Driving with Death as your co-pilot

My friend Bill shared this video with me. It's a amazing but sad collection of old-time auto racing crashes titled "Killed Myself When I Was Young." Sadly, I'd bet only half of these drivers survived these wrecks.

So, watch it not as a celebration of carnage but as a historical document on how awesome and incredibly dangerous racing was back in the day. Low retaining walls, minimal runoff areas and trees on track; primitive, if any, seat belts, helmets, fire suits or roll bars; no fuel cells or safety glass; and spectators within feet of the track. Driving an old-time race car took bravery beyond belief.

The Onion unpeels another layer

The Onion is best known as a spoof newspaper, with a lesser known spinoff book series and radio clips. 

Now comes a weekly half-hour TV version of the brand, the Onion News Network. This spoof of TV news (mission statement: "A tomahawk of honesty in the skull of lies") is currently broadcast on the IFC cable channel. 

As with the newspaper, website, books and radio show, there are some dud jokes that fall flat. But for the most part, ONN is a spot-on spoof of local and national news.

The spoofs start from the get-go, with a bombastic, sound-effect heavy intro that weaves in the ridiculous (images of digital fingerprints, ala "CSI"). "Anchors" spoof the latest in overwrought broadcast TV gadgets, such as touchscreen pinch-and-zoom monitors that look good but add little to the storytelling. ONN cut no corners when it comes to production values. 

Actress Suzanne Sena plays anchor "Brooke Alvarez" perfectly. Sena has a real-life TV background so she knows the ins and outs of the business. She's perfect as ONN's caustic voice of reason, regularly chastising ONN reporters, sources and viewers for being mere shadows of her greatness. 

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A bike ride few of us have the guts to try

Mountain bicyclist Filip Polc gives us a rider's view as he speeds down the streets of Valparaiso, Chile. 

Talk about having a pair of big ones. Some of the holes he worms through at high speed are pretty tight. Wonder how many takes it took to get one clean shot?