Move over Bono, Mariah Carey and Miley Cyrus!  The Hotel Careyfornia hosted the one and only Jad-zilla last night for an Idol Gives Back viewing party.  The staff was star struck as Jad serenaded us with his best Hannah Montana impersonation. 

---

Darlene checked out of the HC this morning, and it’s empty now for a few days until the next wave of celebrities check in.    After work last night Dar and I walked down to the Collar & Leash and met this adorable morkie (eerily reminiscent of last week’s post).  There was also a guy in the pet food store with a baby duck!!  It wasn’t on a leash and it followed him wherever he went.  The dogs were going crazy!

   

I’ll be heading up to Pacifica for a GLY reunion later this afternoon.  Have a great weekend!

At the risk of sounding corny, I met one of my heroes today.  He writes a masterful blog which I follow religiously and enjoy immensely.  I’ve been corresponding with him for nearly a year, and his wit and  charm are even more keenly evident in person.

He’s terminally straight and devilishly handsome, and he is literally an officer and a gentleman (and a good sport, despite my proclivities…).  He stopped by the Hotel Careyfornia today en route to a new assignment for the U.S. Armed Services.  He will likely be in Iraq and Afghanistan in the next year, and though I know that his training and his aptitude will serve him well, it troubles me to think of him in such a quagmire. 

I write a lot of negative things about this war.  But at the end of the day, I’m grateful that people like James are on our side; protecting us and our way of life.  I’m really glad we got to spend some time together.  I look forward to when he gets out of the service and moves to California so we continue to expand each other’s horizons. 

 

After some Pinkberry and lively conversation, we watched Tracey Ullman’s new sketch show “State of the Union“.  It’s so acerbically spot on, it’s uncanny.  I highly recommend it.

Blogs & Kisses!

As soon as James left, it was time for our next check-in.  My cousin Darlene has rented the Master Suite at the Hotel Careyfornia, for the next few days while she attends a meeting in Burbank.  Of course she brought Buster (the one eyed horndog) and Roxy.  They’re already enjoying their West Hollywood getaway! 

 

While the rest of our family back in the Midwest hunted for frozen Easter eggs in the snow, Southern California basked in 100 degree plus temperatures!  It was so hot, my bunny melted!

The kids had fun though and Jennifer cooked an amazing meal.  Thanks Jenn!

 
Easter 2008, Cole, Tressa, Andy & Tommy….compared to:

Easter 2005, Tressa, Cole Tommy and…

Andy (with Great Grandma in 2005)

Hey kids, I was just in a car accident!  Some things never change

Tommy & his favorite cousin

Yes, it was over 100 in the sun!

And here are the best of the rest:

Andy stole the show all day as this video will attest:

It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

I had to work in Irvine today and afterwards I met Lisa at Costco because I was going to buy a temporary camera until mine gets fixed next week (pathetic huh?  I feel naked without it though.  Plus, I may want a small pocket camera for times I don’t want to carry the G9.  So I settled on a cheap SD1000.  If I don’t like it, Costco has a 90 day return policy.)

After that, we headed to Pick Up Stix to get dinner and head to her place to feed the kids.  As I was driving north on Technology Dr. a woman in a white Volkswagen (with Hawaii plates) who was heading in the opposite direction, suddenly decided to turn left, but didn’t see me coming. 

I remember thinking to myself, there’s no way she could possibly turn, but as she did, I slammed on my brakes and braced myself for impact (not a smart thing to do apparently, and I’m paying for it now).  I’ve never been in a car where the air bags deployed.  It’s like a small explosion in the car.  There’s smoke and the smell of gunpowder.  After the crash, I was disoriented.  I smelled smoke though and knew I had to get out.

Luckily, the other woman was unhurt.  I was banged up, but alive and not much worse for wear.  When the police came, the first thing the other driver said to the cop was, “It was all my fault, I’m so sorry”.  Lisa and I looked at each other and both thought the same thing.  Long story short, my car was towed away, and my wonderful cousins took very good care of me tonight.  I’ll rent a car tomorrow and go home.  Weekend plans might be shot though.  It’s 2 AM and I best get some rest.  My neck and my knee is really hurting.

I have my bell and my cousins are at my beck and call.  LOL.  Ice packs are for the swelling!

Happy New Year from Rain

Ho Ho Ho!  I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.  Fred & Susie had Christmas Eve this year for the first time in their new house.  There was SO much more space than we usually have and the kids had plenty of room to run around and play.  The only problem for me, was the 3 cats but I survived.  We did a grab bag this year, which was really nice.  I got a great leather camera bag and an extra camera battery from Sam. 

These are some of the little photo Christmas tree ornaments I made this year.  I thought they came out pretty well.  I still need to work on finding the right photo dimensions though.

Fred & Sue’s backyard is right out of Gilligan’s Island

 
There are even banana trees

And persimmons

And a tennis and basketball court (OK, maybe not like Gilligan’s Island!)  Damn, I should have been a sports photographer (not)!

Curtis, Kevin, Susie, Fred, Cody, Kyle & Kenny

Rob, Cole, Tressa & Jenn

Lisa, Andy, Tommy & Joel

Tressa, Tommy, Andy, Carey, Cole & Cody

Pre Santa

One eyed Buster and Roxy in their Christmas finest

We had the webcams going with our family back home in Chicago.  My brother was showing me the snow there, so I took my laptop outside and…

pointed the webcam at the thermometer

Which kind of reminded me of this photo of my Dad which was taken 30 years ago on  Christmas Day 1977.  We called out to my aunt and uncle in California and (the same ones I’m here with now) and they said it was 80° and they were barbecuing.  My Dad told them he was cooking out too…and this picture was born. 

Nice legs Dad!

Everyone seemed to really like their presents.  The girls got brand new Nikon SLR’s.  I got the new Stephen Colbert book, and a new Gorilla Tripod, a bluetooth mouse, the Hairspray “shake & shimmy” DVD, the Camp DVD, some toiletries, sweatshirts, hats, a crystal globe from Italy and a heated towel rack.  The kids all got new DS games, and were actually quiet most of the afternoon.  We took them to see Alvin & the Chipmunks tonight (save your money), and then I drove home to prepare for Bassam’s arrival.

As I watched my niece (via webcam in Chicago) open her presents this morning, I was reminded that this year she announced that she no longer believed in Santa Claus  (She’s 19.  j/k).    This is interesting to me, as I’ve had the Santa discussion a few times in the past month with friends.  We discussed it in Portland over Thanksgiving (is it OK to lie to your kids?).  Tyson and I discussed it after the God debate.  I personally feel the power of myth can be a good thing, and that the Santa myth is pretty darn time tested and solid.  I also found it interesting to note that my niece wanted to spend Christmas morning watching her little sister (who still believes in Santa) open presents, before going over to her Dad’s house (her parents are divorced).  So Santa or no Santa, God or no God, most of us can’t resist watching kids open presents on Christmas morning.

Children believe in Santa Claus. Creationists believe in creationism. But children eventually discard their belief in the Man in Red on the basis of evidence. So why don’t creationists? The issue here is not so much that creationism is bad science – though it clearly is and that is a serious issue. The issue here is that it is bad Christianity: blinkered, arrogant, literalistic, paranoid, pusillanimous, delusional, anti-truth, world-denying, and cringingly embarrassing Dawkins bait. (This is hardly the place to dredge through the overwhelming scientific case against creationism. It can be done perfectly well in one word anyway: fossils.)  But the parallels between these two beliefs, creationism and Santaism, are more extensive than you might have noticed.

Both start out as reasonable assumptions. Children are not fools, but believe in Santa on the authority of their parents, who have proved a reliable source of information. Just as Christians have found the Bible an invaluable source of information about the ways of God.

But new information makes children rethink their understanding of authority: not every story their parents have told them is literally true, but that does not make them untrustworthy in more important things. Likewise the mature Christian response grasps that God might have good reasons for letting myths be told with his seal of approval on them.  Read more…

And not to beat a dead horse, but Daniel finally responded to the fracas over the D’Souza debate, and seeing as he is one of my most learned friends, I thought I’d post his response here:

On the subject of atheism vs. Christianity there is much to be said. The subject will naturally submerge us into polemics of the most invidious variety. What it ultimately comes down to is this: there are those whose belief systems are culturally and emotionally grounded, and those that choose not to subscribe to what could be construed as anthropomorphic delusion.

Although I would not purport to be a Christian per se, (despite my interest in Jewish literature and Church history) to declare myself an atheist would be both limited in scope and suggest I am seemingly indigent of imagination. An atheist believes there is no God. The problem with an absolute declaration like this is that it begs the question: what exactly do we mean by God? If by God we mean the God of the ancient Hebrews (and subsequently what some would consider the figure of Christ himself) then yes, I am an atheist on the basis that I reject the notion of a personal God. This is partially because I believe that neither the Hebrew nor the Christian weltanschauung has any right to sanctimoniously declare their self-proclaimed, respective apexes of the theological realm to be the center piece of world religions. Their rituals, which are by and large a hypocritical pre-occupation and overindulgence in sin and self-righteousness, limit the average parishioner’s ability to enter the realm of authentic spiritual ecstasy (unless you count those freaky quacks having fake orgasms on the Christian music commercials). Contrast their practices with those of the Hindus or Buddhists, and you will find that by comparison, many Christians don’t really enter into the true realm of spirit (not to level that those seeking nirvana or Krishna-consciousness would be). Buddhism and Hinduism spiritually engage their followers and encourage their quest while in the midst of life (I have witnessed this first hand). Granted, like the Christians and Jews, those religions likely mold, limit, and shape the views of their followers, but at least they are getting more spiritually advanced in the process. There is no waiting for the afterlife (which is why Marx called it the opiate of the masses) as the central focus of its tenets.

On the other hand, to deny any possibility that there is any mystery to the magic of the living realm and how it originated (as the atheist might purport) would be just as narrow-minded as the belief that missionary work is necessary because the whole world should be subservient to just one arrogant admonition (or the ethnocentric Ann Coulter imposistionist view). Empirical science should inspire awe and wonder in humans; not the close minded, fixed views that characterize the repugnant nature of many organized religions. 

Speaking of “fossils” and creation, get a load of this:

It’s an exhibit at the “Creation Museum” in Kentucky (I couldn’t make this shit up!), that depicts a “penis free” Adam naming a sabre tooth tiger in the Garden of Eden.  Nice kitty.  But wait a Kentucky minute!  “Genesis 2:25 clearly says that at this point in Adam & Eve’s life, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.” If Adam courageously sat there unencumbered while he was naming saber-toothed tigers, then why, six thousand years later, should he be depicted as a eunuch in some family-values Eden? And if these people can take away what Scripture says was rightfully his, then why can’t Charles Darwin and the accumulated science of the past 150-odd years take away all the rest of it?” 

The first thing one notices when walking into this den of deceit is the dinosaurs.  Interestingly, they have saddles and are being RIDDEN BY PEOPLE!  I’m sorry, but I found this concept ridiculous at the age of 8 when I saw it on the Flinstones!!!  (This is like shooting fish in a barrel!)

Welcome to white trash (the woman in this picture is likely holding a Bic Mac and a cigarette in her other hand.)

As this excellent Esquire article points out:

The dinosaurs are the first things you see when you enter the Creation Museum, which is very much a work in progress and the dream child of an Australian named Ken Ham. Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, an organization of which the museum one day will be the headquarters. The people here today are on a special tour. They have paid $149 to become”charter members” of the museum.

“Dinosaurs,” Ham laughs as he poses for pictures with his visitors, “always get the kids interested.”

AIG is dedicated to the proposition that the biblical story of the creation of the world is inerrant in every word. Which means, in this interpretation and among other things, that dinosaurs coexisted withman (hence the saddles), that there were dinosaurs in Eden, and that Noah, who certainly had enough on his hands, had to load two brachiosaurs onto the Ark along with his wife, his sons, and their wives, to say nothing of green ally-gators and long-necked geese and humpty-backed camels and all the rest.

(Faced with the obvious question of how to keep a three-hundred-by-thirty-by-fifty-cubit ark from sinking under the weight of dinosaur couples, Ham’s literature argues that the dinosaurs on the Ark were young ones, and thus did not weigh as much as they might have.)

“We,” Ham exclaims to the assembled, “are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!” And everybody cheers.  Read more about the broader dumbing down of America…

The Times of London, said this, when this creationist crap pot opened last May:  “The $27 million (£14 million) exhibition is funded by evangelical Christians, who apparently believe that by reclaiming dinosaurs and fossils for their literal biblical interpretation of natural history, teenagers are less likely to look at internet pornography or get pregnant out of wedlock.”

It’s 3 AM and I’m going to bed.  In the meantime, here are the rest of the photos and a couple of videos I shot.  The first one is of the kids opening their presents.  The second one is of me singing Darcy the Dragon to Andy & Tressa on Christmas Eve and for some reason it’s all jacked up.  I think it’s a codec issue, but I’ve already spent way too much time trying to figure it out and it’s still messed up.  You’ll get the idea though.  I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!  –Carey

Long Day!  Ben & Missy were in town, but I only got to spend an hour tonight with them.  Will hopefully see them for brunch tomorrow.  I took the kids to see Enchanted tonight.  They loved it.  I have to admit, so did I.  Afterwards we went to a cookie exchange, and had a spaghetti dinner too.  It’s 2 AM and I’m still full.  I goofed around with a few of these pictures just for effect.  I’m just going to post these because I’m exhausted.  Nighty night!

Had my normal Thursday night dinner with the family tonight.  Dar & I went to Lisa’s and I took some pictures of the kids with the Christmas decorations.  It’s harder to get into the Christmas spirit when it’s 80° outside (26° C), but Lisa & Joel’s beautiful yard helped.  After that, I went over to Aunty LuLu and Uncle George’s for cherry pie!  Their tree was beautiful too, and we dug out the old pictures from the 30′s and 40′s and they told me lots of stories, which I always love.  I’ll be off for a few days, so I hope everyone has a nice weekend.  Ho Ho Ho.

I told Andy & Tommy that I was sending these pictures to Santa, and if he thought that they looked handsome, he just might visit their house first on Christmas Eve.

Lisa and I in our dunce cap!

Aunty LuLu is my Dad’s 2nd oldest sister

That’s my Aunt in the second row with the pom poms on her shirt.  circa: 1934

That’s my Dad, center picture on the right, and last picture on the left, with his twin sister, my Aunty PeeWee

This is my Aunty GeeGee, my Dad’s oldest sister around 1940.  Yes, I have an Aunty LuLu, PeeWee and GeeGee   Long story!

Lots of pictures of my Uncle George in the Navy during WWII

If you want to see or download the rest of the pictures click here. 
Din Tai Fung tonight!!!  Yeah
See you guys next week!

 

Thanks to everyone who wrote in support of the last post.  As support for the war wanes, it’s nice to know that people are starting to take notice of some of the hypocrisy and atrocities of the Administration.  In the meantime, in the interest of being fair and balanced, I offer you the Hillary nutcracker (or ball buster if you prefer)! 

Not much else new for a change.  My friend Ly is coming tonight for a stay at the Hotel Careyfornia.  He as his best friend are going on a gay cruise that leaves out of Los Angeles.  I haven’t seen Ly in years and I’m really looking forward to his short visit.  Pictures to follow.  Until then, here are some photos of the boys last night at dinner.  We were celebrating Lisa’s birthday (yet another family birthday) at Fuddrucker’s.  The boys were treated to a performance of me, in the car, channeling Jennifer Hudson as I tried to leave.  LOL.  Good times.

Kissing Nana

Yes, his finger is where you think it is!

I love you I do

Yesterday was Darlene’s birthday, so the family gathered at a pizza/pasta place and celebrated.  The kids played video games and a good time was had by all.  I had to go into my office yesterday so I took the dogs and then Lisa came to pick them up, so they played with her dogs all day.  I have a couple of friends in town this weekend, so will probably take a couple of days off blogging.  I hope everyone has a nice weekend. –Carey

 

Last night my cousin and I went to my aunt and uncle’s house for a delicious spaghetti dinner.  My uncle told stories of the war, which I always find fascinating and we had a really nice time:

Jonathan flew in from DC this weekend so went to dinner at Naraya.  The food was great, and the company even better.  Sumaytee Kaemchit treated us like honored guests and a good time was had by all.

On the way home I stopped for gas at the coolest looking gas station I’ve ever seen:

Americans always complain about the price of gas, but at $2.90 a gallon, it’s about the cheapest in the world.

That’s my silver Honda

The station is owned by British Petroleum, and according to their website, it’s a whole new kind of gas station.  The gas was actually cheaper than at the last place I  bought gas.  If you live in Los Angeles, check it out!

About the station

 

At the corner of Olympic and Robertson in Los Angeles, you’ll find a new kind of gas station. It isn’t like an ordinary gas station.

We started with the typical, everyday station on that corner and renovated it in an eco-friendly way — a little greener in its design and materials and in its use of water and energy.

It’s not a prototype “station of the future.” It’s a station for today that’s a little better, a living lab where we can try out ideas for other stations and where people can find ideas they might want to bring into their own lives. It’s a kind of a conversation between BP and people who come into the station, a conversation about how we can both move up a notch on the greencurve.

This idea grew out of BP’s commitment to balancing society’s need for energy with a responsible approach to the environment. It reflects our belief that small steps in the right direction can make a difference.

 

This is a unique gas station, a little better for the environment than a typical station. And yet, still not as green as might be possible with today’s technology. Not as green as we hope to make it in the future.

Water
From the rain to the drain, this station requires less water, wastes less water and pollutes less than a typical gas station. Click to see some of the ways.

The Facility
This station was built by “upcycling” an old, not-so-green gas station. The new design incorporates a lot of unusual features that reduce its environmental impact and allow us to operate a gas station here in a much more sustainable way. Some of these features could be added to other stations and other kinds of businesses. Click to find out more about them.

Materials
Recyclable, recycled, sustainable and non-toxic materials were used to build this station, including even the reuse of scrap materials from the construction job itself. Click to get more details about some of them.

Lighting
The generation of electricity is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and more efficient lighting is one of the easiest ways to save electricity. Click to see some of the ways it’s been done here.

 

Did you know that just one compact fluorescent bulb in every U.S. home would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent as much greenhouse gas as taking up 800,000 cars on the road?