That's how they roll

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian tank crashed through a villager's house after the crew stopped to buy vodka at a nearby shop. Footage from a mobile phone camera showed a laughing, and apparently drunk, driver awkwardly trying to clamber aboard with two bottles of vodka and the tank hitting the house.

"Get him out of the tank," screamed a woman in the village in the Urals. The army promised Friday to pay compensation and said the tank must have been broken and fallen behind a column heading to a test site for exercises. Earlier it said the vehicle slid on melting ice.

"Of course, there were violations but the crew acted in good faith to catch up with its unit," said Colonel Konstantin Lazutkin, spokesman for Russia's Volga-Urals Military District.

"Thank God, they didn't shoot," the house owner said on the video.

Heh, heh. I love how they were like, "The tank slid on ice--I mean, it malfunctioned. Sorry." I can only laugh because the tank did not hit my house. My head would have exploded if that happened. See video of the fallout, here.

Converse One Stars at Target

Good old Converse, as American as apple pie. No arch or heel support, but spunky all the same. I own a pair of rare, green suede One Stars. I call them rare because frankly no one else in their right mind would be seen in them. They weigh a ton and I have to wear them with cushioned insoles, because my ajumma joints won't tolerate the lack of support.

Perhaps you've heard Target stores now sell Converse clothing and One Star shoes. I checked it out on Friday night. The shoes are a dumbed down, cheapened version of their original One Stars. The slip-ons are half decent with metal shoelace rings (the tie-ons don't have them), but I am not a faux shoelace-less, slip-on kind of girl. Target wanted $30 for these shoes. I'd pay no more than $10. They look like the kind of shoes you'd see piled in groups of 300 at swap meets. Now their black suede men's skate shoe is another story. These babies have some substance to them, and while I cannot imagine someone doing tricks with so little heel support, they're pretty comfortable! I snatched up a pair for myself. As far Converse's clothing, they look nice on the models, but doesn't everything?

Dude's not Asian

Today my coworker and I were chatting about how we both watch "Project Runway" at the gym. Coworker said the last episode she saw, Christian the Asian guy won his competition and moved on to Fashion Week. WAIT A MINUTE. I told her nicely and casually that Christian is not Asian. Here's where it got funny: My coworker, who puts the "A" in Anglo and resembles the blonde below, looked at me incredulously and said, "What makes you say he's not Asian?" Wow. "The same way I look at you and can tell you're not Asian," I answered.

I proceeded to Google Christian so my coworker could take a second look at him. Upon seeing him again she said she couldn't figure out why she thought Christian was Asian. I think I know why. Christian looks like one of those nerdy Asian characters in 1980's movies. Sigh.

T-shirt of the month

Razor Ramon is working for the weekend

Waking up with Geraldo Rivera

This morning I awoke to the sounds of Geraldo Rivera being interviewed on National Public Radio about his new book, Hispanic. Geraldo grew up in New York in the 1970s, the son of a Jewish mother and Puerto Rican father. Describing his book, Rivera says, "it is one of my proudest achievements because it exposes how the hysterical anti-immigration propaganda campaign that has infected our nation's political dialogue is based on lies and distortion, false statistics and race-baiting."

What a hot button topic! Living near Los Angeles during the immigration reform votes of 2006, I remember Latino students marching out of their high schools and across cities in protest. Some were true activists and others simply wanted out of class. One of my colleagues at the time came to the U.S. as a child, as an undocumented Mexican immigrant. As a young adult she was accepted to UCLA and earned her Ph.D. When the high school students marched past my office window she rushed to my desk and watched excitedly. She joined them later at a rally, and told them how years ago she wouldn't have dared speak out in a crowd because she lived in fear. But now she now wanted to put a face on the topic of illegal immigration, because that's what she felt was being lost in the controversy--the people and their stories.

I hate Margaret Cho.

Margaret Cho has passed over to the other side and abandoned her chubby Asian sisters. At some point the Goddess (how I used to lovingly refer to her) discovered in this capitalist country you don't have to eat until your stomach bleeds. You can always get more food at any given moment. That's great for Margaret, but I still have the mentality of a cavewoman who has stumbled a box of Girl Scout Cookies and doesn't know when her next meal of gazelle will come. In fact, I've been living on a steady diet of cookies since my Girl Scout order came in two weeks ago. Upon seeing my truckload of cookie boxes, Ajumma's hubby exclaimed, "Do you think we're made of money?!" Apparently $17.00 of cookies is a little extreme to him. Well, the fallout has begun. My skin is breaking out from all the processed sugar and today I had to cut my usual 2 mile run short from fatigue.

This evening Margaret shoved her knife a little deeper into my back when she blogged about her perfect skin. She says, "I have beautiful, amazing, incandescently glowing and mostly clear skin, and I try really hard to get it that way. Skin is totally important to me." Yeah, skin is important to me, too. I really need it so my muscles and tissue don't fall out and slosh all over the ground! Too bad it won't stay clear for longer than a week!!! Anyway, kudos to Cho for loving dogs and for having a pro-PETA stance. But it's sure hard to relate to a popular, skinny Korean girl with incandescant skin.

The Bad Plus in Japan

The Bad Plus played 3 shows in Japan, February 19-21. One cannot deny this show must have been extra fun with these 3 fans in the audience.

I think Taaschen should create a coffee table book made up of bad English translations from foreign countries. It would sell millions.

Home & Garden Show report: Lee Snijders

Yesterday, Ajumma made her way through Minneapolis' Home & Garden show. It was the usual mix of window booths and landscaping vendors, and the only thing we ended up buying was a hand-held tape applicator for painting. The real draw to the H&G show was to see "Design on a Dime" host Lee Snijders, who did a promo on breaking the rules of design. Though we showed up minutes before he appeared, we walked to the front of the stage and spotted two chairs dead center. What a coup! Lee came out and was full of energy. He looks more handsome in person than on TV, which is the same thing I thought about Vern Yip when we saw him at last year's show. Lee fielded questions from the crowd and then launched into thoughts such as:

- Dark colors create depth and therefore make rooms seem bigger, not smaller (I'm not sure if I agree with this one)
- Accessories are the fastest way to change a room's appearance
- Paint is the cheapest way to change a room's appearance
- Plants are the quickest way to warm up a room
- Put real plants on eye level and silk plants on upper levels (Ajumma generally says NO to fake plants, because fake and dead plants don't give off chi.)

Lee also talked about how to select paint colors for rooms. Here's what drew the largest laugh from the crowd: Lee said when selecting a color for your bathroom you should select the opposite color of your hair. Hmm. Lee also said:

- He has broken his arm twice during "Design on a Dime," both from skateboarding accidents
- He has adopted two dogs, so now his house is full of dog hair
- Unlike many other home makeover shows, after the cameras stop rolling DOAD lets homeowners keep everything the crew has made or purchased for the episode
- Alot of the stars of reality homeshows, these days, are not designers or carpenters, but actors. I suspect he was specifically referencing Carter Oosterhouse of "Trading Spaces" and "Carter Can."

Lee, Summer, and Charles wrapped up their last episode of "Design on a Dime" last October. Lee is now filming webisodes of his reality design series, "Real Lee TV," which are pretty cool. Watch his series promo here!

Pedigree Adoption Drive - Echo

Oh man. This ad made me bawl.