MTV Movie Awards

Caro and Dani went to the MTV Movie Awards last night at Gibson Amphitheater at Universal City. All I got was this camera phone picture. It was a blast for Dani, who said "Johnny Depp was there." That about summed it up in terms of hugeness for her. The girls got all dolled up and then went to Katsuya afterwards. Caro said you couldn't even tell that there was, or had been, a fire on the Universal lot.

Aspen

Memorial Day weekend had us up in Colorado visiting friends. The view from the patio was amazing (this photo doesn't do it justice). The mountains were still snow-capped and there was a Spring chill in the air. The air was fresh and the sky blue, and the buds of the trees were just beginning to open.

Happy Mothers Day

Henry got into some mud puppy, dirt pie makin' happiness last night. We went over to Zach & Wendy's house last night to have some burgers, to share some stories over beers and simply just to relax on a cool, California Saturday evening.

The Saddest Dead Pinata in All the World.

We had a party for Caro's birthday along with our friends, Zach and Wendy, for their son's second birthday. Seeing that it was around Cinco de Mayo (the party was on the 3rd and Caro's birthday really is 5/5) we decided to throw in a pinata. The good news was, that unlike Steve Martin in Parenthood who had to resort to sawing through the unforgiving paper-mache, the young kids were able to smash open the donkey with a plastic baseball bat. One family had to leave when they're young son didn't take the paper animal annihilation very well. Drifting out of the party late at night, after one Coors Light too many, I found this sad view before me. I snapped the photo just before getting the creepy feeling that the pinata might actually come to life and attack me. So I ran, ran away from the dead pinata.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Just proof that we did in fact survive a Los Angeles bus trip and arrived at the UCLA campus for the Festival of Books. We had a great time walking around, and we ate a spring roll, bought a few Golden Books, stopped by a fountain, watched a story reading at the kid's venue and then called it a day before it got too close to nap time.

Metro Bus Chronicles #1

Who says no one takes public transport in LA? Well, lots of people, actually. We're heading to UCLA on Big Blue Bus for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books! No Westwood parking hell for this little city boy. He had a great time feeling like a big kid and getting to stand up in his seat and watch the world outside the window.

Run Away!

Henry freaking out at the park next to LAX! If you want to see how close these planes come, here is a YouTube video someone shot. The park in Westchester is right on Sepulveda next to the In-N-Out Burger so you can grab lunch and sit in the park and watch the 747s land. Kids love it, and it's a large park safely tucked away from traffic.

Look out kid, don't matter what you did . . .

We took a family trip to the Skirball Cultural Center and Henry jammed on the keyboard to some Bobby Dylan in the Bob Dylan's American Journey exhibit. You could also play guitar or percussion, and they had a lot of folk revival memorabilia, too. See it soon - it runs through June 8, 2008 and these things always leave town before you remember to visit them.

We also played around in the really amazing Noah's Ark exhibit (the real reason we went up there that day), which if you haven't been is a real treat for any kid (and parent). It's one of those things that is unique and so interactive and playful that you're amazed at how anyone came up with the idea, and you have to experience it; words can't do it justice. Henry had a blast running around untethered with dozens of other kids. We even ran into some friends we hadn't seen in a long time.

Sweet Goodbye

It's always tough leaving home in the morning when working crazy hours. I've been working on a new business pitch that has sent me into the office early and home late, so when I saw Henry looking sad-eyed at me from the window, I had to snap this from the front porch.

Yeah, he's chewing on the paint and kind of looks like a refugee. Or a lead poisoning case.

What's For Dinner? Gourmet Hog Meat.

On tonight's menu at our house will be the Pork Tenderloin with Arugula, Endive and Walnut Vinaigrette, from the March copy of Gourmet. It's one of the Quick recipes and the ingredient list is simple. The herbs - chive and thyme - we have in our herb garden, and we managed to get all the other ingredients on the cheap at Trader Joe's (and we had a pork tenderloin in the freezer just waiting for this recipe). The dressing is a puree of toasted walnuts, rather than having to track down more expensive walnut oil.

"it's a big world" Performance with Renee & Jeremy

Here is Henry (chewing on a book), in Studio City while seeing our friend Jeremy and his singing partner Renee play at a children's program at Storyopolis. Renee and Jeremy have an fantastic children's album, and you can find out more on the official site (and a really well produced one, at that) for "it's a big world."

My Alien Lovechild

Henry having fun with Caro and the new iMac.

Village Green Preservation Society

I heard this song, The Village Green Preservation Society, on XM Radio today and it got to me. It's a 3-disc set of The Kinks' 1968 album. Has some great lyrics, and I'm thinking it would be a good name for the weekly weekend family trips that we have on our New Year's resolution list, trips that we'd like to take with our friends and their kids around Los Angeles.

This weekend, we're planning on seeing the (c)Murakami exhibit at M.O.C.A.

Henry's Visit with Santa Claus

Greatest Christmas Card Ever

I think the look on their faces says it all. From our friends, The Bells, in Athens, Georgia.

Where's my Bro?

So T.R. has been sailing around somewhere, and I hadn't heard from him in a while. I got an email out of nowhere yesterday, not expecting he was anywhere with a PC or Internet access.

So I wrote and in typical yachtsman fashion, he sends me his longitude and latitude in degrees and minutes, north and west. I couldn't figure out how to search Google Maps without converting the degrees to decimal, but a quick search in Google found a conversion calculator. Then using the Help section of Google Maps, I figured out how to map the coordinates. What was interesting is that you can insert text in parentheses in the search box, along with the coordinates, and the resulting url will allow you to include your own text in the mapping result. Which has the potential for fun, and a personal message for my brother, given that his sun drenched ass is boating around:

Click here to locate Tommy, and the special greeting tailored just for him.

Henry Practices Walking

This video may be private, so if you can't view, log in to YouTube to see if you are on my Friends & Family list, or send me an email and I'll add you to my YouTube contacts.

Ramses

It was sad to hear the news of the death of the guy who played the mascot, Ramses, for UNC basketball. We were recently in Chapel Hill visiting our folks back in North Carolina. We took C's father, an alum of UNC, to see Virgina Tech defeat the 'Heels in overtime. Later, at the NCAA tournament, the guy who played Ramses (shown here in a photo I snapped at the game) was accidentally killed when he was hit by a car while walking back to his hotel from a convenience store. Sad story.

(Since authoring this post, the shootings at Virginia Tech have made the experience feel even more morbid and bizarre.)

Truffles Grow Amongst My Roots

My mother sent me this article, which had made its way onto the NYTimes.com most emailed list, about the growing of black truffles in a small town in the corner of East Tennessee. It is, in fact, Chuckey, a small town in which my grandfather, Judd Allen Bolinger, was born and raised.

From the Times: "Chuckey is not the sort of place one expects to find the holy grail of the food loving world. But on the edge of town, perched on a south-facing slope overlooking the birthplace of Davy Crockett, an orchard of 350 hazelnut trees has begun to sprout Périgord truffles, the fragrant black fungi that can send epicures, as well as routing pigs and dogs, into fits of frenzied greed."