Days Off

The Breville Juice Fountain is to fruit what Godzilla is to Tokyo. The Juice Fountain is to juicers what that last sentence is to cliches.

But the Breville Juice Fountain has some hidden, unadvertised features that will make this appliance one of the most useful objects in your entire house.

I don't know why the dialogue of this otherwise-palatable techno-fable of pending planetary doom and extraterrestrial friendship bugged me so darn much. It just seemed weirdly repetitive. It was like the screenwriter had a certain verbal tic that he fell back into whenever he placed the characters in a tough spot. But as always in the movies, the end is affirmative.

 Driving on to the ferry is like the moment when your vacation really begins.

It seems no one wants to go to the Flea Market on Independence Day. Maybe the holiday makes us crave something NEW, as our forefathers yearned for a sparkling, untested form of government in which they could drive around and pick up those hot colonial chicks. We don't want someone else's old picked-over system of self-rule! We want our democracy with an an extended guarantee, lit with brief sodium explosions and sternum-bashing fusillades of canon fire, not dusty, chipped in the corners, and half-price with no returns.

So at the Flea Market today, the tables are empty, the castoff free marketeers away enjoying some well-earned air conditioning. Pickings are slim.

And then we see it.

Crisis comes to wormland when wet sludge starts to accumulate in the worm bin, and its normally earthy fragrance takes a turn for the poopy. It appears that poor ventilation is the culprit.

Will our interventions put the worms back on track to composting productivity, or will our wiggly companions perish in a stinky, damp, gooey mess?

The new "<1m" tag is for short videos that, and I know this will shock you, are under one minute in length. Sometimes this is to create an artificial structure, a haiku-like form in which each moment must shine with truth. More likely, it's just because I have just a little bit of some primo footage, like the brief doggy cutefest of this video. Enjoy.

After two weeks, it's time to pop the hood on the worm bin and fiddle a bit with their world. Remember Biosphere 2? It was a sprawling structure built in the Arizona desert, designed to be an enclosed, artificial self-contained ecosystem for eight human inhabitants. Unfortunately, the complex miniature ecological zones inside it failed to establish a self-sustaining homeostasis, and oxygen levels fell below tolerable levels. Scientists monitoring the experiment were forced to inject fresh oxygen into the system periodically. That project cost millions of dollars, so we felt no shame in breaking open our worms' $25 biosphere for some godlike tinkering.

For some reason, every time we film anything about the worm bin, our dog gets ill.

What combines the responsibility of green living with the earthiness of composting, allows you to be the most inattentive and lazy pet owner since the days of Sea Monkeys, and fits under your kitchen sink?

Vermiculture, my friend. It's composting that squirms.

With nothing but some shredded newspaper, a cheap plastic storage container, and 25 bucks in worms we bought online, we're turning our kitchen scraps to organic soil in the comfort of our own home. We'll show you how in this video, from start to the point when our dog threw up.

Every spring, grim combatants engage in furious competition for a cherished prize. At stake is nothing more than one's Pride - but if one doesn't have one's pride, what on earth does one have?

I am speaking, of course, about the annual Easter Bonnet Competition held by my girlfriend's family. Last year, my Giant Easter Basket Hat took the top prize, so this year I would have to bring something special to hang on to bragging rights. Thus was born the idea for the Easter Diorama, which I would document in a handy "How To Win Your Girlfriend's Family's Easter Bonnet Competition AGAIN" podcast.

As it turned out, I did something completely different. And the sound quality sucks at first. But watch for the charming dog antics!

My options for producing even mediocre-quality entertainment shrink like parents in a Disney movie when illness confines me to bed on my day off. Fortunately, a little good news from the outside world cheers me up a bit.

The world needs more people with the powerful ability to whistle through their fingers. When the disaster strikes, will you be one of those who stand proudly with your fingers in your mouth, issuing forth a shrill alarm, or will you be looking around in irritation with one hand fruitlessly shielding an ear?  It's time to choose sides. If you had trouble mastering the technique in the last video, this might just change your life.

From the Monarch ski area near Salida, Colorado comes this exciting moving picture with soundtastic synchronized musical effects! This footage, from a trip with my sister, bro-in-law, and nephew, unites the once-disparate genres of professional daredevil ski video, dance tune video, and home movie.

When Jen decided to move across the country, I fired up the InterTubes to get more information on this distant mysterious land known as "Oregon." Technology puts lots of information at our fingertips, but can it help answer the question of what will happen to your friendship after your friend packs up a van and heads off into the sunset?

If you always thought it would be cool to hail a cab by whistling through your fingers, you were right - and you owe it to yourself to learn this essential life-skill before another unfulfilled whistle-less day passes. Fortunately, I can teach you how to do it in four easy steps, none of which involve providing information about your banking account.

It's the first day of snowboarding season, and nothing, not even shirt-sleeve warm weather, a constant depressing drizzle of rain, near-zero visibility due to fog, and an unfortunate lack of snow can stop us from hitting the slopes. And by hitting, I mean literally hitting. Hard.

In a last warm spell before winter chills the ocean, I pack up the camping gear and head back to the beach for one more surfing trip. Although I initially only fear the few remaining creepy campground people in my vicinity, a far more sinister development - no decent waves to ride - proves even more troubling.