So I was rushing from a shoot inside one building and on my way to the inside of another building. No time to spare. But there was a fountain along the way. There was sunshine behind it. There was me stopping in my tracks.

Here’s a few shots from my fifteen minute pause. Love me some moving water.

click image to enlarge

written by Los Angeles photographer & writer ©Gregory Mancuso

This mighty fine Fido Factor, a free app, digs up and fetches a big user-generated list of dog-friendly locations. Simply get your opposable thumbs tapping, search for a location type (i.e. restaurant) and you’ll find a list of locales which welcome canines, along with ratings, reviews, photos, and a filled-in Google map.

Enzo with his girlfriend - photo ©GregoryMancuso

It’s a lot like Yelp, but for dog lovers. And we know dog lovers are the best lovers : )

click to enlarge screenshots

You can browse around by category, name, or do a proximity search for cool canine hotspots right around you.

Recently I was a hound outta town, exploring the Bay Area. So I find myself prancing around San Fran and Greg, my personal valet, (he hates when I call him that, but that’s what he is) wanted a beer. So I told him to take out Fido Factor and find a bar that has the good taste to allow canines in to have a taste too.

This is what we got…

In two shakes of a terrier’s tail, Fido fetched over 47 bars for us to consider. We sorted by ratings–which go from one to five bones. We considered a five-bone rated place, the Dirty Trix Saloon.

My valet read the reviews and I checked out the pics. Since we were told it had water bowls and treats and dog-loving owners–I was in. Greg read the reviews, which are from dog fans like your own selves, who have hung out there before.

Greg liked the reviews, free pool and Richmond neighborhood. So off we galloped and we had a barking good time there.

But my Fido friend ain’t just good to use when you’re out of town. It’s works well for exploring and discovering places right in your own neighborhood. I just smacked my paw on “Restaurants” – “Los Angeles” and “3 Square Café + Bakery” jumped up. It’s right in my Venice hood and a reviewer said the three magic words–”Very dog friendly”. Yeah! I’m gonna bark out marching orders to my personal valet, uh, chauffeur, and take off pronto.

Remember Fido Factor also has a big bunch of Pet Services in its brain: Boarding, Dog Daycare, Dog Sitting, Dog Training, Dog Walking, Dog Washing, Grooming, Holistic Health, Pet Food, Pet Photography, Pet Transportation, Shelter/Rescue, Veterinarians. That pretty much covers it, huh?

You can keep track of the best places within the favorites tab and even store pictures of your best beast at those prime locations within the app. The listings on Fido Factor are constantly updated by app users and visitors to the website, FidoFactor.com. I give it four paws up. Bark on!

Inception features an international ensemble cast starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a specialised corporate spy and thief. His work consists of secretly extracting valuable commercial information from the unconscious minds of his targets while they are asleep and dreaming.

Wanted for murder and unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: “inception”, the implantation of an original idea into a target’s subconscious.

Development began roughly nine years before Inception was released. In 2001, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream stealers, and presented the idea to Warner Bros. The story was originally envisioned as a horror film inspired by concepts of lucid dreaming and dream incubation.[6] Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale films,[7] Nolan opted to work on Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008). He spent six months polishing the script for Inception before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009.[8] Filming spanned six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada in late November of the same year.

Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost that was split between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures.[3] Nolan’s reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film’s $100 million in advertising expenditure,[3] with most of the publicity involving viral marketing. Inception premiered in London on July 8, 2010, and was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 16, 2010.[9][10] A box office success, Inception has grossed over $800 million worldwide and is currently one of the highest-grossing films of all time.[4] The home video market also had strong results, with $68 million in DVD sales.

Inception received wide critical acclaim, with numerous critics praising it for its originality, cast, score, and visual effects.[11] The film received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Art Direction and won the awards for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Cinematography.

This amusing video features Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Ron Howard, Jim Carrey, Fred Armisen, Darrell Hammond, Dan Aykroyd, Maya Rudolph and Dana Carvey.

This recipe is courtesy of my favorite food spy Todd Wilbur. Check out Todd’s video episode about his undercover adventure sneaking into P.F. Chang’s to uncover their secrets.

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This week Todd is in Scottsdale, Ariz.,, the home of P.F. Chang’s and one of the most popular appetizers around, Chang’s Chicken Lettuce Wraps. Todd learns at P.F. Chang’s test kitchen that in Chinese cuisine, you need to have a seasoned wok, which he does not have. He also learns that the biggest secret to the recipe lies in the sauce. Todd decides to try a whole new approach to his detective work this time, and gets himself hired as a waiter at a local P.F. Chang’s, gaining valuable access to the kitchen. Hilarity ensues as Todd tries to balance waiting tables and running back to the kitchen to try and uncover cooking secrets from the master chefs. Todd manages to get a meeting with the restaurant’s founder, Philip Chiang, only to learn that the recipe is Philip’s mother’s. Todd pulls a sneaky move to land her number and actually gets her on the other line. The problem is she only speaks Chinese! Will Todd crack this recipe or be forced to cut thousands of lettuce cups for a restaurant dinner shift?

Yes, our own brains seemingly enjoys tricking us sometimes. I think I hear mine snickering at me right now. Or do I?

An optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality.

The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source.

When we experience a visual illusion we may see something that is not there or fail to see something that is there or even see something that’s different from what is there!

Because of this dissociation between perception and reality, visual illusions demonstrate the ways in which the brain can fail to recreate the physical world. By studying these failings, we can learn about the computational methods that the brain uses to construct visual experience.

TYPES OF OPTICAL ILLUSIONS
There are 3 main types of optical illusions: Literal Optical Illusions, Physiological Optical Illusions, Cognitive Optical Illusions

LITERAL OPTICAL ILLUSIONS
Literal optical illusions are those illusions that create images that are different from the objects that make them.

PHYSIOLOGICAL ILLUSIONS
Physiological illusions are presumed to be the effects on the eyes or brain of excessive stimulation of a specific type – brightness, tilt, color, movement, etc. The theory is that stimuli have individual dedicated neural paths in the early stages of visual processing, and that repetitive stimulation of only one or a few channels causes a physiological imbalance that alters perception

COGNITIVE ILLUSIONS
Cognitive illusions are assumed to arise by interaction with in-built assumptions or ‘knowledge’ of the world, leading to “unconscious inferences”, an idea first suggested in the 19th century. Cognitive illusions are commonly divided into: Ambiguous Illusions, Distorting Illusions, Paradox Illusions Or Fiction Illusions.

The original story THE GREATEST GIFT was written by Philip Van Doren Stern in November 1939. After being unsuccessful in getting the story published, he decided to make it into a Christmas card, and mailed 200 copies to family and friends in December 1943.

The story came to the attention of RKO producer David Hempstead, who showed it to Cary Grant’s Hollywood agent and, in April 1944, RKO Pictures bought the rights to the story for $10,000 hoping to turn the story into a vehicle for Grant. RKO created three unsatisfactory scripts before shelving the planned movie with Grant going on to make another Christmas picture, THE BISHOP’S WIFE.

At the suggestion of RKO studio chief Charles Koerner, Frank Capra read THE GREATEST GIFT and immediately saw its potential. RKO, anxious to unload the project, sold the rights in 1945 to Capra’s production company, Liberty Films, which had a nine-film distribution agreement with RKO, for $10,000,and threw in the three scripts for free.

Capra, along with writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett with Jo Swerling, Michael Wilson, and Dorothy Parker brought in to “polish” the script — turned the story and what was worth using from the three scripts into a screenplay that Capra would rename T’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. The script underwent many revisions throughout pre-production and during filming. Final screenplay credit went to Goodrich, Hackett and Capra, with “additional scenes” by Jo Swerling.

The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and the contributions he has made to his community.

Despite initially being considered a box office flop due to high production costs and stiff competition at the time of its release, the film has come to be regarded as a classic and a staple of Christmas television around the world. Theatrically, the film’s break-even point was actually $6.3 million, approximately twice the production cost, a figure it never came close to achieving in its initial release. An appraisal in 2006 reported: “Although it was not the complete box-office failure that today everyone believes … it was initially a major disappointment and confirmed, at least to the studios, that Capra was no longer capable of turning out the populist features that made his films the must-see, money-making events they once were.”

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was nominated for five Oscars without winning any, although the film has since been recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, and placed number one on their list of the most inspirational American films of all time.

A Christmas Story

RedLaser uses your smart phone’s camera to scan the barcode of products that you might buy. It then hits the Internet to pull down a list of prices so you can see if you’re getting a good deal. Better price online? Then, with a few taps, RedLaser lets you jump to a merchant’s online site to close the deal or e-mail yourself the details if you prefer to do your online shopping from a desktop.

Here’s what Jonah Weiner of Rolling Stone wrote: Acid-tongued, rage-prone satirist Marc Maron has been a stand-up-circuit fixture since the Eighties, hosting Comedy Central shows and befriending guys like Judd Apatow and Conan O’Brien along the way. But his new podcast, “WTF,” may be his greatest achievement yet: a series of unvarnished shit-shoots with comedians that move from laugh-geek joke anatomy to quasi-therapeutic venting (Louis C.K. wept during his epic two-part interview). “The podcast began in desperation,” Maron says.

“I was broke, in the middle of a divorce, and I decided I needed to talk to my peers.” Maron’s guests range from comedians’ comedians like Todd Barry to hip young acts like Aziz Ansari to megastars like Ben Stiller.

The podcast has been good for his career — fans in the industry have approached him about developing other projects — but Maron says that’s just a happy byproduct. “I’m doing exactly what I want to do,” he says. “That’s rare.”

WTF – Chris Rock talks about his early days with Eddie Murphy

Here’s a good New York Times article: The Comic Who Explores Comedy’s Darkest Side by Dan Saltzstein

HERE’S a riposte you’re not likely to hear in an interview by Jay Leno or Charlie Rose: “You’ve got to have rage, man. Because I see the posture — your posture is built for rage.” That’s Marc Maron talking to Dane Cook, the popular but bland comedian, on an episode of Mr. Maron’s twice-weekly podcast.

On his show, whose title includes an exclamation that can’t be printed here, Mr. Maron, a stand-up comic by trade, has cast himself as an unlikely celebrity interviewer — one who is angry, probing, neurotic and a vulnerable recovering addict. And somehow he’s able to elicit from his guests, mostly other comedians like Sarah Silverman and Ben Stiller, the same level of vulnerability.

The interviews, usually taped in his garage in Los Angeles, often end up feeling more like therapy sessions. Take, for example, Robin Williams talking to Mr. Maron about the dark side of dealing with audiences: “I guess it’s that fear that they’ll recognize — as you know — how insecure are we really? How desperately insecure that made us do this for a living?”

Thanks to moments like these the podcast has, over the last year or so, become a cult hit and a must-listen in show business and comedy circles. The success of the show has everything to do with its perceptive, prickly host and his ability to coax surprisingly revealing things from his guests.

Comedians, Mr. Maron said, are temperamentally complicated — otherwise they probably wouldn’t be comedians.

“Most of them live difficult lives,” he said. “So that was always more in the forefront than ‘Let’s talk about the business of comedy.’ ”

WTF Live with Seth Meyers

Each hourlong episode begins with Mr. Maron riffing in the style that has characterized his comedy over the years: unscripted banter layered with humor, narcissism and anger, directed both outward and inward. But after about 10 or 15 minutes he turns to a long-form interview. And that’s when the show really takes off.

“People say stuff to him that you can’t imagine them saying to anyone else,” said Ira Glass, host of the public radio show (and podcast) “This American Life,” and a recent guest of Mr. Maron’s. “And they offer it. They want to give it to him. Because he is so bare, he calls it forward.”

WTF – Rainn Wilson talks about his faith

After the show goes up on Mondays and Thursdays, it regularly appears on the iTunes Top 10 podcasts list. According to Brendan McDonald, the producer of the podcast, which is free, the show averages 230,000 downloads a week from iTunes and the podcast’s Web site.

In a recent interview in New York City, where he was performing a series of stand-up shows and recording interviews for his podcast, Mr. Maron talked in his usual manner: candidly, verbosely, intensely. At 47 he is lean (though he obsesses over his weight and eating habits) and sports ever-changing facial hair. (He obsesses over that too, theorizing that the lack of a consistent look has held his career back. “I don’t think Jon Stewart’s changed his hair in 25 years,” he said.) He lives in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles — just across town from Hollywood, but a world away — and has three cats. He calls his house “the cat ranch.”

Many of the comedians he came up with have passed him by. In 1995 he shared a photo spread in New York magazine with Dave Attell, Louis C. K. and Ms. Silverman, all of whom went on to have TV projects. He never got that sitcom, those major movie roles, a spot on “Saturday Night Live.” (He famously showed up stoned to an interview with Lorne Michaels; he didn’t get the gig.)

His personal life was — and still is — tumultuous. He has battled addictions to alcohol, cocaine and nicotine. He’s twice divorced, and has consistently included details about his relationships in his stand-up and on the podcast. During the first of four shows last month at Union Hall in Brooklyn, which were being recorded for a CD, he talked about changing the locks on his house because of a fight with a girlfriend.

Over the years he’s also struggled with jealousy and hostility toward other comics. Many of the podcasts begin with an apology from Mr. Maron — or at least a half-hearted attempt at one. And conflicts that have developed over the years crop up regularly, most notably during a recent two-hour interview with Louis C. K.

The two had drifted apart in the last few years, and Mr. Maron expressed envy — though also enormous respect — toward his old friend, who has his own show on FX. “If you see me doing something, and you’re having a hard time coming to terms with it ’cause of your feeling about your own life,” Louis C. K. said toward the end of the interview, “what’s really happening is you’re letting me down as a friend.”

Mr. Maron began doing comedy in the early 1980s as a student at Boston University. Over the next decade or so he performed at small clubs. He moved between the East and West Coasts in these years before settling in New York in 1993. There he helped lay the groundwork for what became known as the alt-comedy scene (a term he says he’s never really understood), alongside Louis C. K., Mr. Stewart, Janeane Garofalo and others.

“He really was the real deal,” said Mr. Attell, who began sharing stages with Mr. Maron more than 15 years ago in New York. “He truly did hate himself.”

But Mr. Attell added: “He turned it into gold. Nobody does angry and bitter better than him.”

Mr. Maron had a few short-lived TV jobs, including comedy specials. He had a minor role in the film “Almost Famous.” In 2000 he had a modestly successful one-man show, “The Jerusalem Syndrome,” Off Off Broadway. He appeared several times on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and more than 40 times on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”

But, as he put it, “America didn’t notice.”

In 2004 he found a temporary home at Air America, the left-leaning radio network that went off the air last January. It didn’t work out. “I really began to believe that the struggles of most people are existential, not political,” he said, “and my biggest struggles were existential.”

He was canceled by Air America — twice.

A third project with the network, a Web-based show with the comedian Sam Seder, also failed. In September 2009, after that show was canceled, he and Mr. McDonald began to sneak into the Air America studios after hours to record his podcast, bringing guests up in the freight elevator. Soon, he moved from Astoria, Queens, to Los Angeles, where he had spent time on the comedy circuit. And so his garage became the new home of the podcast.

On the early episodes he interviewed — sometimes awkwardly, thanks perhaps to all that hostile jealousy — old friends and comedy personalities he had intersected with over the years: Zach Galifianakis, Bob Odenkirk, Mr. Attell.

Last April he interviewed Robin Williams at Mr. Williams’s home in Marin County, Calif. (Using a technique repeated in later episodes, on the drive up he talked through and recorded his anxieties about the interview.) Mr. Williams, usually an unstoppable riff machine, mostly laid off the jokes, and the discussion was notably raw and real.

The Williams show “put the thing on the map,” Mr. Maron said. “It was unlike any other interview with him. We talked about addiction, divorce, joke theft, about his reputation, about his career.”

So how does Mr. Maron create the space that allows for comics to finally open up?

“What helps him,” said Judd Apatow, the director and producer, and another recent guest, “is the fact that people mistakenly think that no one is going to listen to it, when in fact a ton of people listen to it, and it will last forever.”

The do-it-yourself quality of the podcast — his setup includes only a laptop computer or digital recorder, a mixer and two microphones — puts guests at ease. As Mr. Apatow put it, “You kind of feel like he might lose the tape on the way home.”

Another breakthrough occurred in May: Mr. Maron interviewed Carlos Mencia, a popular comedian who has been repeatedly accused of stealing jokes and bullying his peers. Mr. Maron, though, approached the interview with empathy.

“In my mind this was a guy that obviously paid his dues,” he said. “And so I wanted to talk to him about the accusations — the little I knew about them — but more so just to say, ‘How do you deal with this burden?’ ”

They taped the interview, and Mr. Maron said he immediately knew that Mr. Mencia hadn’t answered the criticism leveled at him. “It was a snow job,” he said.

After reaching out to a handful of Latino comics who had worked with Mr. Mencia, Mr. Maron spoke to two of them, Willie Barcena and Steve Trevino, on a second show. They spoke very bluntly and negatively about Mr. Mencia. Mr. Barcena said that he would not go on in front of Mr. Mencia when working on new material. Mr. Trevino, who for years opened for Mr. Mencia, said of his alleged joke-stealing: “I think he doesn’t know. I think he’s ill.”

Soon after, Mr. Maron called Mr. Mencia, who agreed to a follow-up interview.

“I’m literally frightened on a few levels, ’cause I’ve never been in this position,” Mr. Maron recalled. “I don’t know him enough to know whether I can handle what’s about to happen.”

On the second episode Mr. Maron relentlessly confronted Mr. Mencia with what the other comics said. Mr. Mencia was defensive, but admitted, “I’ve cared so much about what people think about me that it has led me to negative behavior.” Later he apologized for bumping performers at comedy clubs, another criticism.

The interview was widely praised.

“All of a sudden I’m a journalist,” Mr. Maron said. “I have no idea how to be a journalist.”

For his part Mr. Mencia does not see the incident as a negative one and credits Mr. Maron for creating a “familial” environment.

“Had it been anyone else, I would have said, ‘I answered that question a million times,’ ” Mr. Mencia said. “But he’s a comedian, he’s a friend.”

He added that the podcast’s influence on the comedy world is real. “He’s got power, man,” Mr. Mencia said.

The show is unscripted. Mr. Maron does simple outlines before his interviews and relies heavily on his abilities as a conversationalist to carry the interviews.

“He’s a much better talker than me,” Mr. Glass, the radio host, said. “As a performer he’s incredibly bare. And then to bring that bareness to a journalism setting gives you this secret weapon that’s immensely powerful.”

The podcast may be a success, but financially it about breaks even. Mr. Maron solicits donations from listeners, and the show has occasional sponsors.

“I’m getting by,” Mr. Maron said. “But I’m not making a living.”

Mr. Maron said he was working with a production company on a TV project that would combine his interviews and some of the back stories around them. But because the podcast is the perfect format for what he’s doing, allowing for all that intimacy and depth (and raw language), it’s easy to imagine some of the appeal being lost in the translation. For now, though, he’s content — or at least as content as he ever gets — with doing the podcast.

Backstage at Union Hall, he conceded that he can be his own worst enemy. “I’m wired to destroy myself,” he said, “so fighting that wiring is always challenging

If there are fruits for every season, cranberries might just be it for the holidays. Say hello to our Cranberry Bliss Bar. The sweet cream cheese icing and tart dried cranberries go perfectly with the hints of orange zest in the white drizzle. Give one to a friend or enjoy a bar all to yourself. We know you’ll just love it. Courtesy of my favorite food spy Todd Wilbur.

CANCER CAN’T CATCH HER

I know cancer can be fast
Just a blur
Just a flash
A loved one is here
Then catch
Then gone

They told this lady she was caught
You don’t have long
Just a blur
Just a flash

The fine lady did protest
My days are not half done
I have another marathon to run
Life to love
More fun in the sun

Doctors here and doctors there
They shook their heads
Not much we can do
Not many days left

This lady didn’t give up
She searched far and wide
And when all hope was lost
It was found again

There’s a new medicine trick
It sounded like magic
But it hadn’t been tried
The lady bravely stood up
Let’s give it a ride.

…and then…

Lo and behold
Just like a fairy tale
The enchantment did work
The fair maiden was saved

I’ve seen cancer catch many, and drag them away. Uncles, aunts, cousins. Two friends, too young. One father, too sad.

So I was pleased, when this lady asked a favor of me. Make pictures for others, who are sick, to see, how they may be.

Show me running, healthy, happy and free.

Catch how I can be fast
Just a blur
Just a flash

The fine lady did attest
My days are not half done
I have another marathon to run

Life to love
More fun in the sun

written by Los Angeles photographer & writer Gregory Mancuso

click card or link to begin animation http://bit.ly/rvmCum

Wishing you and yours a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving

Best regards,
Greg

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 THE FRAIL BLISS TORNADO VS GLOOM AND DOOM

photo by Gregory Mancuso

It’s not hard to get buried in a heap of frustration in these gloom and doom days. You can be frustrated your career isn’t advancing fast enough. Or your career disappeared and you’re forced to take a job that you wouldn’t even call a career. Maybe you’re frustrated about your investments not performing well. Or your cash flow could be nonexistent and getting more nonexistenter every week for that matter.

And you can always round up the usual suspects lurking in your life even in the best of times. Creative frustration, relationship frustration, or what relationship? frustration, weight,  looks, the traffic, and the kids and on and on.

When frustration hits a fevered pitch, whether in the mundane or life altering category, it may help you to think of the woman in this picture as I do from time to time. I encountered her years ago when I was covering the Special Olympics.

I first noticed her on the other side of the pool, shivering and fearful in the water just before her race began. There was plenty of trepidation and imagined failure in her goggled eyes. I was concerned that hyperventilation might even take over before the race began.

She looked like she might even believe great whites were thrashing under those treacherous waters before her. You never know. Gulp.

But then the starting whistle screeched and they were off. She plunged ahead, gripping her kickboard like her very survival depended on it. A kicking, splashing and spitting up water frenzy ensued.

Then about midway through, the abject fear was slowly replaced by determination. A most fierce and growing fiercer determination was contorting her face. She was going to do this thing, she was going to do this thing, she might drown and die, but oh, she was going to do this thing.

She kicked and kicked. And flailed and flailed. And eventually made it across the perilous seas and across to the other side of the pool.

Reaching the finish, she was at first gasping for air, and the disbelief that it was over, and that she did it, and she was still alive.

Then she let out whoops of joyful ecstasy and accomplishment which seemed to blast the entire arena.

She was a veritable bliss tornado. Twirling and swirling, around and around. Leaping, leaping up and down. Shrieking with delight. “I did it! I did it! Did you see me do it?! I swam it! I’m so so happy. I swam it!”

Then she leapt into the arms of her guide. He had swum beside her in those shark infested waters. He’s the huggee with the wide grin that I captured in the photo.

He told her how proud he was and… That was all he could get out. His eyes started leaking. On her urgent command, he did manage to lift that boney, frail body out of the pool.

Look out. She’s unleashed upon the land!

The bliss tornado is shrieking and leaping with euphoric abandon. Uh-oh. I’m close. Whoosh. She throws her arms around me and the wet whirlwind envelopes me. “I did it, I swam it! Did you see it?”

I told her I did indeed and that maybe I got some good photos. That was a mistake. Her delight decibels hit stun level right next to my ears. But I couldn’t help but hug her back, getting myself and my gear more soaked. Getting baptized with her joy. She was an irresistible force of nature.

“I’m so happy!” She slipped and dripped away from me and enveloped someone else. Just as happy and enthusiastic with whomever she came upon. I had to wipe my leaky eyes as I watched her whirl around, determined to spread around as much joy and celebration as possible.

Everybody around the arena couldn’t help but be touched by this bliss tornado. Years have passed and the spirit she doled out still feels vivid today.

Meanwhile, back in the present day at frustration ranch, what’s all that got to do with all this? Well, what had she accomplished? She only swam to the other side of the pool, didn’t even do a lap. No grand Phelpsian achievement here. She didn’t even win the race. I think she was next to last.

But by just getting to the other side of the pool, she accomplished something that was hard and scary for her.

Secondly, she tried to spread and share the joy of that accomplishment to as many souls as possible.

I’m sure she had plenty of frustrations in her life. Hell, she could barely even walk. But she sure did relish what she could do, did do. And made the most of it.

So I’m thinking that when the frustrations pile up, maybe we should try to think of something we’ve accomplished, even if it’s just a small something. Getting a little perspective that whatever we got going on in the positive column is pretty good. And maybe we should even kick into gear the “count your blessings” deal.

And if do you manage to grab a thimbleful of joy from something or other–spreading it around will probably be appreciated. Even to someone you barely know.

Anyway, I try to keep the memory of that frail bliss tornado handy, and the perspective that maybe just getting to the other side of the damn pool is good enough for now.

Better times ahead. Splash on!

written by Los Angeles photographer & writer Gregory Mancuso

Basically, photography is a medium that captures light reflected off a subject. When moving light itself is the subject, sometimes an almost magical transformation occurs. This has always fascinated me. Sometimes the resulting creation is both abstract and hyper-real at the same time. If that even makes sense?

Here are a few of my favorite light sculpting images from a shoot I did for the LAX business district.

please click images to enlarge

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When marine biologist Roger Hanlon captured the first scene in this video he started screaming. Hanlon, senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, studies camouflage in cephalopods–squid, cuttlefish and octopus. They are masters of optical illusion.

These are some of Hanlon’s top video picks of sea creatures going in and out of hiding. Cephalopods have several tricks for blending in with their undersea surroundings: they can change color, pattern and even the shape of their skin.

I’ve been using All My Faves for years and have found it a fine resource–a visual table of contents of the online world. Whenever I’m stuck or looking for new places to explore, I head over to this directory that contains countless visual links (icons) to popular sites within dozens of categories. It’s also customizable.

Check out their features and info…

Why search?

We like to keep it simple. Why search? is the essence of AllMyFaves’ philosophy. We believe the Internet should be an inspiring, easy and free experience for everyone. We, too, think that there must be an appealing and simple alternative to traditional Internet navigation.

That is why we have taken up the task of simplification so that end-users could find what they’re looking for quickly, whether they are interested in Entertainment, Games, Kids, Shopping, Travel or anything else. With AllMyFaves, users can smoothly cruise on the vast Internet highway without wasting valuable time or having to sieve through irrelevant search results.

Our visual platform not only directs users to their sought-after information fast but also introduces them to new and exciting sites, both of the same and different categories. We achieve this through a strict selection process and a back-and-forth dialogue among the AllMyFaves team members. This way, AllMyFaves acts as a pioneering force of Internet browsing, searching and learning, thereby offering nothing but the absolute best of what the web has to offer.

Today, when much of the searches we perform produce considerable numbers of spam, fraud and aggregation sites, we feel someone needs to step up and sift through the Internet so that Internet users’ experience is a positive, to the point and no-nonsense one. AllMyfaves has a calling and we’re dead set on doing it right. What a better way to do so than by the use of the human brain.

History and Approach

Back in 2006, Shachar Pessis grew frustrated by the cumbersome and convoluted nature of the Internet. To find something on the web, he had to type in URLs, use his ever-increasing list of bookmarks, enter key words in search engine boxes, or be acquainted with an Internet savvy friend who could recommend relevant sites to him. Sure enough, Shachar learned he was not alone: 72.3 percent of adult Americans experience ‘search engine fatigue’ either always, usually or sometimes when searching for a topic on the web (“The State of Search” – compiled by Autobytel Inc. with Kelton Research, October 2007). Discovering new sites was even more challenging and time-consuming, and rarely did Shachar accomplish this in a fast and easy manner.

Shachar shared his discontentment with Roy Pessis, his brother. Together they came to the conclusion that a better alternative must exist, one that applies to and is shareable by everyone, everywhere. The two brothers then held brainstorming sessions and came up with the AllMyFaves concept. They envisioned a virtual directory that includes a list of top and most visited sites in major daily-used subject categories, a list they knew would introduce new and interesting things to others as it grew larger. Shachar and Roy aimed for a simple way by which users can discover new fields of interest without having to think about these beforehand or surfing the Internet with the initial intent of learning new things.

The AllMyFaves’ Internet team scans the Internet for the best and latest sites on the web. Our experts are constantly hard at work in examining the Internet’s various aspects, categories and sites. By doing so, we eliminate all the crudeness of the Internet and offer users a purified, virtually distilled version of the web. Becoming a Faves expert is no easy task; new ‘fave selectors’ who come aboard AllMyFaves go through a personal and ongoing training program in order to perform high quality filtration of the thousands of sites they come across every week. Indeed, we are stern believers in human editing skills versus those of a machine or software.

My Faves

The My Faves feature is one of AllMyfaves’ most exciting components. Although we do our best in making AllMyFaves your one-stop-shop for all your Internet needs, we do recognize the fact that each user is into different fields of interests and activities. Therefore, we’re giving users their own creation powers for free. Once you’ve signed up and have logged in, you’ll have the option of adding your choice of new sites.

Weekly Faves

Updated every Monday, the Weekly Faves are our hand-picked sites for that week. These are the sites we were most impressed by and the ones we wish to pay forward to our users. Think of it as the ‘crème de la crème’ of the Internet on a weekly basis. Accordingly, the Weekly Faves offer users a little bit of everything each week with the added value of introducing new sites and fields of interest to users.

Weekly Games

Same as our Weekly Faves, the Weekly Games are our hand-picked games for that week and we update these every Wednesday. The web offers thousands of online free flash games but only a small percentage of these is actually worth spending some time on. Our games experts play games online all day (hey, someone needs to do the dirty work…) and provide you with only the best ones. We must give you the heads up though: entering the Weekly Games page might result in long hours of participation on your part. To see what games we’ve picked for our previous Weekly Games, you can either click on the Games tab on our homepage or simply click here.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells the fictional story of two plots to assassinate the Nazi Germany political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietor (Laurent), and the other by a team of Jewish Allied soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt).

photo by Gregory Mancuso

Development on INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS began in 1998, when Tarantino wrote the script for the film. Tarantino struggled with the ending and chose to hold off filming and moved on to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007 (as part of the double feature Grindhouse), Tarantino returned to work on INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. The film went into production in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a production budget of $70 million. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS premiered on May 20, 2009 at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or. It was widely released in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Studios.

The film was successful at the box office, grossing $320,351,773 in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino’s highest-grossing film to date. It received multiple awards and nominations, including eight Academy Award nominations. For his role as Hans Landa, Christoph Waltz won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the BAFTA Award, Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Todd takes on the world leader in pizza, Domino’s Pizza. His investigation takes him to Michigan, the birthplace of Domino’s. Todd only has three days to clone a recipe that took two years to perfect, and with so little time, he has to supplement his own knowledge with some undercover work.

He talks his way into extremely high security areas and works in disguise to uncover bits and pieces of Domino’s guarded recipe. Todd even uses scientific analysis on the sauce with the help of a university professor. There’s cheese, dough and sauce that have to be perfected, and this might just be Todd’s most difficult challenge yet.

Todd Wilbur’s Domino’s Pizza Espionage Adventure

View the full TV episode here

It was made by Andrew Grantham, a popular Canadian entertainer. He has taken animal dubbing to a new level with his Talking Animals channel on YouTube. Check it out.