Apparently one of the most watched videos this weekend, Miss Teen USA South Carolina demonstrates, well, you decide…

The California State Fair opens today in Sacramento. Dawn and I look forward to it every year and usually go two or three times in order to take in the full “experience” — the kids with their livestock exhibits, the craft displays, the product demonstrations, the rodeo, the horse races — and we always ride the giant ferris wheel and the tram at least once. Both give us a bird’s eye view of the fairgrounds and, let’s face it, ferris wheels can be pretty romantic at night. We take a pocket camera to record the fair “atmosphere” — I’ll try to post some of images this fair season.

Meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy a slide show compiled by one of the Sacramento Bee’s premiere staff photographers. During the past several years, Manny Cristostomo spent his summers taking pictures for a series called “Postcards From the State Fair.” Hundreds of “postcards” were published in the newspaper and on-line at sacbee.com. Here are some of his favorites.

This is streaming from the Bee’s server, so it probably requires broadband and may require a free “subscription” to the Bee’s web site. Enjoy the slide show and “See ya’ at the Fair!”

Nestled between Yosemite and Lake Tahoe in the Sierra foothills of California lies Angels Camp, historically notable for its part in the California Gold Rush and, every spring since 1928, host of the much-storied annual Calaveras County Frog-Jumping Contest inspired by Mark Twain’s humorous short story. If you’re ever in the area during the jubilee, it’s worth stopping by as thousands converge upon “Frogtown” to see whose frog will jump the farthest.

Justin Bookey made Jump, a “frogumentary” that follows three dedicated frog teams and a solo jockey as they prepare for their annual quest to be the County’s top jumper. The following short clip is apparently taken from the frogumentary. (I can’t help myself… It’s just a fun word to say!)

For those begging the question, the current world record holder at 21 feet 5 3/4 inches is “Rosie the Ribiter” set in 1986.

Are we still mad at France? I can’t speak for the rest of the United States, but the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia wasn’t holding a grudge earlier this month as they continued a unique tradition of celebrating Bastille Day in front of Eastern State Penitentiary, a historic and ominous-looking prison.

“From the top of the Bastille, Marie Antoinette looks down at the crowd and tells them that eating bread violates the South Beach diet. When onlookers insist on beautiful, beautiful carbohydrates, she rolls her eyes and says, ‘Let them eat cake.’ After that famous line, Marie’s faithful minions fire up the catapults and shoot Twinkies* to the people below.

Alas, Twinkies do not appease the crowd, so they storm the Bastille, capture Marie Antoinette and sacrifice an innocent watermelon in the guillotine. Then all sing and drink more beer.”

And that’s how they celebrated Bastille Day in Philadelphia.

*In recent years, the cheap bastards have substituted Twinkies for Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets, a tragedy of dramatic proportion.

Got this from Mike, Heather, Michael…Funny!

Another great Barry and Stuart comedy/magic act, this one with lots of blood (I think they may have ruined their victim’s wallet) and lots of laughs. These two are hilarious!

This may be a stretch for a Patriot’s Journey post, but one of the things I love about America is our airshows. We have dozens of them annually that are within reasonable driving distance and many feature either the U.S. Navy Blue Angels or the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. There are no better airshows anywhere in the world! And whenever I see either of these precision flying teams perform, my heart beats faster and I’m reminded why I’m glad to be an American. You can’t watch the Thunderbirds and not agree!

That said, the second annual California Capital Airshow at Mather Field will run this weekend featuring the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, Red Bull Air Force, Jim Varden, Greg Poe and many more. Local Aerobatics Champion Julie Clark will also perform. It promises to be a great show… If you can get in.

Last year’s show, featuring the Blue Angels, suffered a bit of a logistical snafu - planners so grossly underestimated attendance that Highway 50 was gridlocked for hours, parking was impossible, and many folks, including us, finally gave up in frustration.

Supposedly, planners have “solved” the problems and promise smoother sailing this year. Their  “plan” seems centered around encouraging attendees to ride buses and  the RT. Says RT Driver, “Imagine upwards of 50,000 people trying to exit at Mather Field Rd. over the few hours leading up to the show… Now imagine that you and your family are not among them!!” Hmmm… We’ll see.

With that in mind, we won’t be attending the show this year. Instead, we’ll be spending part of Saturday afternoon at a friend’s home near Mather so, if I’m lucky, I might get off a few shots of aircraft flying over their house… I’ll wait and see how the traffic situation plays out this weekend before deciding whether or not to give it a try next year.

But tomorrow afternoon Dawn and I will be sitting comfortably around a pool, sipping mojitos, enjoying the company of good friends and watching the show action right over our heads. Life is good! God bless America!

Andy Huang made this futuristic short film at Palos Verdes on the Net Community Computer Technology Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. In it, a machine with a doll face mimics images it sees on a television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future. Christina Frenzell plays Doll Face.

Michael sent a link to this site featuring 79-year-old Ray Bethell, eight-time Multiple Kite World Champion and World Record holder, performing a beautiful sky ballet with three kites…

Bethell can fly 39 kites, 3 stacks each, at the same time. Truly amazing!

The Bethpage Federal Credit Union New York Air Show returns to Jones Beach May 26-27 and this year features the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. If you’re in the area, it’s a show to see.

Meanwhile, here are 12 great images taken by Victoria Arocho during last year’s Memorial Day weekend show.

After nearly three years of planning and design, more than sixteen-thousand hours of creative artistry and more than two-million LEGO® bricks, LEGOLAND® California officially opened Miniland Las Vegas March 29.

The family theme park in Carlsbad, California unveiled its largest Miniland expansion ever with the recreation of the fabulous Las Vegas Strip made entirely out of LEGO® brick. Miniland Las Vegas features the world-famous Strip including ten different hotel properties chosen for their unique style. “The Strip” at LEGOLAND also features a miniature wedding chapel, monorails and real life sounds recorded in Las Vegas.

Joining the growing family of iTunes plug-ins, The Filter is a free program that works like your own personal DJ by automatically creating playlists from your library and syncing them to your iPod. Selecting just a few songs directs the program to analyze your picks, scan your library and generate a mood-matching mix. The time-saver will even compile data on your musical tastes to recommend new music it thinks you might like.

Available for Mac, Windows and select Nokia mp3-enabled phones as a free download.

Via Cool Hunting

Well, if not the largest, it’s certainly one of the largest. Mini Wonderland Hamburg’s warehouse district is home to this colossal railroad that would make any young - or old- model hobbyist jump with glee. Day turns to night every half hour in this miniature world. The mega-miniature railroad includes more than 450 railway carriages with more than 7.000 trailers, 50,000 trees, 30,000 figures, 10,000 cars, more than 3 miles of track, 3,000 houses and lots of bridges. Truly a stunning showcase of miniaturization - Cars, bridges, human figures - the level of detail is amazing! Reason enough to visit Hamburg. The linked series of 20 images will give you a sense of the magnitude of this layout.

This is good news for those of us that download music and have pined for removal of the dreaded DRM (digital rights management) encoding that restricts our use of the music we buy and, at the same time, degrades sound quality. Steve Jobs has been campaigning for the availability of DRM-free music for some time and it looks like the dream is coming true, albeit at a price.  

EMI Music announced yesterday that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of DRM restrictions. The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI’s existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. The new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.

Apple’s iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI’s new premium downloads. Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29 while continuing to offer $0.99 standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.

“Apple has been a true pioneer in digital music and we are delighted that they share our vision of an interoperable market that provides consumers with greater choice, quality, convenience and value for money,” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.

Expect higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice. Hopefully, other labels will soon follow. Keep your fingers crossed.

One of my favorite musical comedies was the 1986 remake of Little Shop of Horrors starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene with guest appearances by Bill Murrey, Jim Belushi, John Candy and Steve Martin at their zany best. This performance by Martin is a classic.