It’s certainly been a rocky couple of years on planet earth.  Every continent has experienced at least one (if not more) major disaster(s).  With all the cameras and technology out there, the power of Mother Nature has been caught on tape. And based on these jaw dropping videos I found… she’s one mad mother! I don’t remember seeing many of these videos on the national news broadcasts.  Usually, after a few days, they move onto another topic and these images are left to live to the web.  With the technological age we live in, we are able to beam images of a natural disaster seconds after they happen.  When an area is struck particularly hard, it can take time for the infrastructure to be repaired and lives to be rebuilt, before these have a chance to be seen. On March 11, 2011 Japan was the epicenter of a massive 9.0 earthquake. Almost every citizen in this densely populated country had their cameras on at the time and now we can all relive those horrifying 60 seconds. Much of the rocking, rolling, and destruction was captured on everything from security cameras to cell phones.  But, the massive tsunami that followed brought us some of the most shocking footage of all. Check out this video from a car’s dashboard camera of the quake and the car suddenly being engulfed and floating in the wave! Take a close look – there are people still inside many of those cars! Here’s more rare earthquake footage.  A guy is walking in the park as the earthquake happens and he captures the ground moving and cracking apart! So, what would a massive earthquake look like inside a casino?  Check out this video from the Chilean earthquake in 2010. Casinos don’t miss...

That is the question I ask myself whenever I see a Hyundai commercial. Yes, I know that Jeff Bridges is a man, and The Dude is a character. But, when I hear that voice, I can’t help but think of how a new Hyundai would really pull the room together. If you look in my driveway tonight, you’ll see how compelling that argument really is. Our old Saturn, Blue, was falling apart. At 8 years old, she was way past warranty. The struts rattled incessantly, the Saturn dealer had told us that was standard. Ole Blue’s check engine popped on and off at random and the mechanic said it had to do with a part that turned the check engine light on, which is an expensive and unnecessary replacement. So we lived with it. Over the past two months, we’d been scanning other cars, checking them out in ads, looking them up on the web, sneaking glances at them while we drove down the street. It felt illicit and to be sitting in my trusty car and lusting after a new one. This blue sedan had ferried me back and forth when I lived in Santa Clarita and worked near LACMA (that’s about 50 miles, in LA traffic). She had moved us from the Valley to the Sea. Blue was the car that had carried sick Weasel and Munchy to their vet appointments. That was the backseat where I had curled into a fetal position on the drive home after getting food poisoning at a wedding in Northern California. There were traces of my eye-liner, mascara, lip-gloss and a variety of lotions and sunscreens wiped under the driver seat. She has a indentation in her hood from my butt, from when I thought the...