Saganaki is a Greek dish that comes to the table accompanied by
cries of “opa!” and a dramatic fiery flourish. In reality, it’s just
cheese – but what wonderfully salty, sinfully satisfying cheese it is.  The same could be said for Mamma Mia!

It was a hot, hazy day in Los Angeles today, so Tuan and I decided to go see Mamma Mia at the Arclight.

It was so smoggy, you could barely see the Hollywood sign from Sunset Blvd!

The 2:45 showing of Mamma Mia was actually full!  It’s great fun.  Set in a lush Greek island, with breathtaking cinematography.  It’s a delicious romp!

Tuan (far right) didn’t think he was in this picture

There were so many good musical numbers in the movie, but this one was my favorite.  It was so cute!

When I go to the Arclight Cinerama, I always like to park up on the roof and take pictures.  Today there was this very tame pigeon up there, who let me get pretty close:

You can barely make out downtown LA on the top left.

He finally flew off towards the Griffith Park Observatory.

After the movie, we went to The Abbey and ate a late lunch.

It was unusually humid today too, and I was so tired of my long hair in the heat, so I stopped by Supercuts on the way home and decided to get my hair cut.  You may remember my last haircut debacle just three weeks ago:

After that experience, I wanted to be very specific.  So I told the girl I was thinking of a Caesar cut.  She was Hispanic, and she thought I was saying “a scissor cut”. (Think scissor with a mexican accent…see-zor!).  So she said she wouldn’t use clippers!  I said, “Not SCISSORS, CAESER.  Do you understand?”  “Yes, I understand,” she said, “No clippers.”.  We went round and round for a couple of minutes and I could not get her to understand what I meant.  Finally, she asked a girl at another station, and the girl said, “Of course I know what a Caesar cut is!”.  So I switched stations, and later, she whispered to me, “You should have just told her to give you a “George Clooney.”"  LOL

The finished product.

Speaking of bad haircuts, thanks to Sam, I was up way too late playing with this awesome site, www.yearbookyourself.com.  The scary thing is, that I actually had many of these hairstyles in many of these years.  (Though, in the interest of full disclosure, I was born in 1965. and my hair was never that long in the 70′s!)  Place your mouse over each picture to see the year it’s from.  (1988 and 1996 are remarkably accurate.  LOL…Time to fire up the scanner!)

Actually, 1976 is pretty accurate too, and I just found proof.  I was 11 when this family photo was taken in 1976.  That’s me on the bottom left…diggin’ the outfit!  Incidentally, 1976 was the year that Abba’s Mamma Mia, hit #1 in the U.S.  And we’ve come full circle!

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There was a message in the drumbeats. The final moments of the first
international Pangea Day event on Saturday were big on symbolism, as
seven drummers of varied cultures were linked via satellite from Stage
15 at Sony Studios to an international drum circle scattered across the
planet.



There were drummers from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America
and elsewhere, all beating as one during a worldwide broadcast designed
to encourage peace and understanding. Pangea Day was a four-hour
program of short films, live music and brief messages of hope, humor
and sadness, named for the prehistoric super-continent.  “By sharing stories, we have begun the process of turning strangers
into friends,” filmmaker Jehane Noujaim told the U.S. studio audience
in Culver City on the same soundstage where Dorothy and Toto once
danced down the Yellow Brick Road. Noujaim had conceived of the idea of
a multinational film festival broadcast, and it was supported through a
prize from the annual TED Conference, a gathering of creative thinkers
in science and culture.  Read more…

I really enjoyed Jonathan Harris.  He is such an innovator.  Harris, “makes online art that captures the world’s expression – and gives us a
glimpse of the soul of the internet. His projects are both intensely
personal (the “We Feel Fine” project, which scans the world’s blogs to
collect snapshots of the writers’ feelings) and entirely global
(“Universe,” which turns current events into constellations of words).
But their effect is the same – to show off a world that resonates with
shared emotions, concerns, problems, triumphs, and troubles.”   You fellow bloggers can search for your own blog on “We Feel Fine”.  I found mine!

Mike was in town over the weekend, and we had a nice visit.  Have a good week everyone!

Pangea Day — in quotes

Pangea Day’s fabulous line-up
of thought-provoking, inspirational speakers produced no less stellar a
collection of memorable quotes and priceless bits of wisdom. A small
sampling of what was heard:

“By sharing stories, we’ve started the process of turning strangers into friends.” – Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, TED Prize winner and founder of Pangea Day

“We
have a responsibility to expose ourselves to our world, to see our common
humanity, to learn about other people — not only in times of war, but
in times of peace. ” – Ishmael Beah, former child soldier and advocate for peace

“When we look at the earth from space,
we can see ourselves, our species, in its brave struggle. Yes, we’re
troubled inhabitants of a small planet, but we’re also dreamers of
dreams.” – Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco

“Humans are — and must be — sensitive to differences. But we should find hope in realizing how rich and numerous our commonalities are.” – Anthropologist Donald Brown, author of Human Universals

“If we are to prosper together in our increasingly small world, we must listen to — and learn from each other’s stories” – Queen Noor of Jordan

“When we laugh, we change. And when we change, the world changes.” — Dr. Madan Kataria, founder of the International Laughter Club

“I
feel like a hack… I feel I could be doing more… I feel sexy… I
just want to feel alive for the first time in my life… I feel so much
of my Dad in me that there isn’t room for me.” — A selection of feelings, sampled live from the Internet, by conceptual artist Jonathan Harris

“We
have the capacity and tendency to separate ‘us’ from ‘them.’ Once
established, we’re more tolerant to those we call ‘us’ and more brutal
toward ‘them.’ But increasingly, science shows there’s no limit to who
we define as ‘us.’ Eventually, someday, there might not be any more
‘thems.’” – Psychologist Robert Kurzban

“How can films change the world? They can’t, but the people who watch them can. By changing minds, we change the world.” – Actress Cameron Diaz

Tonight was Paul & Matt’s last night in L.A., so after work we headed downtown for appetizers at The Standard.  We ended up not going to Jimmy Kimmel because we would have had to be there at 5:30 and the show doesn’t start until 9:05 (It’s too bad though, as Neil Patrick Harris was the guest).  So we drove around downtown and I showed them the Disney Concert Hall.  After that, we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater to watch Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.  I haven’t laughed so hard in a long long time.  It was a really fun movie.  I can’t say much more without spoiling a lot of the gags, but suffice it to say, Neil Patrick Harris rules.  When the movie was over, Matt & Paul were pretty tired, as it was in the upper 90′s today and they were out and about all day.  So we made the requisite Pinkberry run, and they came home and crashed; leaving the blogging to me.  Sheesh, kids these days.  Tomorrow, we’ll have breakfast before they head to Weho and the Hotel Careyfornia prepares for our next guest! 

Sorry, I don’t have PhotoShop…just lame old PowerPoint.  LOL.  Anyone know of an easy, free photo lasso tool?

Stop-Loss Is Just the Beginning

“Fuck the president!”

Curry (Gary), his brother and I went to see this movie at the Arclight today, and I must say I was blown away. 

Ryan Phillippe gave what I thought was an Oscar worthy performance and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was hauntingly good, as usual.  When Phillippe’s character shouted “Fuck the President”, someone in our theater cheered, resulting in spontaneous applause.  That says a lot right there.

I was looking back at my blog entry from one year ago today.  It also featured Iraq:

Is Iraq REALLY that bad? YES!

This roundup of YouTube clips is
meant to give a small sense of what it’s like for the people who are
killing and getting killed in Iraq — a view that, limited as it is, one can’t possibly get from the mainstream newsmedia. Terribly sad.

I highly recommend this movie.  I actually tried to see it Friday night, but it was sold out.  That’s a good sign.  I hope the rest of the country is watching.  This war is so ridiculous.

“The main characters are small town kids dragging ghosts, nightmares,
anger and despair in their wake. They have no real means of escape,
apart from suicide, as the cycle of Middle East war spins madly on
without end. If Stop-Loss conveys any message, it’s simply that.”

http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/620655167/the-increasingly-few–proud.html

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Here are a couple of shots from the roof of the Arclight.

Speaking of Hollywood…Steve gave me the idea to upload my picture to find out which celebrities I resemble.  Here are the results.  LOL.  If I looked that much like Jake Gyllenhaal, do you think I’d still be single at 42? 

Mika’s Dad is in town and tonight he took us to dinner and to go see The Groundlings:

The Groundlings is an improvisational comedy troupe based in Los Angeles, California, USA. The troupe was formed by Gary Austin in 1974 and uses an improv format influenced by Viola Spolin to produce sketches and improvised scenes. The troupe moved into their current location on Melrose Avenue in 1979. Many Groundlings performers have found success in movies and television, including several who have become cast members and writers on Saturday Night Live, MAD TV, and Reno 911!.The Groundlings School sees over 1,000 students per year go through their program. The competitive program consists of 4 levels (Basic,Intermediate, Writing Lab and Advanced). Participants must be successfully advanced from each level by the instructor. After completing the Advanced level, one may be voted into the Sunday Company, which performs on Sunday. Members of the Main Company are selected from members of the Sunday Company. The current ExecutiveDirector of The Groundlings is Dan Fishbach who has led the company since December, 2006.  Source: Wikipedia

 




This guy was the funniest.  His name is Jordan Black




Notice who’s picture is behind my right shoulder.  It’s Julia Sweeney (It’s Pat), who has since gone on to such amazing things, including her “Letting Go of God” monologue and her recent TED talk with Jill Sobule, The Jill & Julia Show, which I LOVE, and highly recommend:

It was a crazy day weatherwise in LA today.  It started out warm and sunny.  I’m still dog-sitting, so I took the pups on a long walk this morning.  We sat at a cafe for a while, and I read some more about my new camera.  It certainly has a lot of hidden features…though not quite this many:

Anyway, here are some shots I took of Garbo & Ruby, and of the storm front that moved through Los Angeles this afternoon.  Being close to St. Patrick’s Day, I was hoping for a rainbow, or at least a pot of gold.

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people all those lives
Where are they now?
With the loves and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived and then they died
Seems so unfair
And I want to cry

You say: “ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn”
And you claim these words as your own
But I’ve read well, and I’ve heard them said
A hundred times, maybe less, maybe more

If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don’t plagiarise or take “on loans”
There’s always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who’ll trip you up and laugh
When you fall

You say: “ere long done do does did”
Words which could only be your own
And then you then produce the text
From whence was ripped some dizzy whore, 1804

A dreaded sunny day
So let’s go where we’re happy
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Oh Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So let’s go where we’re wanted
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
But you lose because Wilde is on mine

Apologies to Clement C. Moore:

‘Twas the night before Oscar

And all through the “wood”,

Celebrities were fasting,

Making sure they’d look good.



The statues were polished,
Though wet on this day.

Hoping Johnny or George,

Would hold them Sunday.



David and Hyun Ju,

With Carey in tow.

Braved the Hollywood rain,

And to the Kodak did go.



More rapid than eagles,

The celebrities came.

And they whistled and shouted,

And called them by name.



There’s Angie, there’s Brad,

Ben Affleck and Matt,

And there’s little Juno,
Where’s her new baby at?



We spoke not a word,

But took lots of pics.

Tomorrow’s the Oscars,

And here are my picks:

and my pics:

Yes, my sweatshirt is made up of pi to the 50,000 digit.  Geek!

The Los Angeles snow capped Alps

Oscar’s rain poncho

Nancy O’Dell from Access Hollywood, preparing for tomorrow

Uh huh

Hyun Ju cleverly jumped behind Spidey here for this cracktacular photo opp!

Trying to fill Will Smith’s shoes.  Are you legend?

Best of the rest:

Sometimes it’s hard to get in the Christmas spirit when it’s so warm and sunny outside.  But today really felt like Christmas, because everyone was so friendly and cheery.  It was such a beautiful day.  So clear in fact that I could actually see the snow on the mountains surrounding my house (and I rarely even see the mountains surrounding my house, let alone the snow). I took advantage of the 76° (25° C) weather and walked all around town to get my errands run and deliver some Christmas presents.  Later, Tyson and I went to see Juno.  We both really liked the movie, but neither one of us could articulate why.  What starts out as a sharp, albeit superficial comedy, becomes a poignant coming of age film with Oscar caliber performances.  And the soundtrack is just delicious!  (Listen here.)  I need to think about why it was such a feel good movie, as the the subject matter wasn’t exactly tidy.  Somehow it worked though.

After the movie, we went for sushi at this great local spot in Santa Monica.  Tyson knew the chef and he took good care of us.  We ate $50 worth of food for $20.  On the way home I stopped to take some photos of the Christmas lights at the Mormon temple.  I still didn’t get all my Christmas shopping done.  Oh well…there’s still 2 days!    Here are my pics from today:

Roscoe is growing into such a handsome dog!

Arielle enjoying Emo Elmo on my iTouch

This is from the top of my street, across from the House of Blues and the Mondrian

Homeless Santa in Beverly Hills. I gave him a couple of bucks and asked if I could take his photo

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If you’re a fan of British music, you’re probably familiar with an Irish band called The Pogues.   Perhaps their biggest hit is a “Christmas” song called “Fairytale of New York“  The song is consistently voted the #1 Christmas song in England.  This year however, there was a problem.

It’s two days from the 50th birthday he thought he’d never see and Shane MacGowan is even more bemused and befuddled than ever. How, after a life of such famously bacchanalian excess that he was told 25 years ago that he had six weeks to live, has it come to this? It’s one thing to be best known for a sentimental Christmas ballad, no matter how esoteric, but it’s quite another to have Middle Britain rise as one to prevent Radio 1 censoring ‘Fairytale Of New York’.

If the Pogues’ larger-than-life frontman and chief songwriter has become something of an unlikely national treasure, it is mainly thanks to his bittersweet duet with the late Kirsty MacColl, which returns with Slade-like inevitability each Yuletide. But it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always thus. Nineteen years ago, the BBC banned another of his songs, ‘Birmingham Six’. “They’re still doing time/ for being Irish in the wrong place/ And at the wrong time” sang MacGowan as Patrick Hill and five innocent men served time at Her Majesty’s displeasure. They’re out now but the song is still off the playlist.

The same is not true of MacGowan: he’s back in vogue in a way he hasn’t been since the critical acclaim that greeted the revolutionary, high-octane albums Rum, Sodomy And The Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God made the Pogues one of the hottest bands in the world. Just yesterday, his toothless coupon leered from the pages of the tabloids as he stumbled out of actress Davinia Taylor’s Christmas party with fellow good timers Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Sadie Frost.

Make no mistake, his consumption of alcohol and narcotics has been dizzying. MacGowan says he was fed Guinness from the age of four by the collection of aunts and uncles who raised him in Tipperary in an attempt to put him off alcohol in later life. It didn’t work: at eight he drank his first bottle of Powers whiskey, and he soon added drugs, smoking joints at 13 and taking acid at 14. By 17, he was hanging out with rent boys and junkies (he says he was once the former, although that seems unlikely given his trademark jug-eared plug-ugliness), and so strung out that his doctor threatened to have him sectioned unless he submitted to six months in the notorious Bethlem detox clinic, the first of four stints trying to dry out.

At one stage he claimed he was polishing off 50 LSD tablets and three bottles of whiskey a day and, as he came apart at the seams, his antics became increasingly bizarre. In New Zealand he painted himself blue, claiming he’d been ordered to do it by Maori spirits; back in London, the night before the Pogues were due to fly out to tour with Bob Dylan, he took so much LSD that his girlfriend came home to find him covered in blood after eating a Beach Boys album. He told her he was about to host a summit of world leaders to avert the Third World War. He missed the plane and never toured with Dylan.

At one stage in 1999, his friend Sinead O’Connor found him snorting heroin and called the police, leading to another spell in rehab which ended abruptly when he was thrown out for bad behaviour. But not all of MacGowan’s celebrity friends – they include Bono, Nick Cave and Pete Doherty – believe that he is totally out of control. Bono argued that his self-destructive behaviour is “a mask, his way of ignoring people he doesn’t want to deal with. Shane is more together than people imagine”.

Not that those people will necessarily include the other members of the Pogues, who fired their garrulous talisman after he disintegrated on tour in Japan in 1991. After falling out of a train door at a station and knocking out the few blackened teeth which hadn’t been removed in drunken fights, he then performed an unscheduled exit from a van at 50mph on the way back to the hotel. When they got there, the other members of the band sacked him, replacing him with Joe Strummer. All he had to say was “Thank you, you’ve been very patient with me”.

Bombastic yet with a deeply sensitive streak, MacGowan perceives himself as a latter day Brendan Behan; as a romantic Irish iconoclast with a ready wit, a free-thinking republican writer who suffered for his art, his convictions, his unwillingness to be shackled. Perhaps that is why he allowed himself to be typecast as a drunken minstrel in the Johnny Depp film The Libertine, or why he called his caustic memoirs A Drink With Shane MacGowan.

He has a razor sharp mind, even when addled with drink, and is incredibly well-read. MacGowan says he was reading Marx and Trotsky as an 11-year-old, and he references William Burroughs and James Clarence Mangan regularly, even if he doesn’t have a lot of time for Samuel Beckett (“a miserable fat old bastard”), WB Yeats (“an old fairy”) or even Plato (“basically just some Greek c***”).

An avid reader as a child, the moment MacGowan decided to channel his vast energies into music came when he left detox aged 17. “It was like fate,” he says. “The first thing I saw when I came out of the madhouse was the Sex Pistols, a bunch of people who looked like they ought to be in a loony bin.” He became Shane O’Hooligan, living the punk dream and fronting first The Nipple Erectors and then the Millwall Chainsaw.  Read more…

And so I present to you, a true Christmas classic

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I’ve got a feeling
This year’s for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing “Galway Bay”
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it’s our last

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you.

Thanks for all the emails of concern.  Everything is OK where I live, it’s just really hard for me to breathe.  As long as the winds don’t shift towards the Hollywood Hills I should be OK.  I’m a bit more worried about down where my cousins live though.  Here are two pictures that Lisa just sent me from her cell phone.  These were taken from right by the restaurant we always eat at on Thursdays.  There’s a really interesting map below that shows details on all the fires and how they started and how contained they are.  I guess this is the price we pay for being able to eat breakfast on our patios 350 days a year!

Courtesy LA Times

We had breakfast at Hugo’s this morning and then I dropped Ly and Jeff off in San Pedro so they could board their gay cruise. 

I think this picture is hilarious. Note the Indian on the left and giant disco ball.  God love the queens.

I’ll be interested to hear how they liked it.  I’ve never been on a cruise, and personally have no desire to ever take one.  I’d much rather see places instead of a vast ocean.  I know there are ports of call and all, but it just doesn’t appeal to me.  Never say never though.  Here are a few photos.  Have a good week everyone!

These first three are unremarkable, except for the fact that I took them out of my sun roof while driving 70 mph (FAST shutter speed!).  It was a pretty day in downtown LA.

Where are Isaac & Doc??