It was one year ago today when I was sitting at my desk and smelled smoke.  I was dog-sitting at the time, so I took Buster and Roxy and walked down the middle of an empty Santa Monica Boulevard, to find a fire burning at Micky’s “flaming” gay bar. 

Micky’s was always a popular hangout, but I never knew how popular until I posted these pictures on my blog last year.  There has not been a week that has gone by since then, that someone hasn’t visited my blog by Googling Micky’s Fire (#20 Google hit, thank you!).  The weird thing is that the hits come from all over the world; most recently Poland and the United Arab Emirates! (??)

So knowing the bar and the fire are of such international interest, I’ve been taking pictures of the reconstruction for the past year.  They certainly don’t seem to be in a hurry at all.  Their website says they hope to be reopened in early 2008.  Leave it to queens to be late!

January 2008

April 2008

August 2008

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Renea, Laura & Kristen leave the Hotel Careyfornia early tomorrow morning.  We had a good time in Hollywood yesterday.  Today they went to Venice Beach and Beverly Hills, and tonight they’re out partying.  Meanwhile, Vivek and I went to a special screening of a new documentary called “America the Beautiful” which was about our obsession with beauty and plastic surgery.  The filmmaker was there to answer questions about the movie, and though it was pretty good, it wasn’t as good as the documentary we saw last week.  Here are a few photos:

Striking a pose on the same stairs the celebrities walk into the Kodak Theater for the Oscars

Hollywood glamor girls

You can barely make out the Hollywood sign in the background

The elephants in “Babylon Court” are a recreation from D.W. Griffith’s silent epic “Intolerance“

Another “clear” day in Los Angeles

My harem

The obligatory Pinkberry stop

A sober Ryan in front of the 12 Step Store

Ready for a night on the town

In response to commenters; my other harem

Yet another sushi dinner


The courtyard of the Sunset 5

Vivek on the Sunset Strip

Ryan’s sister Renea and her friends Laura and Kristen took a road trip from Missouri to California this week, getting their kicks on Route 66.  It’s the first time in the Golden State for all of these Midwestern beauties, and of course they made their way to the Hotel Careyfornia!

Last night though, Claudio & Ryan invited us to their new home.  It was the first time Vivek ever went to a barbecue!  He liked it a lot, and enjoyed visiting with other college students his own age.  LOL.

I set my camera on the tripod and took 3 group shots:

As you can see, Claudio looked quite fabulous in the first shot.  But he soon invoked his classic sneer in the second shot, and a new and wacky persona I’d never met before, for the third picture:

In the classic film, “The Three Faces of Eve“, Eve White is a quiet, self-effacing wife and mother who has headaches and occasional blackouts. Eventually she is sent to see psychiatrist Dr. Luther, and while under hypnosis her “alter personality”, wild, fun-loving Eve Black, discloses herself. With Eve Black on the loose, Eve White’s husband leaves her and abandons their daughter. Under continued therapy, a third personality appears, the relatively stable Jane.

Hmmmm…I wonder who’s who??

Hollywood pictures tomorrow   I’m tired!

It’s summer, and the busy season at the Hotel Careyfornia is in full swing.  Daniel & Tori are coming next weekend, and possibly Donna too.  Claudio & Ryan were nice enough to pay us a visit this past weekend.  Tomorrow they’re leaving for Brazil for a month in hopes that Claudio will get his visa to teach at the University of California in the fall.  They will be leaving their car here (apparently the Valet Parking rates at the Hotel Careyfornia are a bit cheaper than LAX), so if Claudio doesn’t get a visa, I guess I’ll finally have a car.    I hope he gets it though; I would hate to see him end up like poor little Elian Gonzalez!

By the way, speaking of “little” Elian, he’s 16 now and just joined the Communist Party last week.  He’s also affecting the Obama campaign!

The trademark Claudio sneer that he developed in the early 90′s as we traveled through Europe together and I constantly asked him to pose for pictures.  It has since become legend!

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My “footprints” (that show who came to my site) had two rather odd Google searches this week (actually one was Yahoo) that returned my blog as a hit.  Someone from Singapore was searching for “sperm + toilet” and was directed to my entry from August 3, 2007 entitled:

Designer Sperm, Toilet Dining, Self Gifting & Rental Goats

and someone from Iran searched for “woman + picture” and ended up here:

Picture Perfect LA, Repulsive Women Drivers, A GLY Visitor and iPhone schmyPhone!

Considering the “woman” in the “picture” in that post was one on the most repulsive I’ve ever seen, Yahoo probably didn’t do much to foster Iranian/American relations.  LOL.

On the way home from the airport tonight, we saw this obnoxious Hollywood wombat, driving with her foot out the window, while smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone! Are you fu**ing kidding me!!??  She barely noticed my flash going offas I took the picture and gave her the most disgusted look I couldmuster.  This girl symbolizes nearly everything I hate in life!  And yes, I know I’m being sexist, but let’s face it, would you ever see a man doing this?  I thought not.

No clues as to why the person in Singapore was searching for sperm + toilet!  (My guess is they were looking for this:  http://www.dearcupid.org/question/can-you-get-pregnant-from-sperm-on-toilet.html) If you’re reading this Mr. (Ms.??) Singapore, don’t be a stranger. 

I went to my first Christmas party of the season tonight.  For reasons that will be revealed in a week or two, one of the guests was dressed as, well, see for yourself.  Before the party started though, I snapped a few photos of the the gorgeous sunset.  For comparison, the first photo is one I took a month ago during the fires.  I took the second picture tonight in the same location.  The sky is still pretty, but luckily not smoke filled.

It rained today in Los Angeles for the first
time in what seemed like years.  Though the rain was quite
welcome, it also caused a lot of trouble in the burn areas from last
month.  It was nice though for a change.

My brother David and his girlfriend
Rebecca arrived today for a short stay.  We went to Hollywood
tonight for dinner and a movie.  We were going to see “Hitman”
at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, but when we found out it only got a 14 on
Rotten Tomatoes, we asked for our money back!  (I
had bought the tickets online, before checking. 
Dumb.)  We instead opted for dinner at Hollywood & Highland, as I had a
$25 gift certificate.  Hollywood after a good rain, is a
different place.  Everything shines a little
brighter.  It was as if I was photographing some
things for the first time.  After coming home, we watched the
latest two episodes of Nip/Tuck.  I think this season is
as good as the second one.  They never cease to amaze me with
the storylines they come up with. That’s it, short entry, as I still
haven’t caught up on my sleep from Portland.  Have a good
weekend.

Song of
the day. (It was either this or the Jonas Brothers, Christine!!) 

I had to work all day today to get a project done, as I’m leaving for San Diego in a couple of days.  I did take 3 hours off though to go watch the Emmy’s with some friends.  Since I live in Hollywood, I feel obligated to report on the festivities.    As I type, I can hear the noise from the after-party at the Mondrian Hotel next door.  I just walked over there to snap some photos, but couldn’t get very close like last year.  The ceremony ended a little after 7 PM Los Angeles time, so the parties are starting to wind down.  Here are a few of my observations about the show:

• I thought Ryan Seacrest did a great job.  He’s so damn affable.  Not all of my friends felt the same way, but I think he’s one of the hardest working people in show business.
• Heroes was robbed!
• What’s up with all the bleeping censors!?  Did Janet Jackson’s nipple phone in a bomb threat?

• The Soprano’s tribute was cool.  David Chase’s speech was not.
• 30 Rock?
• James Spader again?  Gandolfini definitely deserved the Emmy.
• America Ferrera is very poised.
• Helen Mirren is still a class act.
• I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but I wasn’t in love with their bit tonight.
• Bill Maher’s team introduction in the stall was f***ing hilarious!
• If Al Gore is going to run for president at the 11th hour, he needs to lose weight.
• The “Roots” tribute was touching.  And apparently black don’t crack!
• OK, we get it.  Tony Bennett is cool.
• Am I the only person in the world who HATES Grey’s Anatomy?  Apparently so.
• Jamie Pressly is way overrated.
• Jeremy Piven rocks.
• What happened to Friday Night Lights?
• Dexter?
• The Amazing Race is not so amazing anymore. Give it up to Idol.
• Has Masi Oka lost weight?  He’s looking good.
• Tom from MySpace should certainly be able to afford a better sweatshirt.
• Ray Romano is still pretty funny.
• The Kanye West bit was the funniest of the night.
• Ali Larter could turn a gay man straight.
• And finally, thank GOD, no Britney!

My Emmy after photos:

That’s Eva Longoria believe it or not.  I was using digital zoom.

Alfre Woodard

Jonathan Ryhs Meyers

Lara Spencer (drunk)

And speaking of television, the funniest show on TV is finally back after a 2 year hiatus.  Curb Your Enthusiasm never ceases to make me laugh out loud.  Tonight’s episode guest starred Senator Barbara Boxer, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Vivica Fox and Gina Gershon.  I love Larry David.  It’s like our lives are intertwined.  If you know me, you know what I mean.  Hilarious.

Song of the day

And so the award season has officially begun.  I’m personally looking forward to some better movies at the theater.  There hasn’t been much of anything good out at all lately.  I’m really looking forward to this:

And finally, last but not least:

Happy Birthday Ryan!

NOTE:  I’m told some people can’t see the text anymore with this new theme, and I have no idea why.  Could it have something to do with their Javascript not being enabled?  If anyone knows why it’s blank for some people but not others, please let me know. Thanks.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out this new theme last night and this is the result.  It certainly looks a lot cleaner than my old page:

I guess it’s time for a change…something light and airy for summer, LOL.    The only problem with this is that I can’t add my own CSS and JavaScript to do things like my old custom header.  So I’ve had to move the links to the first hand accounts of the Virginia Tech shootings to the bottom left.  I’m also trying to get a Google applet to work for my site to make searching easier, but right now it’s only searching the first page.  If you still like the old theme (as shown above) you can go to the bottom of the final post and click “View all weblog entries” to revert to the black and white.

My other quandary now is how many posts I allow on each page.  With this new layout I can have up to 20 entries per page.  I tried that at first and there were about 2000 graphics that needed to load!   Obviously that’s not an option, and with as much as I write and the amount of complaints that I get about slow page loads, I think what I’ll do is change it dynamically based on the length of each post.  Some pages might have 2 or 3 entries, some only one.  What do you think?  I would appreciate any feedback about the look or the content!  Thanks for reading and feeding my narcissism, LOL.

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I got an the following email from Lisa this morning:

For all of you that don’t know yet, Tommy broke his arm yesterday.  He was playing on a huge ball with his friend, Chase, & he fell off right onto his arm.  Broke both bones!  We were in the ER until 11pm last night.  Luckily, an orthopedic surgeon was on site & was able to re-set his arm there.  Tommy thought he was anything but lucky though.  Watching somebody re-set your son’s arm is one of the hardest things I’ve ever seen.  Hopefully I won’t see it again any time soon.  He needs this splint for about 4 weeks while his bones re-set & then he’ll move on to a cast for another 6-8 weeks.  It’s going to be a long haul!  Anyway, he’s in good (well, ok) spirits and he hasn’t needed any pain medication yet.  I will keep you all posted. 

 

Lisa :)

My poor little cousin!!  He does not look happy at all.  (Guess I wouldn’t be either!)  Hang in there Tommy, we all love you!!

Not a happy camper!!

Tom & Cathy are in Munich this week with Patrick; and Matthias just sent this gorgeous photo of Beate & Patrick.  I just love this picture!

“Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: “Mankind”. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words – “mank” and “ind”. What do these words mean ? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.”

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, mine’s on the 45.

Song of the day