I haven’t had much time to blog, so here’s a vlog to start the year.  On New Year’s Eve, Roin, Jack & Lucie, the kids at our party, wanted to make a video of me, blindfolded, eating unknown foods that they prepared!  The adults supervised to make sure they didn’t poison or hurt me (Tabasco Sauce on the apple was vetoed), but other that that, the little rugrats had run of the kitchen.  They were nice enough to have the foresight to provide me a barf bag, LOL.  Why I agreed to let them do this, is still a new year’s mystery.  The foods I ate were:

My worst reaction was to #4.  I really hate white and creamy foods, and it shows!! LOL.  (I suspect that Eva, who knows my disinclination towards anything creamy, had a hand in #4.  Vicious!)

After that, as it still wasn’t midnight and since they were kids at an adult party, I showed them a bunch of videos of Tyson and Macky solving the Rubik’s Cube, blindfolded and juggling respectively.  They thought it was a trick and didn’t believe that the videos were real. So I sent Tyson, who had just finished ringing in the New Year with friends in Boston, an instant message. He was nice enough to solve the Cube for them on the webcam, in less than 20 seconds. Needless to say, they were amazed. Thanks Tyson! Happy New Year!

Here are a few more photos from yesterday and today.  The rest can be viewed here.

Joaquin the little angel

The first sunset of 2009

Eva & Patrick in the Jacuzzi at sunset on New Year’s Day

The Enchanted Forest

That could almost be a painting behind them!

Facebook finally has a video embedding option, so here are a few more videos from the past two days.  This first one shows a little musical performance on New Year’s Day, led by 3 year old Patrick.  The second one shows Tom & Cathy’s backyard tonight at sunset when it got very cold and windy!  I’ll compile a few more after I get home.  Does anyone know a free and easy to use alternative to Windows Movie Maker for the PC? 

Click for the whole photo album…updated in real time by my new Eye-Fi wireless SD card!
Thanks Tom & Cathy!  What a great gift!!

Update:  It’s 8 AM January 1st and everyone is still fast asleep.  I stayed up until about 4 AM uploading pictures, and have added them to the slideshow below.  In those four hours of sleep over 600 people viewed the pictures!  Last night was a blast, as usual.  And as usual, I spent more time with (and took more pictures of) the kids.  Hope the adults didn’t mind too much!  Happy 2009!

December 31st, 4 PM:  Happy New Year from San Francisco, CA; Pacifica, to be exact.  Our 12th annual gathering of the GLY Gang is in full swing, with people still arriving from all corners of the globe.  It’s hard to believe our far flung group of friends started this tradition in Brazil 11 years ago, and have celebrated New Year’s together all over the world ever since.  As our GLY family continues to grow with marriages and babies, I’m thankful for such wonderful friends.  Let’s hope 2009 and our new president ushers in a new era of change for America and indeed the world.  I won’t have much time to blog over the next few days, but keep checking this website for new pictures, the slideshow below will also be updated.  Happy New Year!  –Carey

My Windows Movie Maker is broken, so until I can process the new videos, this will show you where we are:

Click for photo album…updated in real time by my new Eye-Fi wireless SD card!

Oscar season is in full swing and we saw 7 movies this week!  (Today was a triple feature.  We walked to The Grove (to avoid parking fees for 7 hours) and saw three in a row!  Haven’t done that in a long time, but it was fun.)  Slumdog Millionaire is still my favorite of the year, but here’s a roundup of this week’s films.  I still have to see Gran Torino & Revolutionary Road.

• The Boy in The Striped Pajamas – Good, but a bit contrived.  Claudio liked it better than I did.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still – Horrible.  Don’t waste your money.
• Valkyrie – We both enjoyed it more than we thought we would.  A bit distorted, but gripping.
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Saw this last night with Mica, and we both loved it.  Brad Pitt is perfect in this role.  Truly the Forrest Gump of this decade.
• Doubt – Meryl Streep has done it again.  What range!  It’s hard to believe she played such completely opposite roles in this movie and Mamma Mia in the same year.  Both Oscar worthy!
• Seven Pounds – Will Smith is a powerhouse, but I’m not sure how I feel about this movie yet.  I have to mull it over a little.
• Marley & Me – You can’t help but like this movie if you’re a dog lover, but it kind of makes me sorry I didn’t publish Oreo’s story before Marley’s got published.  Oreo’s life was far more exciting, and would have made a great movie!

Speaking of Marley & Me, the best scene in the film was when Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson were taking Marley to be neutered.  He jumped halfway out of the car window and walked on his two front legs as the car drove down a busy street.  Coincidentally, we got Chazz neutered on Friday.  He was too small to reenact that scene from the movie, so this is the best I could do:

Chazz came through the operation like a trooper.  And no, we didn’t get him Neuticles!!  What are Neuticles you ask??

“Neuticles” are fake testicles for dogs.  I love this quote from their website:

Neuticles allow your pet to retain his natural look, self esteem and aid in the trauma associated with neutering.

With Neuticles – It’s like nothing ever changed!

I wonder how many Beverly Hills pooches actually have these?  LOL  Anyway, here are some photos of Chazz’s recovery and the rest of our holiday weekend!

A toast to Chazz’s last night of virility!

The famous Thai Elvis at Palms Thai

Poor puppy!

Downtown LA from my roof

We had a pretty sunset last night

The Hotel Careyfornia Christmas Tree

Carey & Mica before Benjamin Button

The two big hits with the kids on Christmas morning, were Spike the Dinosaur and Lucky the Puppy who responds to a multitude of spoken commands, as this video will attest:

Our Christmas was better than little Bobby’s:  (See warning below.)

After the presents and a yummy Christmas lunch, I headed home to meet Claudio & Chazz for a movie.  We saw Valkyrie and both really enjoyed it.  Here are a few Christmas pictures.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  Peace!

   

Lisa found the perfect stocking stuffer for me!!  Among my other notable gifts were, an Earthquake Preparedness Kit, Tempur Pedic slippers, Mamma Mia, a Pendleton shirt, “Be the Pack Leader” by Cesar Milan and a Facial Spa!!  (These looks aren’t all natural!)

Best of the the rest…

As a followup to Bachelor Blues & Puppy Love, Claudio found some year old shrimp in the freezer today while making breakfast.  It reminded me of an old Christmas classic by George Michael & Wham:

Last Christmas

Last Christmas, I gave you some shrimp,
The very next year,
I threw it away.
This year,
To save me from salmonella,
I’m cleaning out your freezer.

If you’re reading this because you just got my Christmas Card in the mail, then welcome!  If you didn’t get a Christmas card from me in the mail this year, there are several possible reasons why:

• I see you, email you, IM you, talk on the phone with you, write on your Facebook Wall, Skype you, or you check my Twitter, my Yelp, my Swurl, my Picasa(s), my YouTube, my Flickr, my Vimeo, my imeem, or you read my blog…regularly.  (You see where I’m going with this?)
  
• You weren’t on my first Christmas Card list 25 years ago, and therefore not “grandfathered in”.
• You’re well entrenched in the 21st Century and won’t mind an email or, if you’re lucky, a gift!
• I don’t like you any more.  LOL.

If you read my blog last year at this time, you read about my Christmas Card conundrum.  As someone who despises paper, and despises paper mail, even more, I have to reconcile with the fact that I need to check my mailbox in December and deal with all of the paper.  Don’t get me wrong, I love getting Christmas cards.  I especially like getting pictures of my friend’s kids who I rarely, if ever see.  I love seeing kids I used to babysit for in college sending me pictures of their kids now.  Increasingly though, even those people are at least on Facebook (or in some cases, their kids are.  Hi Chris, Nicole & Collin!).  Let’s face it, it’s the 21st Century, and I document my entire life in pictures and words every other day.  My life is an open book for all to see; and as such, I have begun to whittle down my Christmas Card list from a pre-Internet high of 275 to a far more manageable number.  I don’t have kids.  I don’t even have Oreo anymore.  Most people who want to know what’s going on in my life come here or go to Facebook.  So, my Christmas card list is really shrinking.  It used to be quite a production:

I know it’s hard for you “young’ins” to imagine a time before email, but believe it or not it’s only been in general use about 14 years.  Even before computers and the Internet, I was always very organized regarding my Christmas cards.  In the height of my traveling in the early 90′s my Christmas card list topped 250.  I kept meticulous records (and still do) about who I sent cards to and who I received cards from.  There are some people I’ve been sending cards to since 1983 (Happy 25 year anniversary!).  Some of my friends and family may even be able to recognize themselves in these photos!  The hand written lists go back to 1983 the year I started college.  Back then, I kept the list in a yearly planner.  Starting in 1991 the more countries I visited, the more people I sent cards to.  There are 5 people on this year’s list that I’ve only met once in my life.

  

Another tradition I’ve had since 1988, is that my best friend Daniel has always drawn a picture of Oreo to put in my cards. For example, the year Oreo was shot, Dan drew a picture of Santa going up the chimney and leaving Oreo a bullet-proof vest. 

After Oreo died (many years after the shooting), the drawings became the template for my annual Christmas message. 

 

So last weekend I hunkered down and sent out cards to “the list”.  After that, I tackled a pile of mail, some of which had been sitting, unopened since March of this year.  Here’s the good news, I found 7 checks in the mail, totaling $5056.21.  The bad news is that a couple of them may have expired, LOL.  Two of the checks were from Farmer’s Insurance for the robbery they finally made good on.  Two were expense checks from work.  One was from the Honda of Hollywood nightmare that I had actually opened but forgot to cash.  The last two were from American Express and Pacificare and I have no idea why they sent them.  (They’re the ones that are more than six months old and may not be able to be cashed!)  Have I learned my lesson?  Will I open my mail more often?  I doubt it.  I’ll try to scan it better for checks though!  (Update: I just came back from the bank and they cashed all the checks!  Time for some last minute Christmas shopping!)

The checks I found are on the top right.  The middle stack is all going back in the mailbox marked “Return to Sender, email only! (I’m buying a rubber stamp!!)  The left pile is unopened statements and more crap.  The pile on the right I’ll get to next week….maybe. 

For those of you who are new to this blog or haven’t kept up with it regularly this year, here are my archives, and here are some links to my most popular posts this year:

All is Quiet on New Year’s Day
Kanye Fried Chicken
Heath Ledger is now in Hell! Praise Be To God!
‘Twas the Night Before Oscar
And the Academy Award for Best Over Acting Goes To…
Making History (Herstory?)
Superbad Needles & Pins
Cubing With “The Luckiest Kid in the World…”
Daylights, Sunsets, Midnights & Cups of Coffee
American Idol – The After Party…And So It Ends…
Iraqi Waterparks – A Discourse on This American Life
The Prettiest City in America
Culture Shock, Idols & Puppies
Got Crabs?
California Kids
A Kaleidoscope Of Mathematics
Texting Greatness & Meryl, Eat Your Heart Out!
President Obama & The Beauty Queen
The (Hollywood) Hills Are Alive…
The Spruce Moose & Other Political Observations
Scary Times & Simpler Times
The Gandhi of Dogs
I Was Shot 12 Times Tonight!!
Happy Days Are Here Again
Can You See It If You Open Your Heart?
A Fresh Coat of Hate – “Faggots”, “Niggers” & the Paradox of the Christian Right
The Acrid Smell of Smoke and Stench of Greed
Customer Service Xangaversary
An African Christmas in a Similarly Different Time

Darlene and I just got home from Christmas Eve at my aunt & uncles.  I’ll stay here tonight and the kids will come in the morning to open presents and we’ll have brunch.  Then I’ll head home to meet Claudio (as Ryan is in Missouri) and well go see Benjamin Button (and maybe Doubt).  Chazz gets neutered Friday morning and next week I’ll head up to San Francisco for our New Year’s extravaganza.  Oh, and one more thing…the brakes went out on the Honda today, and guess where I spent the afternoon?  I don’t want to talk about that now though!  Here are a few photos from tonight.  I’ll post more after Friday.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

 

I’ll end with a slideshow of my favorite images from the past year or so.  (377 of the 13,632 photos I’ve taken this year, to date!)  Be sure to check back next week as our New Year’s Eve “GLY” group will be celebrating New Year’s on the coast in Pacifica.  It always proves to be a beautiful setting to end the year.  Happy Holidays!  Peace, Carey

Finally, sorry to end on a sad note, but there’s tragic news from the North Pole.  Sorry to say, I told you so!!

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
“The holiday spirit is infectious. That guy who threw the shoes at President Bush? Today, he was throwing fruitcakes.” — David Letterman

Yesterday, Joel and I took the boys to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana.  They were celebrating their 10th anniversary.  There was cake and punch, and hundreds of Rubik’s Cube enthusiasts (including my friend Tyson), trying to break the Guinness World Record for the most people solving the Rubik’s Cube at one time.  The last time I took Tommy to a speedcubing event at the DSC back in April, he proclaimed he was the “luckiest kid in the world” for having met Tyson, who is admittedly a celebrity in the cubing world, having starred on the hit reality show, Beauty & the Geek.  (He also  taught Will Smith how to solve the cube for The Pursuit of Happyness.)

Ever since then, Tommy has been playing with the cube, but hasn’t mastered it yet.  I think it was good for him to see kids younger than him, who could solve it with ease.  He brought his own cube along and I was careful not to let him ask anyone to solve it for him early on, as I knew that once his cube was solved, he would quit trying, because he didn’t want to “mess it up”. 

At one point though, Tyson was being interviewed by a TV station that sounded Chinese.  He didn’t have a cube in his hand, and since Tommy was shadowing him, Tyson asked Tommy to borrow his cube and to hold some papers for him.  Tommy was elated.  As Tyson proceeded to work his magic fingers, Tommy watched in awe.  I told him he’d probably be on TV in China, seen by a billion people, and needless to say, he thought that was pretty cool!    Of course, now he wouldn’t touch his cube anymore, because Tyson had solved it.  Here’s the video:

After that, I gave in and bought Tommy another mini Rubik’s Cube on a keychain.  When we were watching the speedsolving competition in the theater, Tommy asked the kid sitting next to him if he would solve his mini cube.  The kid, Justin, a former speedcuber told Tommy that he had been “clean and sober” from the cube for a year.  He said that even touching a cube made him want to do it obsessively, and that he had already been down that road of addiction.  I was watching him though, and he was really tempted to take that little cube from Tommy.  It might as well have been a bag of heroin!  Apparently, speed solving can become quite addictive!  Of course, wouldn’t you know it, a few minutes later some girl came up to Tommy and asked him if she could solve his mini cube.  As he watched her, I could see hearts in his eyes! 

At the end of the day, Tyson was nice enough to give Tommy a free DVD that he made about solving the cube.  (Makes a great Christmas gift…available exclusively by Barnes & Noble!)  Oh, and lest I forget, Andy had a great time too….running from the dinosaurs, and not jumping into fountains:

Here are some other images of the beautiful day:

  
Tommy & Tyson

Don’t you think my picture is better than the one they put in the newspaper above??

The kids literally ran from the same dinosaur for over a half an hour.  LOL

Double trouble!

Went to see “Rachel Getting Married” at the Sunset last night.  Talk about a dysfunctional family!!


Best of the rest…

For more amazing Rubik’s talent, check out my visit with Macky in “A Kaleidoscope Of Mathematics”

My favorite Christmas song!

Every year at my company we do a Christmas video for our customers, and every year I ham it up pretty bad!  This year’s theme was a financial bailout for Santa, who was going to have to cancel Christmas because of all of the debt he had racked up from financing his toy factories with subprime loans, (even using his reindeer as collateral!). 

My character, Neb Neezer a modern financial expert, pioneered the concept of Toy Factory Obligations (similar to the Collateralized Debt Obligations which caused the real financial meltdown).  In this short scene from the video, I’m interviewed by a Larry King-like, Chris Moss. 

Watch for my wink and nod to Sarah “the AntiChrist” Palin, and my artful shoe dodging at the end!  (By the way, did you hear Levi’s mother is dealing meth!?  I still think they should name that boor bastard “Tweaker”!  Do you still want Bristol married in to that white trash family Sarah, you moron?)  Anyway, this is just a small portion of the video, but in the end our company saves Christmas!

As a single guy who lives alone, I go out to eat a lot because I don’t really like cooking for just myself.  When I do buy things to eat here, they often go bad and sit in my refrigerator or cupboard for months….sometimes years.  The other morning Ryan made some pancakes and wondered why they didn’t taste as good as normal.  When he looked at the box of pancake mix, he saw that it had expired over 2 years ago.  The same thing happened all weekend; with salad dressing, olive oil, vinegar, jam, mayonnaise and more.  ALL expired; some much more than two years ago.  My standard response every time they asked how old something was:

“____________ never goes bad!”

Apparently pancake mix does.  Oh, and fresh eggs aren’t so fresh in December if you bought them before Halloween.  Who knew?  (In my defense I didn’t even know they were back there! LOL)  So last night we ordered Thai food from Sunset Thai.  I had an old takeout menu of theirs from 2002.  When they delivered the food, the bill was $60 for the three of us, which I was sure was a mistake.  Apparently though, the prices at Sunset Thai have gone bad too:

A 92% price rise in 6 years?

We also went to see Frost/Nixon at The Grove.  The performances were good, but I thought the movie took too much dramatic license with the fact.  As the grandson of a History, English & Latin teacher (who sat me down to watch when Nixon resigned), I felt the movie treated Nixon a bit too sympathetically and messed with the actual interview facts too much.  If you’re interested; this article by Elizabeth Drew sums it up pretty well. 

As promised here are the rest of the Chazz pictures from our Christmas tree trimming extravaganza and his first trip to the dog park:

On his first trip to the dog park, he met his new best friend, Weho (short for West Hollywood!)

After playing with Weho (as shown in the video above), he was pooped!

Ryan & Claudio before the movie….downtown LA in the background

Christmas at The Grove

Stale pancakes for breakfast!

Sunset before the big storm

Best of the rest…

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
“Everyone is in the holiday spirit [in New York]. Coming to work today, I saw two strangers sharing a cab. One took the tires, one took the radio.” — David Letterman

As promised, there will be lots of photos of my new nephew, Chazz this week! Claudio & Ryan arrived Friday and Chazz quickly acclimated to the West Hollywood lifestyle.  By today, he was getting good at dodging the paparazzi and hobnobbing with all the celebrity dogs at the dog park.    Eva came Saturday for her annual tree trimming sojourn, and the decorating of the official Careyfornia Christmas Tree was underway.  Ryan and I picked out an nice 7 foot tree for $25 at Home Depot and we strung 2200 lights, before hanging over 350 ornaments,  (Rockefeller Center, eat your heart out!)  Claudio, aka, “The Grinch” didn’t help much, but he did manage to put the top on the tree without knocking it over, as this video will attest.  I had to redo it though.

The day in pictures… (I’ll post more of Chazz on Wednesday.  We’re going to see Frost/Nixon now.)

 
I tried to dress Christmas-sy, but the shorts gave it away!

Notice the Hollywood sign above Ryan’s head!

 

Joy to the f*&*%*g world!

 

Deck the halls with Chazz

He looks like the Grinch’s dog here….wait, he is!

 

 

 

 

The other night we decided to take the boys to the Irvine Spectrum to go ice skating.  It’s weird to go Christmas shopping when it’s 80° and the palm trees are decorated, so ice skating seemed like just the thing to make it feel like Christmas.  Unfortunately though, the ice skating rink was closed for a private party.  So we just had dinner and took some photos of the lights.  Andy however, wanted more.  If he wasn’t going to get to ice skate, he was going to do the next best thing:

Andy, enjoying the fountain…

Looks innocent enough, right?  But notice the twinkle in his eye.  Something is going on inside that head, behind those deceptively cute eyes.  Five seconds after I took this picture….

he started to lean forward….pondering how good the water looked,  And suddenly….

He jumped full force into the fountain.  I think he thought is was the 4th of July again….not Christmas!  He landed on his feet, so I quickly set my camera down and reached in to grab him.  At that point he fell backwards, completely under water.  For a second I thought I’d have to go in, but I grabbed on to him, and a stranger also came to help grab him.  His mother, father and brother who were on the other side of the fountain watching, ran over too.  Lisa said she knew he was going to jump right before it happened.  Looking at the photos now, you can almost see him thinking about it.  He’s 4 years old, and I have a feeling he will remember this for the rest of his life!

After the dip…walking back to the car….soaked, but happy!


Tommy took it all in stride with a little yoga!

Before the dip, we met a Great Dane

What a look!

Nice and dry

Thinking of things to come…


No ice skating tonight

Christmas in California

Best of the rest…

 
The Tale of Colin’s Christmas present…

A few weeks ago I met up with stevew918 because I knew he was going to Hong Kong this week, and I wanted him to deliver some Christmas presents to my little buddy Colin.  You see, Colin is a very special little boy who loves motorcycles and Spiderman.  So that’s what I got him!  Thanks for the special delivery Steve, and for sending the pictures and video!  And thank you Colin for never failing to make me smile.  You are a light in my life, and though you’re halfway around the world, your joy and love knows no borders.  Merry Christmas!

Carey Anthony

---

Colin

---

From: Steve	Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 8:13 PM
To: Carey Anthony
Carey,  I met the wonder boy Colin and his beautiful family yesterday afternoon.  Colin, his mom, his dad and mommy mom, and I had tea lunch.   Colin really enjoyed the Spiderman toys.  You surely know kids,  hehe.  He said thanks to Uncle Carey several times, he is so very cute.  I was melting, lol.  Attached is a picture and video for your enjoyment.  Btw, Colin’s Mom got us each a nice box of chocolate, we need to meet up so I can give it to you.  Carey, Colin knows many English words already, you need to start learning some Cantonese chinese, hehe. Thanks, and hope we will meet again, Steve

Xanga cut off the end of this video, but he says “Thank you Uncle Carey”.  Steve also posted another video here.

Here’s Colin last Christmas singing Jingle Bells!

Merry Christmas Colin!! xoxo