At the risk of sounding a little too “Jerry Seinfeld” I’m going to start by asking, “Am I the only one who notices the fact that Leslie Stahl, venerable reporter with CBS News best known for her long-standing gig with 60 Minutes, doesn’t seem to know how to apply her own lipstick?
OK, in her defense, I’d have to guess that Leslie doesn’t actually apply her own make-up before going on camera for 60 Minutes. It’s not absolutely certain but she no doubt has a professional make-up artist doing that for her, albeit only with her direction.
I’m actually a fan of 60 Minutes. I, like throngs of other geezers and boomers, have been watching that TV show for decades. Along with the rest of America, I’ve grown up — or more accurately, grown old with — with the anchors of that show.
Tivo’d from last night’s broadcast, I watched it tonight.
Although it seems that the 120-year-old Don Hewitt and CBS can see that some of these folks have just been around too long and are trying to bring new blood on to the show like the little Brit hottie Lara Logan, and Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper, they still have the frail Morely Safer the gazillion-year-old Mike Wallace and that ghost at the end. Continue reading →

door knob, originally uploaded by visualkaos.

So, Sunday afternoon Linda and I were driving around town, nursing hangovers from a holiday dinner and cocktail celebration hosted by her boss at Flemming’s in Woodland Hills the night before and doing some grocery shopping and Christmas shopping.
We decided that we should make our first stop of the season at the Green Thumb nursery out in Newhall.
Green Thumb, as anyone in California knows, transforms itself every year around Christmastime from a gardeners paradise where you can get anything from houseplants to orange trees to picnic tables, to Christmas nirvana.
Passing through Newhall on the way there we passed by William S. Hart Park, as we have so many times before, except for some reason this time, we didn’t pass by, we pulled in.
I’ve lived in this valley for 10 years now and I never knew that William S. Hart park is the former home and ranch of the silent film cowboy star and director and sits on 265 acres of beautiful, hilly countryside.
When the old man died in 1946, he willed the property, the mansion he built there and all the western and indian artifacts he collected to the County of Los Angeles.
I did know that a small herd of buffalo live there.
OK, technically they’re bison but every cowboy movie I ever saw had indians worshiping and living off the massive herds of buffalo that once packed themselves on the the plains where interstate highways now pollute, defile and otherwise mess up.
I photographed the buffalo, some chickens, goats and other barnyard dwellers and I took this photo of the entryway to one of the old structures on the grounds.
I swear the first thing I thought of when I walked by was, “I wonder how many people have passed through that doorway? How many hands have grabbed that door knob?”
I know, I can be pretty pedestrian sometimes.

pug.jpg, originally uploaded by visualkaos.

At least two things happened today that were just kind of weird.

First, I was listening to a podcast of a Neko Case concert recorded by NPR at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. in April, 2006.
Between songs she was bantering back and forth with one of the other musicians in the band and at one point she said, “I could still get arrested after eating macaroni and cheese.
“I wasn’t paying that much attention so I didn’t actually get the context of this comment but that statement, that she could still get arrested for eating macaroni and cheese, for some reason just kind of recalibrated my ears.
Continue reading →

liberlman, originally uploaded by visualkaos.

Just when we need him the most, Liberalman is nowhere to be found.