I’m a little behind the times on this one, but while I was actually working for a couple of days last week (helping my union set up and tear down their holiday party), one of the oddest reality show concepts to actually make it to air got thrown at the screen last week.

I speak, of course, of ABC’s Conveyor Belt of Love (Variety’s photo illustration at that link is priceless). How does it work, you ask? According to The Hollywood Reporter:

“If a woman is interested in someone, that man will step aside and wait as the rest of the men go by.  But if another man comes by on the belt that seems better than that woman’s first choice, she can swap out the man waiting off of the belt as many times as she wants until the last man has passed by. If two or more of the women are interested in the same man, the tables turn and the man on the conveyor belt gets to choose which one he would like to wait for. After all 30 men have made it through the ‘Conveyor Belt of Love,’ each woman is left with her final choice as they embark on a date in the hope of finding a true connection.”

The description is pretty stupid, not to mention overly complicated to the point where my eyes glaze over about halfway through it. The trailer THR dug up looks infinitely stupider:

Something that explains a lot about the current state of the airwaves: Television executives watched that 86 second video and determined that, stretched out over an hour, it would be even better.

I would really like to know what kind of wonderful, powerful drugs these executives were on at the time so I can get some for myself. They are clearly the best drugs ever.

I was watching a documentary in ESPN’s excellent 30 for 30 series about the University of Miami’s football program in the 80’s and early ’90s, and like many documentaries, there were a few shots of newspapers of the day, with the stories related to the program highlighted.

In one instance, however, I was much more intrigued by a story that ran alongside the one that I was supposed to be looking at. The documentary was concerned with a story about Luther Campbell, who was a big booster of the University of Miami teams, getting arrested for obscenity after performing with his rap group 2 Live Crew.

But running right next to that story in the newspaper (unidentified, but I presume it was the Miami Herald) was a story headlined “Pilot Nearly Sucked From Jet”, with the following text from the New York Times News Service:

The pilot of a passenger plane was partly sucked out of the cabin window onto the nose cone of the jet today after its windshield blew out at 23,000 feet. But he was saved by crew members who clung to his ankles for 15 minutes until the co-pilot landed the plane safely in southern England

Several of the aircraft’s 81 passengers said they watched in horror as crew members frantically wrestled to pull Capt. Timothy Lancaster back into the cockpit. The plane went into a dive, but with half of Mr. Lancaster’s body hanging outside the co-pilot flew the aircraft to Southampton Airport, 70 miles southwest of London.

Wait, WHAT?! I have a few clear memories of incidents from the news around this time frame, but I had zero recollection of something like this. Which is probably good because I would have been pretty reluctant to get on a plane after hearing about it.

I was so distracted by the story that I paused the TiVo so I could Google the headline. Turns out the New York Times actually has this story in their archive, albeit under a less eye-catching headline, and it’s just about as insane as you could imagine.

The pilot basically was hanging out the front windshield of the plane unconscious for fifteen minutes while the crew desperately hung onto him by his ankles. The man somehow wound up only needing to be treated for “shock, a fractured elbow, wrist and thumb, and frostbite on one hand.” After hanging out the broken windshield of an airplane in flight for 15 minutes.

A little more Googling turned up a 2005 first-person recollection the Sydney Morning Herald published from one of the flight attendants who saved the captain’s life, with the spectacular headline This Is Your Captain Screaming. That link is well, well worth a read – The abject terror the poor guy captures makes you understand why he had difficulty flying again.

The ironic part is that the pilot, who was unconscious throughout the ordeal, was back at work within six months and was still flying as of 2005.  I suspect someone will track him down next year for the 20th anniversary of this bizarre incident, and I’ll be interested to hear what he’s up to now.

There have been quite a few odd ones, but nothing tops the L.A. County Board of Supervisors naming Buzz Aldrin the county’s Honorary Consul General to the Moon.

Spotted in Encino yesterday:

It does look a bit browner in this picture than it does in person – the other non-painted lawns in the neighborhood were looking pretty darn sickly.

This monstrosity has been hanging from the lemon tree in my apartment complex for the last few months. Today, just as I was heading past it to go to the gym, it fell off the tree, right next to me.

Given everything that’s been going on lately, I had to laugh. Life has now taken to literally giving me lemons. Guess it’s time to break out the sugar and make some lemonade.

I get a little listing of all the movies in development and/or about to go into production, which I use to cold-call and beg people for jobs. Occasionally I see a title so goofy that I think, “That can’t possibly be real.”

Or at least I do until I see a story in the trades that confirms that no, they really are making a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine.

Because I would love a translation and/or explanation for the following video of Korean baseball teams fighting:

Although I have to admit, I think I would enjoy it very much if the next time Barry Bonds gets hit by a pitch, he just started hopping out to the mound on one foot, ready to bowl someone over in a chicken-fight.

Courtesy Dave Barry’s Blog, who suggests that perhaps it’s time for a different sort of drug investigation in Korean baseball.

I got the following in my personal email inbox a few hours ago, and I’m a bit confused:

The points of confusion, all around the “Why on earth would they send this now?” question:

1. It’s August 15th.

2. I would have understood getting this in my work email as I do a lot of work with gifting. My personal email? Makes no sense.

3. It’s fucking August 15th.

4. When I’ve gotten quotes about turnaround time for numbers of engraved iPods in the hundreds, they’ve quoted me three weeks, even near Christmas.

5. IT’S FUCKING AUGUST GODDAMN 15th.

They even beat the absurdly-early-last-year L.L. Bean Christmas Catalog by almost a full month. What. The. Fuck?

I love a category of internet flotsam that could loosely be described as Weird News. The bizarre, the hilarious, and the truly ridiculous things that happen across the globe on a daily basis. The things that give Fark a reason to exist.

There is a story today that just really hits it out of the park in terms of the elements of a truly great weird news story. This one has four key elements:

1. Stupid and/or crazy Criminals.
2. Situations that lend themselves to multiple puns.
3. Inexplicable costumes, preferably including duct tape.
4. Someone with a hilarious name commenting on the story.

I speak, of course, of the story of the New Hampshire man who decided to dress as a tree and rob a branch (har!) of a bank. That story has a picture of the lunatic gentleman involved, and his…unusual getup.

That story (from the Manchester Union-Leader, whose reporters must be grateful to have such an amusing break from covering the Presidential Primaries) has both merciless use of puns and two hilarious details.

First, the branch that was robbed bears the address of 1550 Elm Street. Secondly, and far more hilariously, the Manchester police captain commenting on the story is named Dick Tracy.

Reading that name, I find it difficult to believe the reporter didn’t laugh and say, “No, seriously,” when the good captain introduced himself.

Apparently, whoever sets off the Fourth of July fireworks in the big public park near where I live decided that since the Fourth was on a Wednesday this year, they wanted to do the fireworks on a more convenient day.

So they’re doing them right now. They’ve been booming away for about the last 20 minutes. It’s not even the first of July yet. Am I the only one who finds that really, really bizarre?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go peel Chaplin off the ceiling.