MTV has surprised me once again. In only two short hours, MTV pulled off yet another award show that was entertaining, funny and chocked-full of surprises and censors.

Yes, there were parts of the show hosted by the hilariously quick-witted Aziz Ansari that were predictable. It is a sure thing that at any award show where fans vote for winners, Twilight will be the victor. While the Hangover may have more fans, those viewers are much less likely to take the time to log online to vote for their favorite movie. 

As predicted the Twilight Saga and its band of vampires pretty much ran the show. Barely ten minutes went by without some quip or quibble about vampires or Taylor Lautner’s abs and the franchise swept all of its categories. Kristen Stuart (Best Actress), Robert Pattinson (Best Actor, Global Award), Anna Kedrick (Best Break Out Performance [for Up In the Air, but we all know it was for Twilight]), and the rest of the cast of New Moon (Best Movie) took the stage that night. 

But this year, the least interesting part of the show was who won. Once again MTV returned to its roots of shock value entertainment. The new ”Most WTF Moment” award was pretty much the theme of the entire show. Whether it was a hilarious moment like J Lo smacking Tom Cruise’s rear end during a surprise rump-shaking dance performance or an extremely awkward moment like Sandra Bullock lip-locking with a timid Scarlett Johansson, the show was full of surprising moments and loose lips that kept the censors on their toes. 

There were so many classic moments that some of them began to overlap themselves, such as the acceptance speech of Ken Jeong, who arrived on stage seemingly as carefree as ever frolicking around the stage giving of a series of his now infamous hand gestures from the Hangover only to break down into tears a few seconds into his acceptance speech. Laughter turned to tears as Jeong thanked his wife and reflected on her recent battle with cancer. 

Tears at the podium are unusual for the MTV awards, but they were acceptable for Jeong and would have been acceptable for Bullock had she let them fall while accepting her “Generation Award.” I was surprised that the recent tabloid-queen held it together during the standing ovation that seemed to never end after she took the stage. Because this was one of her first public appearances since the news of her husband Jesse James’s affair hit the newsstand, Bullock would have been given some slack had the event made her emotional. But as usual, she was the epitome of class and elegance even as she delivered a sharp-tongued speech littered with jabs at the media. 

It is always refreshing to see celebrities who can take a joke, make a joke and not be afraid to make fun of themselves. And Bullock and Tom Cruise weren’t the only celebrities unafraid of sparking controversy by oddness last night. Aguilera’s flashing heart on her bikini bottoms, Stuart and Pattinson’s contrived sexual tension and Mark Wahlberg dangling from a wire during the middle of an acceptance speech were all proof enough that maybe Hollywood does have a little backbone next to their bleepin’ funny bone.

It is true. This week a contract worth over $250 million, which will include ten album projects, was signed by Sony Music and the estate of the late Michael Jackson proving that the best success is achieved after death.

 ”I think that, as with most artists, death is not a terrible career move, as we know, for the estate and for the record company,” said Editor of Billboard Magazine, Craig Marks, when asked about the multi-million dollar Jackson Estate deal.

Shortly after Jackson’s death, I touched on the topic of dying as a career move. Click here to read my earlier commentary about Jackson, Chuck Klosterman and America’s obsession with death and success.  

University of Tampa Assistant Professorof Biology  Dr. Todd Campbell understands all too well how it feels to find a species acting outside of its natural environment. When he is not in the classroom, Campbell is out in the wild, researching animals that are establishing communities outside of their own natural habitat.

And while finding a teacher outside of the classroom may seem unnatural yet unproblematic, Dr. Campbell is finding that this is not always true with animals.  Especially when dealing with African Nile Monitor Lizards who are currently unnaturally establishing themselves in Florida and beginning to take over the canals of Cape Coral.

 ”What I found were trails and boroughs and scared residents and people who had had the things climbing on their roofs, eating their cats, taking goldfish out of their ponds, and cornering them in their garages,” says Campbell.

These African lizards grow on average to be four to five feet long, although it is not uncommon for the reptile to grow up to seven feet. They are the largest lizard in Africa and are notoriously aggressive with sharp teeth and a strong tail.

Many of Cape Coral’s residents are alarmed at the unnatural sighting of this large, carnivorous lizard lounging in their backyards, and Campbell understands their confusion. “It’s freaky. It’s really a surreal project.”

Pet stores throughout Florida sell the lizard as a small, friendly pet that fits comfortably into an adult’s palm, but most pet owners aren’t informed that the animal won’t stop growing for months and will eventually outgrow its tank.  When the lizard continues to increase in size, owners often panic and let the animal loose into the wild.

Release by pet owners is a common explanation for most introduced species, but Campbell also theorizes that a local pet trader may have intentionally released the animal into the wild with the intent to establish a local population. Although, he cannot say for sure why the animals are there, he does know that the lizard has been establishing itself into the canals of Cape Coral for over ten years.

Campbell began studying the problem in 2004.  One year later, he received $50,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program to fund further investigation. When the money ran out, Campbell was left with an extensive amount of information about the Nile Monitor.

Research answered questions about the lizard’s eating habits, location, and population size. But most importantly, the research answered the biggest question: Can the problem be fixed?

Campbell says “Yes.” The Nile monitor can be eradicated from the environments of Southwest Florida, but it needs to be done so quickly. “If we do no eradicate this problem in the next five years, there will be no hope.”

But without funding not much can be done to render the problem, and Campbell worries that without rapid action, the five foot lizard will continue to spread its habitat as far west as Texas and as far north as Atlanta.

As of now, Campbell, his team, and the people of Cape Coral are in a waiting game, hoping Congress will grant them the needed $2 million dollars to fund their project.  That $2 million dollars seems a meager request, compared to the $130 billion dollars spent every year on unnaturally introduced species, most of which goes to eradicating agriculture pests and plants that affect crops.

For now, the people of Cape Coral are doing what they can to help themselves. Whether it is writing letter to congress or calling officials to alert them of lizard sightings, the people are not waiting around for the problem to fix itself.

One resident, known as “Monitor Dun Dee,”  goes as far as catching the lizards on his own.  Dun Dee once lassoed a six and a half foot lizard with an extension cord and then tied it to his deck before handing it over to local animal control

Campbell is grateful for the helpful community of Cape Coral. “The public are our eyes, and the people of Cape Coral deserve a lot of credit.”

Campbell is passionate about the work he does outside of his classroom and glows at the idea of being able to make a difference.

 ”I would love to be known as a person who helped to get rid of this animal.”

As if the couple from the smash YouTube Wedding Entrance Dance video weren’t already awesome enough, they have gone and made themselves an even better example of groovy peace and love.

A few months ago Minnesota couple, Jill and Kevin, were thrown into a national spotlight after a clip of their unorthodox trip down the isle surfaced on the Internet. The popularity of the clip quickly led to over 26 million views on YouTube. It was an unexpected influx of attention for the couple who only posted the clip on the web so that they could share their big day with family and friends who couldn’t make it.

But once the clip starting bouncing all over the web, Americans everywhere just couldn’t get enough. The couple along with their wedding party were featured on numerous national talk shows where they recreated their quirky wedding march dance to Chris Brown’s “Forever.”

This media frenzy caught on a time when Chris Brown represented anything but newlywed love. A domestic dispute with Brown’s long time girlfriend and singer Rihanna had caused a public backlash against the artist. But just as America was losing their faith in Brown, this video surfaced.

The Wedding Entrance Dance video provided the best and most unexpected publicity Brown could have dreamed of. Instead of his name being slapped all over picture of Rihanna’s black eye, Brown’s name was associated with the newlywed couple of the year.

But Jill and Kevin are making sure that peace, love and happiness are the only things associated with their video.  They have created a website, JK Wedding Dance, where people can view their infamous dance, as well as make a donation to the Sheila Wellstone Institute—a national program dedicating to fighting domestic abuse.

Instead of basking in their fifteen minutes of fame, the couple is going against the grain and using their publicity for good—shinning another light on the power of positivity, a good beat and love.

Revist an earlier post featuring the couple’s outrageous wedding march.

The premises seems pretty simple. Type the distorted word into the text box to gain access to a particular sect of a website. But it is not always so easy. Sometimes the words are so stretched and distorted that it is almost impossible to tell what the access word is.

The CAPTCHA—Completely Automated Public turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart—was designed in 2000 by a team at Carnegie Mellon University in effort to protect users from all of the nasty “bots” out there trying to scrape, spam and scam your computer. 

Since the CAPTCHA is doing a pretty good job at keeping the bad bots out, I guess we will just have to suck it up and spend the extra time decoding passwords like “plucks pride in difficult” and convincing ourselves that there are no subliminal messages in the CPATCHA’s seemingly random jargon madness.

Want to know more? CAPTCHA has an offical website. Check it out at www.captcha.net.

This year’s show was exciting, emotional, invigorating, and dare I say enjoyable. It was entertaining in all the proper premeditated ways a producer hopes for and in all the unplanned, spontaneous ways a producer dreams of. It reminded me why I kept tuning in year after disappointing year. I have been waiting for the redemption of Music Television, and finally almost a decade later, it happened.

When first I heard about the show, I had my doubts. Russell Brand hosted the 2008 show and he was terrible, so I didn’t expect him to be any better this year. I was already annoyed and confused by MTV’s decision making. Here we go again, I thought. But as soon as the show started, I could tell that this year something was different. 

The blunt, straightforward Michael Jackson tribute speech given by Madonna, as the opening of the show, was a perfect display of heartfelt admiration and sadness. Being a child of the 80’s, I have always associated Madonna and Jackson, so right away I knew that Madonna was the appropriate speaker for the occasion. As far as pop icons go, Michael is the King of Pop, Madonna is the Queen. The speech properly delivered the tribute to Michael, the person, then a performance featuring Janet Jackson saluted Michael, the artist. The highlight of the performance was a camera shot of Janet dancing in sync with her brother, creating the illusion that brother and sister were on stage dancing together.

The rest of the performances for the night were exactly how they should be–entertaining and powerful in a way that makes you appreciate the artist even if you don’t appreciate their music. Finally, talent is back in style. Pink performed from a trapeze and Taylor Swift from the New York Subway, both without missing a note.  During Beyonce’s performance of “Single Ladies” she somehow managed to shake her lower half like it was not attached and never even loose her breathe. But the best performance of the night was most definitely Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. The return of Jay-Z lived up to all of the hype. If the show had only featured this one performance of “Empire State of Mind”, the show would have been a success (watch it below). Jay-Z and Keys single-handedly reminded us why we love music in the first place. It isn’t just about the music, it is about the energy, and a truly great performance like that reaches you from another place and makes you want to throw you hands up and dance right next to your television.

And this year the entertainment wasn’t just reserved for the main stage. The side shows were just as great, and Lady Gaga could have very easily been claimed the side (or freak) show star of the night. MTV made a wise decision by seating her in the aisle seat so that we could check out all of her new get ups and costumes each time the camera panned the crowd. The shots of Beyonce dancing to her hubby’s performance were almost comical with Gaga’s cowardly lion collar lingering in the background. Well, it was either funny or creepy. In fact, most of the time Gaga was on tv, I was a little scared. Her blood covered performance reminded me of porcelain dolls and childhood nightmares. Gaga really is something from another world, whether that world is another plant or a some future time, I don’t know. So whatever you call her…creepy, freaky, progressive, she made you feel something, so as a performer, she did her job.

And of course, there was Kanye and Taylor. I’m sure that before Kanye interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video, their names had probably never been uttered in the same sentence. But now, it feels as though it will be a long time before we will be able to separate the two. I can only hope that the best can come out of the situation where a young girl was robbed from one of the biggest moments of her life, by Swift either writing an anti-Kanye anthem (with the help of Emeinm) or that Kanye feels so bad that he collaborates with Swift on a song. Either solution would satisfy me. The Kanye bashing seems appropriate because it is about time someone puts Kanye in his place. His tantrums are getting old. But the Swift-Kanye collaboration at next year’s MTV Music Award would be the best way for MTV to continue on the wave of the unexpected success and originality of this year’s show.

And as a bonus, this year I was not only satisfied with the talent of my generation, I was in awe of their class. When Beyonce was on stage accepting her award for Video of Year and called Taylor Swift up on stage, it was confirmed that this award show was different. In resistance against everything that Kanye was screaming out against, Beyonce literally stepped aside and allowed a new voice of a new generation to glow in the spotlight. Times may change, music styles may vary, but talent will prevail. Thank you MTV for allowing the stars to remind us why music is power. (Oh yeah, and Russell Brand wasn’t too bad either. )

In New Zealand those people are called Maoris. These eastern Polynesians decendants first arrived on the islands about 700 to 2000 years ago, bringing with them a culture rich with tradition.

Watch below as a group of Maoris perform their traditional dance, Haka. The harsh chants, body slaps and over-exaggerated facial movements were tactics used to scare off enemies while proclaiming strength and unity.

(If you were a fan of MTV’s last season of The Duel, you may recognize the dance. It is the same performance given by the cast during the introduction of the show. All season long I’m sure you, like me, were wondering what they were doing. The show was filmed in New Zealand… now it makes perfect sense!)

Kudos to national news links creating awareness of this soon to be trash disaster, and thanks  to the University of California for going out and investigating the problem.

Revisit this soupy, trash island on RaubiMarie then read what AP had to say about it on Yahoo.

The most wondrous examples of New Zealand’s geothermal activity can be found in area called Wai-O-Tapu, which is a Maori word for “Scared Waters.” This region, located just outside of Rotorua, is about a three hour drive south of Auckland and is home to a beautifully diverse landscape of cavernous craters and colorful pools formed by hydro thermal eruptions that took places hundreds of years ago.

When entering Thermal Wonderland, smells of sulfur invite you into the land that time forgot. A world where it is easy to forget about city cement and remember that rocks were here first. But while the land maybe seemingly at a stand still, don’t be fooled. The land is completely alive.

Air rises up in bubbles out of pools of green, orange and yellow. Steam congregates in corners of hot pools before dispersing out in a great gust, cloaking the surrounding area in an eerie, dreamy thick fog. While walking through the 3 km path of the park, you can literally feel the land living and breathing all around you.

The Champagne Pool is one of the area’s most exquisite sights. The stunning orange rim bordering the side of the pool is a reaction to years of deposits of metalloid compounds that have saturated the surrounding rock. Look but don’t touch, the surface temperate of the water is a toasty 160 to 165 degrees, and the water deeper down in the crater can reach a blazing 500 degrees.

Next to the Champagne Pool lies the Artist’s Palette. A Picasso plate of colors and hues seldom seen in nature. Mineral elements like Silica, Sulphus, and Iron Oxide are responsible for the vast spectrum of colors. Throughout time, as the minerals were absorbed by the hot water, the pool was shaded and infused with bold, vibrant yellows, reds and greens creating a natural rainbow canvas.

All of this beauty, along with the rest of Wai-O-Tapu’s craters, mud pools and geysers, is thanks to volcanic activity that took place almost 160,000 years ago and a few fractures in the earth’s crust. The combination of these cracks and the pressure of the tectonic plates force the earth’s heat to escape into some of the most beautiful birthmarks on this vast and diverse planet.

Check out more of the sights of Thermal Wonderland at the Wai-O-Tapa Website.

So I was pleased to find the coolest and cleanliest of all public bathrooms in Auckland, New Zealand. Watch as Jillian demonstrates how the Kiwis keep your public bathroom experience comfortably clean and personally private.