O Canada! Hockey, National Anthem And Skating Hazards Don't Mix

Not the best moment in the history of people
singing "O Canada."  

You have to expect this to happen all the time in Canada: A hockey game and a rendition of "O, Canada," the national anthem at the start of a hockey game.  

Some moron decided that it would be cool to have the guy who sings "O Canada" skate around the arena before the hockey game as he sings.

Bad idea, but it wasn't totally the singer's fault. Some moron, there were a lot of morons in this incident, apparently, put out a ceremonial carpet. The singer, Mark Donnelly, didn't see the carpet and fell flat on his face as he was singing.

Decent recovery though.

Watch the disaster in this video:

Fun With Huge Bonfires On A Rainy Night During Foliage Season

Steam, an otherworldly glow and ghostly
people at a bonfire in Shrewsbury, Vermont last night. 

Last night, I was at a huge party at my sister Laurie's house, and her partner Bennie, in rural Shrewsbury, Vermont.

As you read down, you'll get an explanation of the ghostly photos in this post. Some explanation is in order.

Laurie's parties tend to be huge affairs that go late into the night. There's plenty of music, food, and LOTS of booze.

(It's OK, there's also lots of designated drivers, or people who just crash on couches for the night.)

The party was a huge hit, despite the fact it rained torrentially through most of the event.

We huddled under tents with good buddies like Dr. McGillicuddy, Dr. Jagermeister,  and some home grown concoctions.  Although, to be honest, at my age I wasn't able to handle much beyond some nice Vermont microbrew.

A bonfire on a rainy night in Shrewsbury, Vermont.  

There were two guys, one a singer and guitarist, the other, a handsome young man playing spoons incredibly expertly.

The pair played mostly country standards, and were surprisingly talented and engaging.

There was a lot of dancing, but I don't think anybody there would be a finalist on "So You Think You Can Dance." 

Especially not the woman in the pink sweater and the clear garbage bag she was using as a raincoat. She was drunk enough to kind of look like those blow up signs and figures that wave wildly in front of used car lots.

I did think the big huge burly guy wearing the hard hat while dancing might have been the smartest person at the party.

People were especially enthusiastic when the two guys played Garth Brook's "Friends in Low Places." It was that kind of party. In other words, raucus, not exactly fancy, but very, very, very fun.

Sparks from a nighttime bonfire rise
up into fall foliage overhead on a rainy
Saturday night in Shrewsbury, Vermont.  

Another odd highlight was when the two guys played that song from the early 1960s about a teenage couple who gets in a car crash and the girl dies.

It's called "Oh Where Can My Baby Be." It's totally cheesy, which is why the guys played the song

It was hilariously odd to see people dancing with drunken joy to a stupid, melodramatic song about a car crash. You had to be there, though, to get the full effect.

A centerpiece of Laurie and Bennie parties is usually an immense bonfire. Such was the case last night, despite the rain soaking everything so thoroughly it was hard to get a fire going at first.

But it did get going.

I loved the ghostly images it caused with the flames spiking up into the rain pouring down, the smoke, the sparks, the glow of the fire on the fall foliage, the steam from the fire's heat hitting everything wet.

Of course, it was hard to take photos of this with an iPhone in the rain after a few beers, but I tried. They're amateurish, but I got a few otherworldly images that I kind of like in a weird sort of way.

So they're in this post. As always, click on any image you're interested in to get a bigger, better look.

Two Baby Animal Rescues To Charm Your Day

This baby elephant fell into a little ditch in
a Zurich zoo and couldn't get up. Watch the rescue in this post.  

Sometimes, kids quickly get themselves into trouble and have to be rescued by responsible adults.

Such was the case recently with a young elephant at a zoo in Zurich and a baby fox in Britain.

Note: Hat tip to Nothing To Do With Abroath for both videos.

In the first video, an baby elephant is playing at the zoo when he falls off a little ledge, lets out a squawk of pain from the bump and can't get up.

Luckily, there were a couple adults in the room to set things right. Very charming:



The next video isn't so charming but it does have a happy ending.

A baby fox ended up badly tangled in a soccer net (OK, football net if you want me to be proper). The fox struggled, and made things worse, The net was strangling him, and cutting off the circulation in its legs.

Luckily, some human rescuers noticed in a nick of time, and a couple of guys from Wildlife Aid cut up the net, freed the fox and examined the little critter to see if he was OK. (Spoiler alert: The fox scampers off at the very end of the video, so he's fine.)

It's still fascinating to watch the video, though. Amazing what can turn into a hazard for animals. Wildlife Aid suggests rolling up and putting away soccer nets when they're not being used.

Here's the video:

Bet You Can't Do What This Yo-Yo Guy Can

Gentry Stein doing his yo-yo thing, awesomely.  

A young man named Gentry Stein competed in the World Yo-Yo Contest in Prague back in August.

Gosh, they have a contest for everything, don't they?

Apparently, there were 1,000 competitors from 30 countries at the competition, so it's really a big deal. Stein, of the United States won the competition.

I found a video of Stein performing at the competition, and it's totally worth watching. Just watch the volume on the background music, though. It's kind of loud.

But who cares? See if you can do any of Stein's tricks:

Aretha Franklin Covers Adele's Rolling In The Deep. Awesome!

Aretha Franklin, 72, is out with a new album,
and covers Adele's "Rolling In The Deep."  

There's a huge divide on this one: In one corner there are people who are dismayed by Aretha Franklin's cover of Adele's "Rolling In the Deep."   

There's only a few of those.

In the other corner are the many people like me, who are floored because this is AWESOME!!

You decide. Here's the video:   (Actually, it's just a picture of Aretha, but you get to hear all of her version of "Rolling In the Deep" on it.)

Watch What Happens When You Fly A Drone Into A Volcano

An image from a Drone and GoPro
trip into the Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland.  

The Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland is still erupting spectacularly, so a couple of guys decided to fly a drone as close as they could to the spouting lava to get a good look.

(As an aside, I think "Bardarbunga" is an excellent name for a volcano, or anything for that matter.)

Anyway, you'll see the video they took below. The two guys were Eric Cheng, of DJI Phantom, which makes the drone they used. Photographer Ragnar Sigurdsson attached a GoPro camera to the drone.

The whole account, in Wired, of what happened is pretty cool.  Cheng managed to get the drone faithfully back from the volcano, despite radio transmission problems caused by the volcano.

It turns out the heat from the lava melted and destroyed the GoPro camera, but the memory card for the camera was intact, so they got the video.

The two men got closer to the volcano than local officials wanted them to, because it was so dangerous The day after they were there, a caldera wall in the volcano collapsed, suddenly flooding the spot they were standing with a flash flood of hot lava.

Yikes!

Here's the wild video, h/t Gizmodo.

SpaghettiOs On A Spoon Kept Woman In Jail For A Month

This woman did not possess methamphetamines or
any other illegal drugs, but she did make the
mistake of eating SpaghettiOs in a car.  

A woman spent a month in jail on felony drug charges because she was a bit sloppy:

There was a little food residue on a spoon Ashley Gabrielle Huff, 23, had in a car. She'd eaten some SpaghettiOs with the spoon.

But in a case that really gets my outrage going, a cop decided it was methamphetamine residue on the spoon and arrested her back on July 2, says the Gainesville (Georgia) Times. 

Interesting, reporters tried to get the original arrest report in the case but have so far been unsuccessful, even though arrests records are public record.

I can only conclude the Gainsville Police Department has something to hide and is trying to make the negative publicity go away.

Even though Huff knew she was guilty of only eating SpaghettiOs and did not do anything involving drugs, she figured the deck was so stacked against her that she was going to go in for a plea deal.

Says the Gainsville Times:

"Huff originally attempted going through the Hall County Drug Court but wasn't able to make all the appointments, (Hall County Assistant Public Defender Chris) van Rossem said. Huff was then reincarcerated Aug. 2 and was unable to make the bond payment.

"I think what the unfortunate part about her case is she was probably willing to take the felony to close out her case so that she get out of jail, even though she always maintained innocence," van Rossem said."

OK, there are all sorts of problems here. I though we were presumed innocent until proven guilty, so why was she in  jail and why was she being pressured to take a plea deal?

How long does it take to test SpaghettiO residue for signs of drugs? Somebody was pretty slow here.

Why was it important to keep her in jail, when it would have been cheaper to let her out on bond, with conditions? Yeah, she couldn't make the bond payment at one point, but arrangements could have been made.

Taxpayers got a raw deal, too. They kept Huff in jail, at taxpayer expense. It's a lot more costly to keep someone in jail than to keep them out, when that's possible.

So what were they trying to accomplish by keeping Huff in jail so long?

I'm not so sure Huff's case is isolated. In fact, I know it isn't.

Here's a for instance: Some Mississippi counties keep people awaiting trial in jail for months, prompting a class action lawsuit from the ACLU.

The ACLU says the Scott County sheriff, district attorney and judges after learning the Scott County Detention Center has held people for as long as a year without appointing counsel or indicting them.

"The county's practices violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments' rights to counsel, to a speedy trial and to a fair bail hearing," says the ACLU

According to Mississippi News Now, The Scott County Sheriff says one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit has a federal charge hanging over him, which keeps him in jail, and the other has two felony charges pending.

Still, even if the plaintiffs are eventually found guilty, should they sit in jail without a quick indictment, or a bail hearing, or trial, or something? If they are eventually found guilty, sure, lock 'em up, but let's at least have a fair legal process.

But screw the Constitution if local politicians can claim, probably falsely, that keeping suspects in jail saves taxpayer money. Or something.