Andy had a blast with Chazz the other night. And apparently he misses him (and me). Now if I could just lock up that favorite cousin status without Cole always being mentioned in the same breath! 
I’m really getting sick of hearing about Twitter in the mainstream media. It’s everywhere and it’s getting ridiculous.
“The concept of regularly “micro-blogging” to the world an answer to the question “What are you doing?” using no more than 140 characters seems utterly stupid to me. After all, not only do I feel no compulsion whatsoever to broadcast my every move to the rest of humanity, I suppose I’m just not narcissistic enough to assume that other people, my friends and associates included, actually give a damn anyway. Read more…“
I’m also tired of celebrity twats: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/technology/internet/27twitter.html. Look, I get it. The world is smaller. We’re all connected. No one sticks up for this kind of technology and connectedness more than I do, but getting updates to my phone when Ashton Kutcher is getting his nipples waxed is taking it a bit far. Do people not realize that Ashton Kutcher is not their BFF even though he might be following them on Twitter?
I think Twitter and the like, can be useful tools if used properly. I pretty much only use Twitter, or Xanga Pulse (rarely Facebook Status Updates) when I want to get a fast message out to my readers that I think they would care about or find funny or interesting:
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Carey Anthony |
| On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Chris wrote: Carey, How are you doing? Chris On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Carey Anthony wrote: How am I doing? On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Chris wrote: On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Carey wrote: LOL, there’s always something fun and exciting in my life! My blog is also on Facebook, and I don’t buy the “I don’t have time to read it excuse”! If you want to know, make time! Email is just another form of electronic communication, and it’s woefully outdated. Get with the program! I find it odd when people ask me in an email how I’m doing when it’s all out there. Now, when you’re talking in person, that’s another story, but my entire life is documented in pictures, words and video online. So why rehash it in an email or on the telephone? Seems like a waste of time to me…time that could be spent keeping up with the latest technology! Technology has made our lives easier. We have more free time now than ever and have all the tools to keep up with friends and family anywhere in the world. Use the tools! –Carey On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Chris wrote: You’re such a geek, but I love you!! |
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That said, if you want to “follow” me on Twitter, I’m at:
Now before you call me a hypocrite, let me explain. The only thing I use Twitter for is to link to my blog here on Xanga. Let’s face it, all bloggers are narcissistic, and I’m just as big an attention whore as the next Xangan. But I’m not delusional enough to think that anyone cares to follow the most mundane aspects of my life. Heck, we’re all just looking to be accepted and liked. My blog is a creative outlet for my writing and pictures. I’m glad when people appreciate it. I’m also glad that the people closest to me who really care about me, respect me enough to read it. They know who they are. I can only surmise the people who don’t take the time, just don’t care enough.
Speaking of Chazz humping…it really did happen today for the first time! I texted Claudio & Ryan to let them know the news, and got these replies:
Claudio and Ryan are driving up the coast for Spring Break this week with Victor & David so Chazz is with me. He’s still only 5 1/2 months old, but he’s really never been left alone, save for that hour in January when he decided to take up reading:
No touch, no talk, no eye contact. Practice this rule when you leave and again when you return. By doing this, you are letting your dog know that your separation is not a big deal. For some dogs five minutes of “no touch, no talk, no eye contact” can solve the problem. For others, you may have to start practicing the rule an hour before you leave.
Say goodbye long before you leave. If you are having trouble practicing “no touch, no talk, no eye contact”, take a moment to tell your dog how much you will miss him and share affection long before you actually leave. Remember, this display is for you — not your dog! Your dog won’t be hurt that you didn’t kiss him goodbye before leaving for work.
Practice! Start out small; leave your dog alone for five minutes. Then the next time, expand the time to 20 minutes. Then an hour. Continue increasing the time until you can leave your dog alone for a full 8-hour business day.
Maintain calm-assertive energy. This is crucial! Don’t feel sorry, nervous, or concerned. Project the confident energy of a pack leader. Let your dog know that everything is going to be alright.
Other that that incident though, we’ve had a good week. While taking these photos, rolling in the grass at the Pacific Design Center however, I lost my phone.
When I realized it had fallen out of my pocket, I went back to find it and someone had already picked it up. I sent texts, but never heard from anyone. I needed a new phone anyway, so this is what I got:
Here are a few more photos from Chazz’s Spring Break: 
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Joelle and I went to see “Dancing with the Stars” tonight. It’s a live show on the east coast, so they start at 5:00 here. It’s performed just down the street from me at CBS Television City on Beverly & Fairfax in the same studio as American Idol and the Price is Right. We ended up getting pretty good seats on the main dance floor. We were in back, but we had our own little corner to ourselves, which allowed me to covertly take photos with the camera I was able to sneak in. The security was tighter than Jimmy Kimmel, but not as tight as Idol. To get my camera past the two security guards and the walk thru metal detector, I had to create a diversion. I let Joelle go first and waited for them to take her Blackberry away. While she was arguing with them, I discreetly stuck my camera in underneath my wallet in the basket and nudged it through while no one was looking. I also got my iPod Touch through! 
Afterwards Joelle said I should have gone into terrorism…thus the title.
Contrary to the picture above, Barack & Sarah weren’t dancing. In fact, most of the “stars” were D-List bordering on F. The girl from “The Bachelor”? Denise Richards? Steve Wozniak? The Playboy Bunny from “The Girls Next Door“? Please! I see bigger stars walking their dog in front of my house or at the KFC down the street! At any rate, the show was entertaining. I think the judges do a better job than the ones on Idol. It doesn’t seem rigged…I guess there would be know reason to rig it, since all they win is an ugly disco ball trophy. The photos I took aren’t great, as there was a lot of dry ice smoke in the air, and I was trying to be extremely discreet. We even had a plan where to meet if I got kicked out (as I lost my cell phone yesterday). Still the blur effect is kind of cool on some of them. It’s a pretty studio.
Julianne Hough with her boyfriend, country star Chuck Wicks
Co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. Only worth 4 billion dollars! Horrible dancer.
Mark Ballas and Olympian Shawn Johnson
Lil’ Kim and Derek Hough
Hastily take self portrait of Joelle and I…trying not to get caught!
After the show…
The only picture I took with a flash and the girl who took it for us, covered the flash with her finger. Ugh.
A quick video of Gilles Marini and Cheryl Burke dancing while Joelle and I look on from the audience
Ryan Seacrest, eat your heart out!
One last Los Angeles sunset, before returning to Santiago, Chile then New Delhi for 3 years!
The picturesque fountain at The Grove
I swear, people don’t know how to take good pictures!
That’s us…The biggest stars in the place!
Yeah, you read that right. Backwoods Barbie is at it again, this time jumping on the bandwagon criticizing Obama’s “Special Olympics” gaffe. For the record, here’s my take on it, since John and a few other of my Republican friends have asked:
*By the way, there’s no need to educate me about the fact that Trigg has Down’s Syndrome or that “retard” is an offensive term. I’m not an idiot. I’m just venting. It’s my blog goddamnit and Sarah Palin is more offensive to me than any words I can put on this page. She’s vile, reprehensible and evil incarnate. For the record, I put myself through college partly by working at group homes for the developmentally disabled and partly by babysitting over 50 kids. I have attended and worked my fair share of Special Olympics over the years. All people are “precious and unique” Sarah, not just your white trash baby and illegitimate grandson.
Now that I have that out of my system, here are some pictures from tonight. Claudio & Ryan are back with Chazz and we had a nice dinner at home and watched movies. Tomorrow we’re heading to Santa Barbara.
Claudio always has to get a sneer in!
Chazztastic!
Ryan was asleep before the movie started!
The Hotel Careyfornia welcomed an honored guest today. Joelle arrived from Santiago, Chile. She was actually the first person who ever visited The Hotel Careyfornia when I moved here in 2002. The place has changed quite a bit since then!
Before we got our famous moniker…
We’ve had a few renovations since then!
Miso soup, edamame, cucumber salad and sushi at Canal Club
Joelle was the one who had been flying all night, but I look more tired!
The canals of Venice…California
Chazz and I were lucky enough to run into the Oscar winning screenwriter of Milk, Dustin Lance Black yesterday. For those of you who don’t know, he’s the young man who spoke so poignantly at the Academy Awards this year.
When Dustin met Chazz it was like watching history being made. A new Hollywood power couple was born. Move over Brangelina….meet “Chazzlance Black“.
Coincidentally I heard from a filmmaker this weekend who is doing a documentary about Proposition 8. He had seen some of my blog entries and videos about the protests and emailed me to ask if he could use my video footage for his documentary:
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Carey Anthony |
| From: YouTube Service | Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 12:22 AM | |||||||||||||||||||
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Claudio and Ryan went back home today, but they’ll be back with Chazz next weekend to drop him off before heading up the coast for spring break. Joelle is also coming on Thursday, so it will be another busy week at the Hotel Careyfornia. Cheers!
At 4 AM in the morning I was awoken by a car alarm. Usually something like that never wakes me up in the middle of a sound sleep, but this alarm was loud and seemed quite close. (People have become quite nonchalant about alarms these days, have you noticed? Even sometimes when I see people walk out of a store where the alarm goes off, the cashiers and sometimes even the “security” guards, just wave people through, or worse yet, don’t even notice!)
So as I lay in bed waiting for whoever the idiot owner was to figure it out and turn off the damn alarm before waking up the whole neighborhood, a thought came into my mind…What if it was my alarm? Surely it couldn’t be? My car was safely parked in my garage. No, wait, when I came home from the grocery store earlier that evening I parked on the street because it was easier and closer to carry the groceries into the house. But how could my alarm be going off? Did I somehow hit my keychain on the nightstand next to me while dreaming? At any rate, this had been going on for at least 5 minutes, and by now I was wide awake. So I grabbed my keys, and ran out to my patio. Sure enough it was MY car alarm, and my trunk was open!
I was able to stop the alarm from my patio, and then I put on some shoes and ran outside. I expected half of my neighbors to be looking out their windows and cursing me. When I got to my car, I found the passenger side window was down (?), the trunk was open, as was the center arm rest in the car. I quickly started the car and moved it into the garage, where I began to take inventory. Strangely, nothing seemed to be missing. Apparently alarms really do work. Mine must have scared this would be thief away. But how then did he have time to rifle through the center arm rest? Very odd indeed.
Then I noticed my neighbor from across the street, movie and TV personality, David DeLuise was outside. He’s the son of Dom DeLuise (of Cannonball Run fame) and brother of Peter and Michael DeLuise. In fact, here’s a bit of Hollywood trivia, they all (even Dom) appeared in 21 Jump Street, the television show that rocketed Johnny Depp to fame in 1987. Turns out that David thought it was his car alarm going off, and by some weird coincidence, we both clicked the buttons to turn off the car alarm(s) at the same exact time.
As we stood on the street and pondered the 4 AM coincidence, we noticed a band of punks (think West Side Story…when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette, to your last dyin’ day…) loitering up by Sunset Blvd. Suddenly we were back in 1987 as undercover cops, posing as high school students a la 21 Jump Street. I was the Johnny Depp character (or course) and David was, well, whoever he played in 21 Jump Street. I asked him if he thought we should call 911, and (in character) he pondered the question, analyzing the danger, and responded “Let me get my dog”. At which point he went into his 1.2 million dollar house and brought out what can only be described as a teacup! This dog made Paris Hilton’s dog look mean! (OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, but the point is, it wasn’t a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd!)
We started walking up the street with the “attack dog” and we both had our keys in our hands, in case we needed to gouge one of the Shark’s eyes out. As we got closer to Sunset Blvd. we found, quite anticlimactically, that this band of ruffians had escaped. (And not a minute too soon, lest they face the wrath of our keys and our faithful sidekick, who for the purpose of this story, I’ll call “Killer”).
By now it was after 4:30 AM, and it was time for Johnny Depp to get his beauty sleep. I went in and phoned the West Hollywood Sheriffs office with an “anonymous tip” (very 21 Jump Street), and they said they’d send out a patrol car. My job was done. Just another night in Hollywood.
Speaking of ferocious dogs, I’m Chazz-sitting this weekend, while Claudio & Ryan are in San Diego. Chazz is 5 months old now, and he finally learned to bark. And what a manly bark he has! He would have scared away the robbers for sure! It’s only been 2 weeks since I last saw him and he’s taller. Isn’t he handsome?
I had to call amazon.com tonight about a problem with an order. If you’ve ever tried calling them, they’re not an easy company to get a hold of. They don’t like talking to people. If you’re ever looking for a number for a company like that, www.contacthelp.com is a good resource:
I was able to get what I wanted from amazon, by using the old “I have a blog…” speech. Though my rhetoric lacks the dulcet tones of Martin Luther King, it usually gets me what I want. Coincidentally, Dan sent me the following article tonight. This is what I’ve been saying all along to the companies I write customer services blogs about, and I’m glad someone is finally noticing! Keep up the good fight people. You can almost always get what you want, as I’ve proven time and time again.
People are connecting with one another in increasing numbers, thanks to blogs, social networking sites like MySpace and countless communities across the Web. Some companies are learning to turn this growing groundswell to their advantage.
Companies are used to being in control. They typically design products, services and marketing messages based on their own particular view of what people want. Keeping up with customers has meant conducting research on their needs and test marketing new products and services. Because the balance of power has favored large corporations with a lock on manufacturing, advertising, distribution and other operations, the term “customercentric” was mostly just a buzzword.
Now, though, many customers are no longer cooperating. Empowered by online social technologies such as blogs, social networking sites like MySpace, user-generated content sites like YouTube and countless communities across the Web, customers are now connecting with and drawing power from one other. They’re defining their own perspective on companies and brands, a view that’s often at odds with the image a company wants to project. This groundswell of people using technologies to get the things they need from one another, rather than from companies, is now tilting the balance of power from company to customer.
To understand the dramatic implications of this shift, consider what happened in 2006 when Brian Finkelstein, a law student, was having trouble with the cable modem in his home. A repairman from Comcast Cable Communications Inc. arrived to fix the problem, but when the technician had to call the home office for a key piece of information, he was put on hold for so long that he fell asleep on Finkelstein’s couch. Outraged and frustrated, Finkelstein made a video of the sleeping technician and posted it on YouTube. The clip became a hit, with more than one million viewings, and to this day the image continues to undermine Comcast’s attempts to improve its reputation for customer service.
As you may remember, I’ve had some similar experiences. Ones where people lost their jobs and ones that made the AOL call look short. I really need to start a customer service blog that’s just devoted to my railing against corporate America and their greed. It would feature some of my favorite rants against, Honda, British Airways, eFax, Safeco, Farmer’s Insurance, Aetna, Dell, United Airlines, Facebook, my Homeowner’s Association, my mortgage company or even Xanga. Until then though, I’ll just keep writing about them here, and smiling when people take note! Power to the people….we shall overcome!
Of course, I like to blog about when I (or my friends) receive good Customer Service too, as Bine did last week from Emirates Airways when her camera got stolen from her luggage in Bangladesh:
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Carey Anthony |
| From: Bine | Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 8:01 AM | |
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To: Carey Anthony
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Little Jaden got out of the hospital today. He gave us quite a scare, but he’s going to be OK. Sophie was happy to see her Mom and new baby. All’s well that ends well!
Proud papa Jahmal!
