Believe me, the drive on the 5 is a food desert.  I know, because I love Burning Man, San Francisco and have numerous friends and family in the Northern part of CA, so end up driving north a couple of times a year.  It’s a wasteland in the food department.  Especially if you are partial to fresh eats, have a penchant for veggies and hate fast food.

However, on our last trip, I found a couple of  places that deserve a stop.  The first one is about an 3 hours north of LA, Harris Ranch.  I know it’s known for it’s beef…about 3/4 of the menu is steak, meatloaf, burgers, etc and they looked great, but we are into strictly organic beef if we have it, so the steak was a no-go.  My honey Dan and I shared a magnificent salad, a flatbread eggplant pizza and some fresh gazpacho and were really impressed. All their vegetables are from their very large ranch, so  were pretty good.  They also have fresh juice (orange, grapefruit and tomato) so that was a treat. There is a bakery too, but we got there too late to try anything.   The restaurant is open from 6am to 10pm, and you can get snacks in the bar til 11, so it’s a pretty good get-out-of-the-car stop half-way between LA and SF.  They have an amazing pool too.  Just sayin’!!!  C’mon, it was 90 degrees at 10PM!!!!!  And I’d been cooped up in the car for hours!

The other place we found is 90 minutes north of LA at the Buttonwillow exit.  It’s a family owned Indian restaurant.  It’s kind of pricey… their entrees are $12-15 bucks for veggies and the chicken dishes were $15-20, but their appetizers were good, all in the $5 range.  The mango lassi really hits the spot when it’s blazing outside.  I’ve heard the Mexican Restaurant, “Tita’s” at this exit is pretty excellent, with homemade pupusas, but my sweetheart doesn’t like Mexican food, so he always vetoes it.

Anyway, these two get my votes if you want to avoid fast food on the 5, when driving north of LA.  Any other suggestions out there?

Yup.  Every Thursday this summer (and lots of summers past!) the Twilight Dance Series is rockin’ at the Santa Monica Pier.  Grab your honey, your friends or both, bring a blanket and some deliciousness to imbibe and it’s a guaranteed good time on the sand.

I’ve made it a point to hit it at least a couple of times every summer and it has never disappointed!  You can dance, you can just lay back and listen, you can ride the Ferris wheel under the stars, you can lay out on the sand with hundreds of other revelers…. it’s all good.  Starts at seven every Thursday.  Tonight features Jovanotti, an Italian Superstar crooner.  August 5th, Ricki Lee Jones is playing!  More info here.

There’s also bike valet parking for free if you want to wheel down without gas.  Thank you Santa Monica!

One of the sweetest things about a 98 degree day like today in Los Angeles, is the cool night that follows.  Just when I thought I couldn’t take the fiery heat anymore… the sun set and a cool breeze blew in.  It was time to light the candles and dine alfresco on the deck.

As the crescent moon set over the canyon, I broke out a new organic sparkling wine from Spain I found at Trader Joes.  “Albero”  is the name.  Super perfection when paired with the strawberries growing on the deck.  And even delicious without them!  I can’t really remember exactly how much it cost, but it had to be relatively cheap since I’m not buying the expensive stuff much!  Yummy.  A perfect summer compliment to the soft summer night.

I welcome summer in LA!  Yes, the hillsides burn, we sweat and swear at the heat, but oh!!!! the nights!

The Lakers are the Kings of LA today!  The game last night was simply epic. They played with heart, soul and fire and kept us on the edge of our seat til the very end!  Congratulations to the new champions!  Whew!  That was a great ride!  THAT was entertainment!

I had a friend who wanted to watch the game at a sports bar with his buddies and they left TWO hours beforehand to get a seat and had to go to five bars before they found one they could squeeze into!  He called us at 8am this morning to share the crazy shenanigans of the drunken crowd.  Me, I watched it in the sweet comfort of my own home so I could laugh at my love, Dan the Man jumping around in front of the TV waving his fists every five minutes.  There’s something inherently tender about your guy getting full of testosterone watching his team.

And Ron-Ron, you earned your jersey!  So sweet, thanking his wife, his mom and his psychiatrist!

What a game!  Every single Laker player contributed in his own way.  Fisher pulling out that three, Pau, never giving up and Kobe rallying in the last quarter!  Thank You.  I am honored to be a fan of this awesome team!

GO LAKERS!

I know lots of you are weary of politics and the difficulty this city seems to be having in the basics of operating.  But don’t let cynicism rule! Now is the time to make your voice heard, so get on down to the polling station and vote.  I’m taking a moment out of my crazy day to cast a vote for the people I hope will make living here easier.  Yes, Mr. Brown, that is YOU for the primary race for Governor.  I’m counting on your allegiance to not throwing around 90 million dollars (helloooo Republlican Meg Whitman) to get elected.  Hopefully that reflects your common man approach.

Also, gotta put the brakes on State Measure 16.  PG & E has poured millions and millions of dollars into this, trying to hoodwink the public into granting them a virtually monopoly and very little accountability.  A big no for me.  Big corporate entities have shown us their lack of responsibility all around and I’m not inclined to support them any more.

Kamala Harris gets my vote for Attorney General.  She seems the most sane…

Anyway, see you at the polls!

A couple of years ago, on the spur of the moment, my sweetie Dan and I hopped into the car for an adventure and ended up at Lightning in a Bottle up in the Santa Barbara/Santa Ynez area.  It was an amazingly blissful weekend, filled with great music, in-depth ‘green’ talks by cool speakers, great performance art and all around groovy goodness.  And fun.  Lots of fun, which can be hard to come by in the daily grind of living in the city.  Best of all, we ran into so many friends and made a hella lot of new ones, who we still hang with to this day!   After a couple of years of annual fun communing at this spectacular three day event, last year it suddenly disappeared. Poof.  I was bummed.

Well, now Lightning in a Bottle is back and looking wilder and better than ever.  But instead of the oaks of Santa Barbara, this year’s event takes place in a park on the outskirts of Irvine.  Yeah, I thought that too.  Irvine?  But there’s a beautiful park there called Oak Canyon, full of rolling hills and oaks.  Looks really tranquil.  (that won’t last long!) There’s even a lake to camp by.  The infamous radical art group The Do LaB puts on this event (as well as Lucent L’Amour) and they always deliver.

One of the things I like about it is the plethora of music genres.  From DJ’s who rock the house, to live music that gets you on your feet, it’s all there.  There’s even Kirtan and meditative music performances.  This year the line-up includes: DJ Garth, Sandra Collins, March Forth Marching Band (not to be missed!), Govinda, Beats Antique and many, many others.  There’s also a boatload of Performance Art, Dance and mind-blowing installations and best of all, some really wonderful workshops.  Everyone from Daniel Pinchbeck to Bellydancing.  If yoga is your thing (it is for me) there are classes and workshops every day in their Temple of Consciousness.  I’m pretty psyched about the whole thing.  If you go, bring an open mind and get ready for a blast!  You can go here to buy tickets for the whole event… or just get a day pass to check it out!  Very tribal.

Dashed into Canter’s this morning to say hi to WilL… we’re two of the oldest bloggers… and by that I mean we’ve been around 5-6 years on this site… okay, okay, maybe we ARE even the oldest of this crew of kids… I’m not fessing up, but we’ve been around!  And he’s an inspiration in his bike riding!  I think of him riding around the city a lot of moments I’m stuck in traffic.

But back to this morning….I have to say one of the greatest things about Canter’s is that they have FREE PARKING!  How rare is that in this city?  Damn rare. And more restaurants should take notice. Canter’s has been around since the 20′s. How’s that for surviving endless financial meltdowns!!!

But amidst the cacophony of early Sunday, the array of characters was really splendid.  If you want a slice of life of LA, young, old, hipster, native, ethnic…. it’s all here.  And white toast too.  I had a Bially.  Yum!

Thanks to all you hardworking bloggers (especially Julia and Lucinda) who put this together!  Hope we raised lotsa cash for the cause!

Okay.  I give.  What’s up with the Mayor, the City Council, the DA and the City Attorney?  Why are they staring at a cash cow in the face and shooing it away?

These are the people we elect who are supposed to be logical and run the city of Los Angeles so it works. I know it’s a really hard job, and I know they are doing they’re best.  Seriously.  I really am grateful that there are people who take these incredibly difficult, thankless jobs on.  Most humans don’t want to deal.  So I’m grateful that they are trying.

But, we’re in a major budget crisis.  So much so, that the mayor proposed last month that we shut down city offices a couple of days a week. School budgets are being flattened, police forces minimized and at last count, the deficit was running at a mere 500 million a year. That’s over a million a day. The state deficit is around 24 billion. Not great prospects for a stable future in this city or state.
That’s a lot of money to be losing. So why are they approving laws, ordinances that will cost the city millions upon millions in lawsuits, enforcement and waste the time of everyone?

Now enter the potential cash cow. A big one. Approximately 590 Marijuana Medical Collectives that are operating smoothly in the city. That’s a lot of potential tax flow.  Mayor Villaragosa and the City Council, instead of considering this new potential tax base to raise a LOT money for the city, have enacted a new ordinance that shuts these serviceable, successful collectives down. Collectives that the people of this city clearly want, support and have lobbied for. There is a need being filled, and the people are happy.  Doesn’t what the people of this city vote for, and more importantly, what they want, matter?

Do the math: Hundreds of millions of dollars they could potentially raise, (say tax each medicine exchange at a dollar), thousands of jobs lost, hundreds of landlords losing tenants and hundreds of thousands of patients who can’t get their medicine easily. No one wins. What am I missing here? Read the rest of this entry →

Yay!!!! Playboy founder Hugh Hefner stepped up today and threw down the last $900,000 needed to buy the land around the Hollywood sign that was threatened by developers. The Trust for Public Land had to put together 12.5 million dollars to rescue the view from being blighted by houses built on the famous ridge and that $900,000 was the last piece of the puzzle . The 138 acres of land will now be donated to the city to be added to Griffith Park, preventing any construction that would ruin the view of the Hollywood sign.

“As I’ve said before, the Hollywood sign is Hollywood’s Eiffel Tower and I’m pleased to help preserve such an important cultural landmark.”"My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies, and the images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life and Playboy,” Hefner said in a statement. What’s good for the bunnies is good for Hollywood!

I’m fascinated by dreaming and the unconscious mind.  Forget traveling to Cabo for the weekend, taking an exploratory trip into the inner depth inside and unearthing the creativity we all have access to is perhaps the most fascinating journey there is in this life.  Maybe it’s even one of the reasons we are here.  Carl Jung was the leader in this exploration.  His theories, keen insights into psychology and spirituality offer a goldmine of the richness and the pathos we humans are capable of.  And it’s all there in his Red Book.

“The Red Book”, a collection of Jung’s art work… and until last year, his unpublished thoughts on the collective unconscious, famous theories about archetypes and the process of individuation are all worked out here.  This book and the art work are, as he described it, his “prima materia for a lifetime’s work. Until very recently though, it sat in a safe deposit box in Switzerland and very few people had ever seen it.  It’s an amazing ride of spectacular paintings, drawings and archival material from his work.  His use of color and the ideas expressed in his art work blows my mind.

The show at the Hammer Museum, The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology is running now through June 6th. It’s the only scheduled show of his work on the West Coast.  They are also putting on a series of lectures, the first of which debuts this Sunday.  More in-depth info here and the lecture series here.

I grew up in a small town in the Florida Keys.  About as far away from Hollywood glamour and Sunset Boulevard as a girl could get.  Flip-flops ruled and TV was a rarity, given that we had no access to cable or satellite. When we did get a signal, there was only one channel.  A local one from Miami, its primary fare was re-runs of “I Love Lucy”, (which I adored!)  “Gilligan’s Island” and for some odd reason, once a month or so, the movie “Sunset Boulevard”.  So I kind of grew up on this macabre, delicious movie.  I saw it at least 15 times before I was 15.  And it scared the heck out of me.  Nevertheless, upon graduation, the first thing I did was move to Hollywood and become a TV producer.

Now I’m not saying that the movie “Sunset Boulevard” was the reason I am what I am today.  But if you got deep into my sub-conscious…. those scary scenes with Gloria Swanson vamping for the cameras are still lurking there.  And now, seeing the film so many years later, it is undeniably a classic.

The movie made such an impression on me, that when I first moved here and saw the sign for Sunset Boulevard, I squealed. And the very first place I lived in LA was a two minute walk up the hill from Sunset. Spanning from Downtown to the Pacific Ocean, this street represents just about every neighborhood in LA and acts as a main artery to the city. Travel on Sunset and you get a taste of the true eclectic soul of the city.

As a movie, “Sunset Boulevard” ranks up there with the best, it was nominated for eleven Oscars… walking away with three. It’s ranked #12 in the top 100 of AFI’s best films of the 20th century and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve always fantasized about the women who came West and settled this amazing part of the United States.  How did they do it?  Traveling across the country on a wagon train, having babies, trying to stay alive and keep their families healthy in the face of cold winters and scant food.  Then you add in the Native American women who were here to start with and you have an amazingly rich history of tough females who created this frontier.

Well, starting Friday, at the Gene Autry Museum, you can examine the rich history these women created.  The exhibit, “Home Lands:  How the Women Made the West” runs from April 16th-August 22nd and features an amazing array of artwork, oral and written stories and photographs of these pioneers.  It’s a treasure trove of the past and the contributions women made to settling here and other regions of the West.  From Annie Oakley to Native American Princesses, it’s all here right adjacent to Griffith Park.

I’m giddy that a new Trader Joe’s is opening in Hollywood on the Corner of Selma and Vine (just below Sunset).  I’m not sure what that says about me…

I guess that I’m attached to their frozen french Gruyere pizzas and I like Pinot from Santa Ynez that is priced several bucks lower than other retail places.  Yes.  But I’m also impressed that they consistently get organic vegetables and fruit… by the same grower as Whole Foods, that is two dollars less! It doesn’t make sense to me because for the volume they do, Whole Foods should be able to get discount prices too,  yet over and over again, I find the same products at both stores with wildly lower prices at TJ’s.

In any case, I’m excited that in two weeks or so I can roll down the hill and get my market tasks done in the hood!  Yay!  The revitalization of Hollywood is working!

I’m a sucker for Tomatoes.  I grow at least six varieties every summer and this weekend my plants are going in the dirt.  I love them sloppy and dripping with Miracle Whip on a sandwich, sliced with fresh mozzarella, basil and a sprinkling of salt and balsamic vinegar, but my favorite is picked warm off the vine and popped into my mouth on a hot summer afternoon.  So you can  imagine how excited I am to find out that this weekend is the Monster Tomato and Pepper Sale at the Fullerton Arboretum!

Yep, from 9am to 4pm this Sat & Sun there will be 230 varieties of tomatoes for sale for three bucks each.  They’ve got peppers galore too.  Over 75 varieties, which include Hottie, a large orange habanero and Bhut Jolokia, which is the world’s hottest deadly pepper.  I never thought peppers could be deadly until a friend of mine keeled over after eating a super hot chili pepper.  He passed out trying to out testosterone the other males at the table by eating a ridiculously fiery pepper.  Everyone thought he had a heart attack and called 911, but he revived just as the ambulance pulled up.  True story.

Anyway… if you like tomatoes or peppers and want to get your garden on, check it out.

Unfortunately my iphone couldn’t capture the second tier of this amazing, glowing rainbow in the sky…
And earlier there was hail! Magical Los Angeles Weather!!!