what it offers.  It is - what you make it.
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Bitter?  Hell yeah. I'm a Phillies fan.  One that wore my hat before they became the powerhouse they are.  As a Phillies fan I can't complain that the Yankees won, the fans and the team itself wanted to play the best team in baseball and make it something to be proud of.

Again, I'm not writing this to offer excuses for why the Phillies lost.  They lost to the better team.  I'm about to tell you what sucks about losing to this particular 'better team'.


One thing is certain and satisfying, the Phillies didn't buy up all the all-stars around the league to assemble a team of prostitutes.   I love the city of New York, I think the people of New York are pretty damn nice.    I would root on the Yankees if Steinbrenner didn't own the team.  He's handed over the team to his son so I guess I'll never root for the Yankees. 

The Yankees had a montra this post season, it was, "WIN IT FOR THE BOSS".   That epitomizes the empty BS that it takes to be a Yankee.  You know what the Phillies montra was? ...    more »

Since I have a great deal of new friends reading up on my 'relationship' articles I think today I'll visit the issue of compromising your integrity.  I'll use personal experience to write from.

But first...What is integrity? Defined in ethics, integrity is how your actions hold up to your principals. When it comes to integrity as it relates to your values in romance, we can often find ourselves compromising those values in order to keep a person in our life that strains the principals we believe in for ourselves.

I knew a girl.  She was different for me than others.  Was she amazing or special?  Maybe not to the rest of the world, but to me she was. She was... just different... you know. Chemistry.  That one thing that makes one person special to you. We met with the intention of a relationship.  Late night talks, sharing secrets.  We've all been there.   You know the conversations where you both let your guard down and expose that you may be good at being alone, but better as a couple.  The conversations where you tell each other that deep down inside you'd like someone in your life that had your back. And not just anyone, because god knows we can all settle.  We can all find someone, but to have someone special... that's something few of us find.    We both agreed we thought we found that in each other.   Been there too? 

Now stay with me as I need to paint a broad brushstroke here so you can understand the greater point.  And there will be a few lessons to learn here...

Somewhere after week two she backs off.  OK. I can accept that, the question is why?  No answer.  In fact she not only backs away from a romantic interest, she doesn't blow me off either.  She does what most men would consider a worse thing.  She says she wants me as a friend. 

Now for you men, you can relate to the attitude of thinking, "This is BS, I'm not settling for the friend zone".  I wasn't about to either.   But my instinct told me that if she wasn't interested at all, why keep me around? 

Well I decided to follow my instinct.   She told me date other women, so I did - knowing that women are jealous creatures.  I figured this alone may get her to step up.   At first I told her. She seemed intimidated by it but accepted it because it was the mandate she set down.  In short she had to eat crow.  But for all that eating crow, she wasn't coming back from the 'friend zone'.   At one point I was intimate with someone else and I felt like garbage after-wards.  But the fact is I wanted to either be with the girl I cared about or move on.  My own experimenting with dating told me my feelings for this particular girl were real.   It seemed moving on wasn't the easy option I had hoped it would be.  I re-focused on her.  She pushed away, then explained to me she pushes away people she cares about. 

Oh yeah... I'm confused. I'm wondering if   more »