So I took Maria’s recommendation and spent an evening at the Pearson Park Amphitheater in Anaheim watching the spec-freaking-tacular fire knife competition. If you haven’t taken time to stop in and see this event in its five year history, you’ll have to make sure and drop in next year for the sixth annual competition. It’s well worth the fifteen dollar admission price and features adorable kids doing impressive Samoan dances and some seriously buff warriors showing off their fire knife skills.

This particular contest was hosted by the actual descendants of Freddie Letuli, the man who literally invented the concept of adding fire to the traditional knife dances the warriors performed before and after battles. Guess there’s nothing like flames and sharp blades to celebrate your victory or to scare the crap out of your enemies?

The winners of the three divisions (pictured above) all performed remarkably well. Have you ever been to one of those tacky but awesome fakey luaus? Have you ever seen the attempt some of their dancers make at the fire knife? It’s often vanilla, slow and not nearly as thrilling as it should be, Not so at this competition! The “world championships” are held here in Anaheim and tonight we saw competitors from all across Polynesia, Asia and the United States.

The live drummers provided the soundtrack and the rhythmic pounding was down right infectious; just try not to tap your feet, I dare you! At two and a half hours, the program was just long enough without becoming overly extensive and numbing to your butt. While there, we checked out the tasty long-rice, kalua pork and the many polynesian vendors on site. Needless to say, we came away with full stomaches and more than a few trinkets.

What will tide us over till next year? Well there is always YouTube.

With Labor Day Weekend upon us, here are a few interesting things going on around the OC:

• The Orange International Street Fair: This event (which everyone in the OC knew about except me) starts today and goes on until Sunday. Featuring food, music, and all around good fun from cultures around the world. For more info, visit http://orangestreetfair.org
• Fire Knife Competition: Looking for something with a little more heat? On Saturday and Sunday you can watch fire warriors from around the world duke it out for the champion title at Pearson Park Amphitheater in Anaheim. For more info, visit http://www.fireknifeofsamoa.com
• Art Festivals in Laguna Beach: Several summer art festivals will end this Labor Day Weekend, including the Sawdust Art Festival Summer Show and Pageant of the Masters. For more info, visit http://www.sawdustartfestival.org and http://www.foapom.com

Or, you could mourn celebrate the end of summer by relaxing at the beach, cooking s’mores and hot dogs over bonfires. Whatever you do this weekend, I hope you all have a great time, and please stay safe!

Somehow I missed this last month, but it seems that members of the OCTA really want people to know who widened the 5 for them.

They were planning on placing a large, monument-style sign as you enter Buena Park announcing the fact that you would now be leaving the crappy tiny six-laned LA County section of the freeway and heading into Orange County, the land of ten (count ‘em, ten!) expansive lanes for your driving pleasure!

But, the sign was deemed “stodgy” by some and others stated that it needed to be “peppier.” And everyone agreed that it should not be changed to say “The OC.” The person who made that suggestion was kicked out of the meeting and forced to watch a “Real Housewives of Orange County” marathon.

And, at an initial cost of 250,000 and a yearly maintenance budget of 25,000, there were protests that the money could be better utilized elsewhwere. The plan also includes the eventual construction of similar signs at six different points along various freeways.

Yeah, for a quarter million dollars, you bet your tuchus I’m gonna want peppy.

The best show ever set in Orange County is trying to make a comeback!

Well, on the big screen, anyway. 

 Yes, that brilliant show that I and a couple dozen other people loved so much hasn’t yet been greenlit, but one can hope!

Words cannot describe how much I adored this show. If all twenty five of us can pledge to see the movie at least 20 times, maybe this would help assure the studios that the movie will indeed make enough money to justify the production.

But hey, they cancelled the show despite the critical acclaim and rabid (if admittedly small) fanbase, so maybe I shouldn’t get too excited.  I’m going to pop in my Season 2 DVD of season for some solace.  You can go to Hulu and watch some episodes and clips for free.

Looking for something to do this Saturday? How does dropping trou sound as trains whiz by?

Apparently, people have been doing just that for almost 30 years. This Saturday, July 12, marks the 29th annual Mooning of Amtrak (and the 3rd annual Mooning of Metrolink) in Laguna Niguel. You can go and show off your assets as early as the 7:35 A.M. Northbound train, and stay as late as the 11:24 P.M. Southbound train. They say the busiest time (translation: most bared buns) is between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M.

Yes, visitors are welcome to just watch, but where’s the fun in that? Alternatively, you can also hop on a train and experience it from the other side of the glass. There are no formal organizers, so if you wish to participate, simply show up along the chain link fence next to the train tracks across the way from the Mugs Away Saloon.

[Image courtesy of moonamtrak.org]

There’s no real argument to be made against it. Disneyland has the best July 4th fireworks display in Orange County – possibly in all of Southern California. This year’s show was special because it was an all-new “inclusive” program titled Celebrate America!

So it was very sad indeed when half way through the new, bigger, better and freakishly patriotic program everything came to an abrupt finale. That’s right. Thousands and thousands of Park Guests were told “Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls! Due to winds at higher elevations, our fireworks spectacular Celebrate American A Fourth of July Concert in the Sky, cannot continue. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. We hope you enjoy the rest of your evening here at Disneyland”.

What a bummer. The video below catches the drama as it unfolds. Skip to the 1:55 mark to see it for yourself. This particular video posits the theory that the fireworks were raining down on the spectators watching from Ball road – a theory which is not only unproven, it’s untrue.

If want to catch the rest of the show, a quick search of You Tube for the identical Walt Disney World version should help you get your fix.

While normally TV shows wouldn’t count as city [county] based posts, I really want people to tune into the show. And seeing as 3 of the top 20 dancers are from Orange County, I’m using that as my excuse for posting.

If you don’t already watch this show, you’re missing out. My wife and I are dancers, so I know we’re more inclined to like this type of show than non-dancers. However, more and more of my non-dancing co-workers are watching the show and telling me how much they love it. Let’s meet our local dancers shall we?
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Greetings my friends. Behold the 10 Commandments of Orange County!

1. Thou shalt never ever ever ever take public transportation. Never. Ever.
2. Thou shalt wear fake eyelashes, get fake boobs and sport fake tans - “fake” is the new “real”.
3. Thou shalt always refer to our baseball team as the Anaheim Angeles no matter what their retarded brain dead owner renames them.
4. Thou shalt knock down old strip malls and replace them with new and less exciting strip malls - for no apparent reason.
5. Thou shalt always drive thy Hummer to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Mother’s Market.
6. Thou shalt embrace Disneyland in all of its glory!
7. Thou shalt reserve the right to endlessly bitch and moan about Disneyland in spite of commandment number six. It’s our park and it’s a love/hate relationship.
8. Thou shalt deny the existence of The Real Housewives of Orange County as something that actually exists in the universe. You can’t make me watch it… you can’t you can’t you can’t!!!
9. Thou shalt not lie cheat and steal - unless it’s for a really good reason, like getting better grades.

And last but not least…

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s McMasnion.

The idea for this post was ripped off, er, I mean inspired by, a similar post over at the LA Metroblog

Don’t like the commandments I came up with? Want to add your own? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

If you were in the area of Anaheim looking toward the heavens Tuesday afternoon, you may have seen this! I was going to embed the video right into the page - but alas it seems our shiny new web site disagrees with YouTube’s embeding code. *sigh*

That’s right, those are Green Army Men parachuting into the toilet bowl blue waters at Paradise Pier inside Disney’s California Adventure. All of this was in celebration of the grand opening of Toy Story Midway Mania at the resort. The Mouse really put his best foot forward with this presentation, there was even a special video message sent from Buzz Lightyear and his fellow human astronauts from the International Space Station. That’s right, they are even promoting the opening of this new attraction in friggin’ outer space! So take that Pony Express/X2/Simpsons!

While I have been doing most of my blogging on my personal blog, I forgot to write a blog post about some of the local things that have been going on here at the state convention. There is always a large Orange County delegation here every year, this being my forth state convention I was surprised by the number of OC delegates who showed up.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I am a delegate myself.

I am also glad to see the party use the web to stream the state convention. Most of the speeches today have been streamed live. Tomorrow Bill Clinton will be addressing the crowd, since former presidents require a lot of security I’m going to leave it to the state party to stream his speech live. To watch the state convention visit the California Democratic Party.