Coffee Anyone?

There aren't too many places where business is more cutthroat than in Seattle. Seattle, home of the Starbuck's chain, has hundreds of local coffee houses all fighting for the same nickel. However, there is a fairly new coffee shop chain in the Seattle area that is giving its competitors, even Starbucks, a reason to take notice. This new chain has gone back to a very old business model to garner their success. That business model is "Sex sells," and the new chain is called Cowgirls Espresso.

Cowgirls Espresso owner, Lori Bowden, opened her first coffee stand four years ago. Lori's two employees, Candice and Toni, coaxed her into doing "Bikini Wednesdays." Immediately, the profit on Wednesdays doubled. "School Girl Tuesdays", "Cowgirl Thursdays," and "Military Mondays" were later added.

Cowgirls Espresso now has six locations in the Seattle area. Their website can be visited at www.cowgirlsespresso.com, or just click the pictures above.

The Police to Reunite at the Grammy Awards

The rumors are true: The Police will reunite for a performance that will open the broadcast of the 49th Annual Grammy awards at Staples Center on Feb. 11, the Recording Academy announced early Tuesday.

The British trio of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland have set aside their legendary animus for one another to revive one of the most popular rock bands ever and, in the weeks after the awards gala, they are expected to announce a concert tour that will certainly be one of the hottest tickets of the year.

For fans, the announcement is cause for excitement but not shock; the band members have been talking publicly in recent months about a negotiated reunion to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary as a rock 'n' roll enterprise.

The band split in 1984 after seven years and five studio albums jammed with memorable, often reggae-influenced hits, among them "Roxanne," "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic," "Spirits in the Material World," "Wrapped Around Your Finger" and the 1980s signature song of love-as-obsession, "Every Breath You Take," which won the 1983 Grammy for song of the year.

The song title that best described their attitude toward one another by the mid-1980s, however, may have been "Don't Stand So Close to Me," especially as Summers and Copeland chafed under Sting's push for more artistic control. He got his wish with a solo career and his estranged band mates kept busy with numerous and respected projects through years but never came close to matching the singer's commercial success.

The trio did call a ceasefire in their personal feuds long enough to play at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York City in 2003.

Now singer-bassist Sting, guitarist Summers and drummer Copeland will come to Los Angeles and play the Grammys 30 years to the month after the Police released their debut single, "Fall Out." That anniversary and tie-in releases scheduled this year of music from the band's archives has been cited as the motivation for the thaw between the band members.

The Grammys will air on CBS and scheduled performers this year include Justin Timberlake, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mary J. Blige, John Legend, John Mayer, Gnarls Barkley and the Dixie Chicks.

Hobbits are People Too

By Ker Than
LiveScience staff writer

New computerized casts of abnormally small Homo sapiens brains are reigniting the debate over the skeletal remains nicknamed "The Hobbit."

Ever since the 18,000-year-old remains of the three-foot-tall adult female hominid were unearthed in 2003 on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, scientists have argued whether the specimen was a human with an abnormally small head or represents a new species in the human family tree. The diminutive creature had a brain approximately one-third the size of modern adult humans.

Some scientists named the specimen Homo floresiensis, a dwarfed offshoot of Homo erectus, a human ancestor that lived as far back as 1.8 million years ago.

In the latest study, the evidence supports the claim of a new species. A team of scientists led by Dean Falk, a paleoneurologist at Florida State University, compared computer-generated three-dimensional reconstructions, called "endocasts," of brains from nine microcephalic modern humans with those of 10 normal modern-human brains.

"We asked, ‘Is there anything other than size of the brain that separates these two groups?'" Falk said.

According to the researchers, the answer is "yes." They found that two ratios, created using different skull measurements, could be used to accurately distinguish the normal humans from the microcephalics nearly 100 percent of the time.

David Lee Roth to Rejoin Van Halen

It is being reported that David Lee Roth is going to sign a contract to once again be the frontman for Van Halen. Ironically, Roth predicted this exact thing to happen almost a year ago. Roth was quoted by Billboard.com in May 2006 when asked of a potential reunion with his ex-bandmates, "I see it absolutely as an inevitability. To me it's not rocket surgery."

I'm not sure what "rocket surgery" is, but I guess ol' Diamond Dave knew what he was talking about. The band's recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has made his words a reality.

REVIEW: The Black Dahlia

I watch a lot of movies, so I thought I'd throw in my own movie reviews here and there. Here is my review of The Black Dahlia:

THIS MOVIE SUCKS ASS.

I should have known any movie with Josh Hartnett couldn't be that great, but not even Scarlett Johansson in underwear could save this piece of shit. Drawn out and boring. There is way too much time spent trying to develop characters, and the murder is a secondary part of the script. Don't waste your money on this one. If you want to see a good movie about a true crime, then go rent the original In Cold Blood with Robert "O.J. Simpson" Blake. You could also rent Capote, which basically chronicles the years of Capote's life while he wrote In Cold Blood and includes a lot scenes regarding the murders described in the book.

My Heart. What Keeps Me Going in Life.

Heidi Klum in an $8M Bra

You Want a Piece of Me?