My buddy Scott Bateman has a deliciously deadpan sense of humor that just kills me. Lately, he has been having a straight-faced field day animating (and, in a truer sense, reanimating) offbeat bits of found audio.

One of his latest is this reinterpretation of "Magic Oranges From Spain," an ancient audio clip promoting the Iberian citrus crop, wherein the world "oranges" seems to take on entirely new meanings.

Scott sometimes re-uses various images from previous cartoons — including, in one of this one’s early scenes, me, from the Trebekistan clip to your right. So suddenly, I’m enjoying the clip, and then there I am, too, next to the giant nude man with the Magic Oranges. Odd, I must say. Wasn’t in my DayPlanner, but that’s life in the big city, I guess.

This is a bit like when somebody sent me that clip of a guy giving out Free Hugs in Australia, and I turned out to be in it, an event I barely remembered. Only, well, giant nude subway guy doesn’t get a hug. Even despite having Magic Oranges from Spain.

Lots more of Scott’s bent genius here. Don’t miss Andrew WK’s advice for the unbalanced Japanese guy who the plays the GHEE-tar here.

If you didn’t catch this in the NY Times over the weekend, author Robert Draper recently received unprecedented access to Bush, six full hours of private interviews. In the Times’ preview of Dead Certain, Draper’s resulting book, Bush displays the depth of his genuine desire to improve the lot of humanity.

Will Bush work to improve global conditions of hunger, homelessness, and military tension, like certain other ex-presidents you could name? Um… no:

Small enough? There’s more. Asked about the disbanding of the Iraqi army, one of the key mistakes of 2003, Bush took no responsibility for even knowing what had happened:

Yeah, well, that catastrophic decision that helped create the lasting insurgency… I dunno, one of my guys has some files…

The rest will be in Draper’s book Dead Certain, released today.

Taken with my crappy cell camera while waiting at a stoplight over the weekend.  And keep in mind that I just came back from Iceland.

I knew it was crazy hot, but thermometers are often off by at least a few degrees, of course. I had to check when I got home — and yup, it was 110 in much of the Valley, 112 in Woodland Hills.  Somebody driving through across the Malibu hills could experience a 30-degree jump in about twenty minutes.

We get heat waves like this from time to time. But not usually during football season.  This is new. 

And certainly a heck of a welcome back from Iceland.  Kinda like the last time I came home from a long trip, arriving on the night of the Hollywood fires after two months in the Caribbean.

Sweet home, Los Angeles…

Taken with my crappy cell camera while waiting at a stoplight over the weekend.  And keep in mind that I just came back from Iceland.

I knew it was crazy hot, but thermometers are often off by at least a few degrees, of course. I had to check when I got home — and yup, it was 110 in much of the Valley, 112 in Woodland Hills.  Somebody driving through across the Malibu hills could experience a 30-degree jump in about twenty minutes.

We get heat waves like this from time to time. But not usually during football season.  This is new. 

And certainly a heck of a welcome back from Iceland.  Kinda like the last time I came home from a long trip, arriving on the night of the Hollywood fires after two months in the Caribbean.

Sweet home, Los Angeles…

Wonderful waterfall called Gullfoss — for a sense of scale, spot the teeny specks of humanity along the left edge.

But there’s no railing or protective fence.  Just a small reminder rope.  Apparently tort law has yet to reach Iceland.

So some people wander a little close to the edge.  I thought for a moment that I might even see an accidental human sacrifice.

Same level of non-security around Geysir, the giant geyser after which all other geysirs are named.  (Actually, Geysir hasn’t geysed much in many years, so most people hang out around its little brother, which blows a crowd-pleasing 35 feet in the air every 3 or 4 minutes.  Pretty remarkable.)

You can get pretty much right up to the edge here, too; a half-dozen tourists get scalded around here each week, in fact.  Not my idea of a great souvenir, but hey.  Got close enough myself (after checking the wind direction!) to get this pic — not of the explosion, since I’d seen geysers before, but of the millisecond just prior, as surface tension creates an enormous four-foot superbubble.

Talk about a cliffhanger.  More shortly.