Callifornia Blogging Part Five, Friday June 8th, with pictures. MSN Sucks edition.

View from ritz carlton marina del rey

This is the third time I am trying to make this post. I was putting pictures in an writing little blurbs about each one. But MSN fucking sucks and kicked me off the page each time before I'm finished. So, since it is now 1AM and I don't want spend another hour creating a post that will only be lost once again,  I am going to just post the pictures. Maybe I'll come back and tell you about the pictures. Maybe not. I depends on how long it takes for the Fed to catch me after I blow up MSN corporate headquarters.

This is the pictures from my room at the Universal City Hilton.

Here are some from my tour of Universal Studios and my wandering around the park.

 

 

And from the Dodgers game me and Jen went to that night.

 

Enjoy! And remember: MSN fucking sucks!

California Blogging Volume Four: The Paris Hilton Dog and Pony Show...and a Meme!

Paris-hilton-crying-02

If all of you are sick and tired of the whole Paris Hilton saga, I feel your pain. Try spending that week in Los Angeles, where the story actually qualifies for local news. The story was all over the TV, local news reporters camped outside her house like the paparazzi and you could not escape it.

I am of two minds of this. One, the whole "I'm rich so I deserve special treatment" stuff annoys the hell out of me. I have to deal with that on a daily basis around the suburbs of NYC I live in. Just because you have more money does not make you a better person. It does not exempt you from the rules of common decency or the laws of the land. It simply means that you have more money.

But on the other hand, I agree with the statement "Paris" made where she said that she wished the news media would focus on other news, like, say, the war in Iraq. There is a war going on, you know. With casualties and everything.

But I think the reasons America latches on to topics like these is because they want to get angry about something but are afraid to get angry about the war or the crappy job the President is doing. Railing on against Paris Hilton is safe. Railing on against the war or Bush makes you un-American. I do both, so I may be wrong in this assumption.

But the whole Hilton scandal inspired me to do something for the first time. It inspired me to create a "meme". I am very nervous to present this to you. I am pretty sure I did it wrong, because, mainly, I have no idea exactly what a "meme" is. And Wikipedia was of no help I used red lettering and all the "memes" I saw used white is this a cardinal sin? I don't know. I mispelled "You're", which seems to happen alot in these things. If I did screw up, blame Jeff. He inspired me to do it.

Well, here it is:

 

Paris meme

California Blogging, Volume three: Wednesday and Thursday.

Yes. I know I am back in New York again. But unfortunately, I did not have internet access through out my stay in LA. It cost $9.95 per day to get on the internet, and if Jen didn't have to go on for work, I didn't go on. I like blogging, but it didn't feel right to spend $10 getting on to the internet just to do a Paris Hilton meme (which is forthcoming) when that $10 could be used to buy a Diet Coke from Room Service. And I was usually busy doing stuff that I will talk about here over the next couple days.

I'm going to start off at one week ago. This, as you recall, was my "resting of the foot day". I had a, well, wart on my foot that one guy thought he got rid of but it never quite healed. Damn my Type 2 Diabetes!!! So I have been going to another guy for about, gosh, it must be two months for a series of freezing the wound, scraping of the dead tissue caused by the last freezing, then freezing the wound again. Last Monday, the guy tried something different. He put some acid on my foot to try to "Atom Bomb" it into submission. I don't know if it worked but it made my foot hurt--a lot. Tuesday last, I walked on it to Venice and was pretty much in excruciating pain. Since most of the weekend would involve me doing a lot of walking, I decided to rest the foot on Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday, after my last blog entry, I decided to lay in bed and watch TV.  What to my joyous eyes should appear on HBO but Empire Strikes Back. Ah, HBO. You'll run a stupid Seth Green movie I've never heard of 15 times a day, but every once in a while, you'll put a gem like that on.

That night, Jen's business was having a soiree in honor of all the attendees so I thought that I was on my own for dinner that night. Around 8PM, Jen comes up and asks if I wanted to come down. They had loads of food left over and the powers that be suggested that Jen bring me down. So I had some really good food and a beer for free. Can't beat that.

The next day, Thursday, I decided to go down to the pool and read a little more of the new Michael Chabon novel I've been reading. Now, the one gift I can claim for my Lithuanian/Irish genes is the ability to get a sunburn in 0-60 seconds. So, I bought a spray-on "sports" sunscreen. This is a type of sunscreen that is not supposed to come of if you sweat. Which is good, because I sweat a lot (I am telling you much more than you really want to know. I guess I am becoming a true blogger.).

Dealing with the spray was a learning experience. I learned that you need about 10 minutes for it to dry. I also learned that my shorts ride up about an inch when I sit down and I shouldn't be afraid of getting my socks damp when spraying the stuff on. These last two things came into play that first day because, while it worked fine on the areas that were sprayed well, I have a band of sunburn above my socks and around my knees where spray didn't get to. Ouch. But the odd shapes of the burns make for interesting conversation pieces.

Later that night, Jen's boss's boss took the team out for dinner. Again, I was asked to tag along. A bunch of us piled into Jen's direct boss's car. We were given shady directions to the restaurant and ended up getting lost getting there. The joke of the whole thing was that the car was equipped with a GPS system. Thing is, it took us almost half the trip to get it to work. Oh, but when it worked, it was awesome! I definitely want one!

The restaurant was called Sona. It was one of those fancy, foo foo, chic California restaurants. We all had the tasting menu, which provided a selection of their menu. Each plate featured tiny portions yet artfully decorated and composed. It was good, but I probably would have starved if I had to eat only one of the tasting menu items by itself.

But the kicker, for me at least, about this place is that it is a block away from a "live nude girls" place. Rich eating establishment near a sleezy strip club. Gotta love California.

More later and after this weekend--pictures! Maybe! 

California Blogging, Volume two: Paris Hilton: Free at last!

 

Parishiltoninpokey

So, I woke up horribly this morning. The first thing I saw, THE FIRST THING, when I turned on the TV at the hotel was that Paris Hilton was released from prison. After serving, what, a whopping four days in jail. Now, I shouldn't be so harsh. The sheriff's department said she was released due to "health reasons". What were they?

Terminal richness and chronic case of celebrity.

No, no. It was that. The real reason has yet to be released, but rumor say it could be anything from a rash to a possible nervous breakdown.

Awww, isn't that so sad! She was going to have a widdle iddle nervous bweakdown. Boo hoo hoo!

I'm sure that if her name was Juan Dominquez or her net worth was under $10,000 dollars see would still be in prison. I mean, isn't the whole idea of prison to introduce a breakdown in the people who go there? Heck, she was all by herself in a cell. She had a cotton candy, ice cream prison experience. No communal showers, no threats from other inmates. And that was too tough. Wah, wah, wah.

 Los Angeles would have just been better suited not even letting her get any prison time. I mean, it was laughable when they reduced her sentence from 45 days to 23 days for "good behavior". This is downright hilarious.

The sheriff department's spokesman stressed that her sentence was simply converted to a house arrest situation. She is still being punished! By being forced to spend time in her Hollywood mansion with her pets and having her friends coming over and having parties. And heck, she could even leave the house for 48 Hours a week! She already called in her hair and makeup people so she could "forget the whole prison experience" with a new look.

There night be an optomist out there who thinks that she has finally learned her lesson. I think not. All she did was prove that while the people who operate the legal system out here might be ashamed for the rest of the world thinking they have gone light on punishing celebrities, they don't really have the guts to do anything to change that image.

Since I am out here, I was considering going to Hilton's mansion and offering a protest to her getting off light. But I would probably be arrested and sentenced to prison. And I feel I would be in there longer that just four frikkin days.     

California Blogging, Volume One

Los Angeles at night

Yes, since I am blogging this on my wife's work computer, we are going with Vox stock photos. Sorry about that.

Well, I am in sunny Los Angeles! Actually, sunny Marina Del Rey. My wife is at a conference here today and since I made the mistake of having my foot scraped (and acid put in it, don't ask why), I am resting in our hotel room. Since that is boring as heck, I am blogging.

How was the flight out? Uh, okay I guess. You really don't realize how long 5 and a half hours is until you are in a confined space with poor ventilation for that amount of time. But it was relatively smooth and reasonably quiet. The in flight movie was Breach. How did I like it? Unfortunately, the projector in our part of the plane was not working.

When we arrived yesterday, the temperature in LA was in the 60's, about 20 degrees cooler than it was in New York. That was a nice change.

We are staying at the Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Rey. This is a luxury hotel. I feel like I am a pauper when I ride the elevator. This is how ritzy (no pun intended) this hotel is-there are cloth towels in the lobby restroom. Cloth, not paper, towels to dry your hands with. I have never seen that before.

The service was awesome. Although, since the room is in Jen's name, I was called Mr. Dogin by the staff. Yes, I know I'm a kept man, but I still like my own name.

We decided to walk along the boardwalk by Venice Beach. It wasn't too packed because it was rather gloomy. But at least I can say that I did that. We actually ate at a pretty cool bar and grill-the Venice Whaler.

I'll try to blog a little more later in the week.