Road Trippin'

Last Friday night, I needed to get from work in Santa Monica (Point A) out to a friend's house in Arcadia (Point B). Normally this should take about 45 minutes - it's 33 miles - but on this particular Friday, every single freeway route I could have taken was completely jammed up. Not like that's anything new in L.A. but still . . .

So I Google-Mapped a route that avoided the freeways completely, and long story short, I drove through parts of the city I had never been through before. Granted, it still took two hours door-to-door, but I grew up here, and after a 15-year hiatus, moved back nearly two years ago, and still saw things in person for the first time, like this Broadway Avenue bridge that crosses the Los Angeles River.

I'm not a huge fan of driving; I think the claims of a car being "fun to drive" are a bunch of hooey, especially here in L.A. But every once in a while, I like driving a route where there's interesting stuff to look at . . . just so long as it doesn't take me longer than two hours.

Childhood Books

I cringed when I saw that Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are are being made into movies because children's books rarely translate well from the page to the screen. - witness the disastrous Dr. Seuss live-action films with Jim Carrey and Mike Myers.

But my childhood memories were pleasantly jarred when I read that The Hungry Caterpillar was celebrating its 40th anniversary. It was one of the first books I can remember reading as a child, though I don't remember if I actually owned the book or it was from the library. Mom still has pictures of me at the library sitting on a carpet square listening to story hour - and I'll always be grateful to her for allowing and encouraging me to read.

News & Notes

First of all, a big thank you to my dear friend Dar, who today gave me my first feedback on this here little corner of the interwebs, as the kiddies call it. So thanks for reading, Dar, and as I promised her, I'll try and write more often.

So I'm flipping channels between the NCAA Tournament and a meaningless pre-season game between the Reds and Astros on the MLB Network (a pitfall of having a TV in my office, but hey, I use it for video editing more than I do for TV watching) and I notice that Lance Berkman of the Astros has some flippin' HUGE muttonchop sideburns (see left). Good lord, what is it about Houston first basemen and whacked-out facial hair? 'Cause on the right is what Jeff Bagwell grew in 2000. Yikes.

Why Wear 'Em?

So I've got the MLB Channel (greatest channel ever) and they're showing the U.S. WBC team against the Yankees. Granted it's the YES feed, so I've got to put up with Michael Kay, but it's baseball.

Anyways, first Adam Dunn, and just now David Wright struggled with pop-ups on the infield (Dunn completely missed his - D.C. can look forward to a whole season of that) but both of them were wearing sunglasses . . . on TOP OF THEIR FRICKIN' CAPS! Dudes, seriously. I know they're super expensive Oakley whatever-the-heck-they're-called, but they ain't doin' a damn bit of good perched on top of your heads! The top of your head doesn't need extra sun protection - that's what the cap is for! If the sunglasses aren't on your face, shielding your eyes from the sun, don't wear 'em. Plain and simple.

Dumbasses . . .