hot, hot, hot!

L.A.'s hottest day ever - latimes.com

So it was 113 Downtown today. Big whoop. It was hotter than that in my driveway yesterday....

... which means it was probably even HOTTER than that in my driveway today. Glad I was in North Hollywood where it was only 110 degrees. (Holy heatwave Batman!) And I'm REALLY glad I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow, where it will be a measly 81, followed by lowly mid-70s on Wednesday and Thursday.

Before that though -- and speaking of hot -- my fave reality show, Dancing with the Stars, is back! And while Maks is the hottest dancer on the show, tonight the HOT, HOT, HOT award goes to cutie Derek and his star protege' Dirty Dancing's Jennifer Grey, who kicked butt on their jive. They got three 8's. They should have gotten three 10's. Wow!

cleaning up the coastline

Thousands clear debris from the shore - latimes.com

A group of us went to El Matador State Beach in Malibu to clean up the coast for an hour and a half on a very hot Saturday morning. What did we clean up, you might ask? About a babillion cigarette butts (smokers are disgusting litterers), a bazillion small pieces of styrofoam (they aren't kidding when they say that stuff is forever/doesn't degrade), candy wrappers, a dry cleaners claim ticket, a giant empty liquor bottle, a syringe (empty, with cap on it) and a track suit (yes, I said a track suit... as in Sue Sylvester).

LIZARD! (It's been a year since I took a Lizard pic! There were a bunch of them on the hill leading down to the beach)





















MINE! MINE! MINE! Sadly all the fish were farther out to sea being eaten by seals, so this perfectly perched seagull was outta luck. :(

can't wait! can't wait! can't wait!!

okay, i'll admit it... here's how i spent my summer

Julie Chen blogs 'Big Brother' week 11.

And way to go Fan Favorite $25k winner Britney! Eye-rollers RULE!

countdown to awards season begins... now

It feels like I haven't been to the movies in ages, and lets face it, with the exception of Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3 and Inception, the 2010 summer movie season kinda sucked. So I'm happy that the fall movie season (aka the beginning of my favorite season -- Awards Season, the fabulous time of year when I get screener dvds delivered to my doorstep!) is finally here.

I kicked it off last night with Ben Affleck's The Town. Ben wrote, directed and stars in this Boston bank robbery drama, that also stars Jeremy Renner (as a long-time "townie" bud and fellow-bank robber of Ben's character) and Jon Hamm (as the FBI agent trying to take them down). Thoroughly enjoyed this... good script, great cast, good action and suspense. I'm now hopeful for the rest of the fall releases. And while I doubt many of these will be award nominees, for pure entertainment value, here's what I'm most looking forward to seeing:

• The Social Network (October 1)
• Life as We Know It (October 8)
• Red (October 15)
• Hereafter (October 22)
• Due Date (November 5)
• Morning Glory (November 12)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows - Part 1 (November 19)
• Burlesque (November 24)
• The Fighter (December 10)
• How Do You Know (December 17)
• TRON Legacy (December 17)

time is flying... and so am i

I can't believe September is half over already. It just started. I've been traveling so much for work I actually finally earned a free flight on Southwest. I'll be on my way to another one in a week... I just booked four more work trips: two to San Fran, one to Phoenix and one to New York/New Jersey... so Southwest and United miles are going to be piling up. I need to find somewhere fun to go on a VACATION with my free trip. And then I need to book my real vacation (to Italy) for next year. I just need to do it, or else I'm never going to do it.

I'm also sitting in my home office today getting organized. Cleaning out my inbox, tackling my to-do list, getting everything I have to do between now and Christmas on the calendar. It's crazy. It will be 2011 in the blink of an eye!

back to goo

So the Goo Goo Dolls are one of only four bands I will pretty much go anywhere to see in concert. I've had some pretty up-close-and-personal concert moments with them in the past at House of Blues (where John Rzeznik squirted his water bottle on my leather jacket laying over the barricade in front of the stage. I forgave him cuz he looked really good that night ;) and Verizon Wireless Amphitheater (where, after an awful experience waiting for fan club tickets to arrive at the box office for like two hours, my Goo-buddy Miriam and I discovered we were once again in the front row, but at a much bigger venue and with a seat number on a ticket!). So when the Goos announced a show at the awesome Greek Theatre on August 29th, I signed up, even though their new CD -- Something for the Rest of Us -- wasn't out yet and I had no idea what to expect.

The show started with a new song ("Sweetest Lie") I didn't know... by the end of the song, I loved it!. Then they moved into hitsville for a while... the sound was so good, both instrumentally and vocally -- John's voice sounded amazing! They sang a few other new songs: the first single, "Home," "Not Broken." By the end of the show, I couldn't wait till Tuesday to get the new album.

I stopped at Best Buy last night to purchase the actual physical CD on the way home from work (I do that for bands I'd go anywhere to see in concert ;), and ripped it to my Droid so I could listen to it today on the plane to Raleigh. I've often felt that the band has never quite topped the overall goodness of 1998's Dizzy Up the Girl (which brought us "Slide," "Black Balloon," "Iris" and "Acoustic #3" some of my fave GGD songs, along with "Here is Gone" and "Sympathy" from 2002's Gutterflower) that could be listened to end-to-end without feeling the need to skip a song or two. That's a rare feat for an album, especially these days when very few people actually buy and listen to full albums.

But after listening to Something for the Rest of Us approximately 10 times in a row today, and actually reading the lyrics (many of which read like love letters), I think they might have done it. This album is beautful... full of extremely emotional, personal stories of love, yearning, happiness, acceptance. It's not loud, it's lyrical and I love that. My favorite songs thus far, in no particular order: "As I Am," "Home," "Notbroken" (which is already the second most downloaded Goo song on iTunes ever, 2nd to Iris), "One Night," "Nothing is Real," and "Still Your Song." After the emotional roller coaster I've been on this year, those songs really spoke to me in different ways. I really love this album -- it was definitely worth waiting four years for.