Bearded man update

Americans triumphed at the World Beard and Mustache Championships. It probably helped that they had home court advantage (it took place in Alaska).

Jack Passion, who was profiled by the LA Times earlier this week, retained his title in the full beard category.

Passion has an outrageous red beard but I think David Traver had the most original beard with "a beard shaped and woven into the shape of a snowshoe." Full LAT update with pictures here.

Yoga

Santa Monica is truly the epicenter of yoga. I found out in this NY Times article that the Representative for where I live, Jane Harmon, even attends. Harmon is quite wealthy but she still, apparently attends class with the masses. She even made a joke about torture memos (even funnier given that she was previously the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Full article here:

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The yogis arrived toting their mats and towels and SIGG water bottles. Some had waited a half hour before being allowed to claim tiny plots of floor just inches from one another. They jostled and chatted while setting up their spaces, some kicking up into handstands to loosen up.....

“Didn’t you see the torture memos this week?” called out Jane Harman, a 63-year-old devoted student in the front row, who also happens to be the United States Representative for the South Bay region of Los Angeles County.

The teacher responded, “That’s why I’m doing this.”

Bearded man

I was reminded this morning that there's a contest for everything when I saw the cover of the LA Times. It featured a picture of a bearded redhead, Jack Passion, the defending "full beard: natural" titleholder at the World Beard and Moustache Championships.

He looks a bit like a young Santa Claus if Santa were from Ireland.

Jay and Mavis Leno

The LA Times Magazine had a long Q&A with Jay Leno and his wife Mavis. I liked Jay's solution to finding a wallet in Monte Carlo:


ML: Like I said, it’s the admiration. When Jay and I didn’t have that much money, when we were first married, we went to Monte Carlo because Jay was doing some stuff for—
JL: John Davidson.
ML: Yeah, The John Davidson Show. One night, Jay found a wallet lying on the ground. There was money and a work visa and, without thinking twice, Jay said we had to find this guy. He went back out in the square and just yelled—
JL: "Jean-Paul! Jean-Paul Tourneau!" I kept yelling, and this guy came running over, saying, "I am Jean-Paul!" like in one of those bad movies where the guy steps out of the dark and goes, "I am Jean-Paul—why you call my name?"
ML: That was funny, but the guy was in tears, you know. He was so glad to get it back. That’s Jay.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver at Palisades Park

The Santa Monica beach and Palisades Park, which overlooks the beach, are great democratizers. They're free, beautiful, and attract a wide demographic -- families, hipsters, buff guys working out on the free equipment, tattooed beach volleyball players, rollerbladers, etc.

Today I saw a guy on a recumbent two wheel bicycle talking on his cell phone on the bike path. Earlier I saw a dad helping his pint-sized son do pull ups as I embarrassed myself by failing to complete even half a pull up. Half an hour later I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver walking along the footpath at Palisades Park, the only visible security a guy tagging along fifteen feet behind looking more like a tourist (in shorts) than a heavy. Maybe it's because Schwarzenegger has lived in LA since emigrating from Austria, but people seemed to be leaving the two alone, even though they are a very recognizable couple even when they're dressing and acting low key, which they were.

Funny personals

These were in the LA Times Magazine a few weeks ago:

SWM cultural imperialist foodie seeks goofy hipster hick to drive to San Gabriel so we can brag about being the only white people at a filthy C-grade restaurant.

(San Gabriel Valley is the place to go for plentiful, authentic Chinese food in LA. You can easily find places where you're the only non-Chinese speaker. It's a joke that contains a grain of truth that the tastiness of the food is inversely proportional to the health grade of the restaurant.)

Another one that gets right to the point:
Young and knocked up. Ex got locked up. Looking to start a family? No cons.

I'm not sure where in LA you can find wild pigs:
M4M 6'5", 30s ripped, seeks male companion for bow hunting and pig roast. You know -- the love only a warrior can share. Amateur butchering skills a plus.

California Governor's race

My latest CQ Politics article on the California governor's race went online yesterday.

In a nutshell: Meg Whitman has major cred as a Silicon Valley CEO but her social networking (Twitter and Facebook) pales compared to Gavin Newsom; Newsom made a big splash with his Twitter announcement that he's running for governor but he has made some veiled comments about needing to make history instead of reliving seemingly aimed at former Gov. Jerry Brown, who is running again; there are some other Republicans who could give Whitman some competition; LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa probably will not be announcing that he's going to run via Twitter; if Feinstein gets in the race she becomes the heavy Democratic favorite.

NYer

This doesn't really have California angle, other than I think I read once that the New Yorker has more California subscribers than New York subscribers.

Dan Baum used to be a staff writer for the New Yorker and he's currently tweeting the story of how he got fired in 2007. Among the interesting tidbits: he had to write 30,000 words per year for which he received $90,000.

Grunions

Last night I went on a grunion run by the Santa Monica pier. Grunions are little silver fish found only in southern California and Baja California.

They have a unique way of mating -- they spawn completely out of water, laying their eggs in the sand during high tide. The females come first and lay the egg then the males fertilize them. You are allowed to catch them only with your bare hands, but not during the closed season of April and May.

I knew nothing about grunions before tonight, but a friend who is a certified grunion greeter organized an outing so I decided to join. The peak time for observation was between 10:15pm-12:15am, perfect for my night owl schedule. Unfortunately, the grunions weren't active on our strip of sand. I didn't see it but there was apparently one grunion that came out to scout; alas, a seagull snapped it up. We asked Gwen if it would help if we scared the birds away, and when she said it might, my friend Mary took it upon herself to run over to the birds to shoo them away. (I should note that I would have done likewise had I not been so lazy.) Unfortunately at one point, there was a huge flock of birds on land, and a number of them took flight. But since there weren't any grunions anyway, a grunion massacre was averted.

Even though I didn't see any grunions, there are worse things than a night time stroll on the beach. And I'll get another chance May 26.

Google's goats

I admit I just read this on TechCrunch but it was too hilarious not to share. In lieu of a lawnmower, Google has rented goats to mow the weeds and clear the brush.

"A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers," Google says on its official blog. TechCrunch has comment from PETA.

Post-it car

Just a couple days after my Seinfeld sighting I saw an even more unique car covered in hundreds of Post-its. It was parked on Inglewood Blvd near Navy Street in West L.A. There was no writing on the Post-its so I don't know why it was decorated as such. Perhaps someone's temporary art car? Or an ode to someone obsessed with organization and to do lists?

Seinfeld

I was driving to Santa Monica from my house yesterday on Bundy and was waiting to turn left onto Pearl when I saw a small pink Porsche in the opposite lane, stopped even though the light was green. Eventually it started moving again (I think the driver was talking to someone in the lane next to him) and as it passed me I saw it was Jerry Seinfeld.

I knew from the LA Auto Show that Seinfeld collected Porsche. And it turns out that at one point in the 1990s he rented a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport to store his cars -- he has over 40. (We were a couple blocks away from the airport when I saw him so it's possible he still does.)

The car he was driving yesterday, which was a convertible, is not the car you want to be driving if you're trying to be low key. Then again, I can't recall the last time I saw him in the pages of People or US Weekly ("They drive million dollar cars, just like us!" wouldn't go very well in their celebrities are just like us section, I guess) so he must be doing a decent job of keeping the paparazzi at bay.

Arlen Specter

Just read that GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is switching to to the Democratic party, putting the Democrats one seat closer to 60. (If Al Franken is ever seated they'll be at 60.)

There's some self-interest at play here. As Cillizza lays out here, Specter is up for reelection in 2010 and he was facing a very difficult primary challenge from former Pennsylvania Rep. Pat Toomey (who headed the uber-conservative Club for Growth from 2005 till recently).

Specter has long been one of the more moderate Republicans in Congress (he's pro-choice and as ranking Republican of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee he tends to support more funding for those programs rather than less, especially when it comes to health programs).

On a personality note, Specter can be a cranky guy, at least when dealing with reporters. (Not that his constituents necessarily care about his demeanor with reporters; presumably, they elect him based on his stance on the issues). But he has also survived numerous health challenges. He was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s disease in 2005 but still retained his chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee as it held hearings on Roberts' and Alito's confirmations to the Supreme Court. He was diagnosed with a recurrence last year. Part of his secret is that he plays squash almost every day.

The Santa Monica Library and Gay Marriage

The Santa Monica Library held an interesting event, called the Living Library Project, a couple weekends ago that let you check out people and talk to them for half an hour. They had a Mormon, fat activist, little person, homeless person, teenager and others. I ended up talking to the Mormon and a lesbian Jewish married mother about Prop 8 (barring gay marriage). I wrote about it in my inaugural column for CQ Politics.

Dodgeball open gym

At the open gym today I was standing by the sidelines because I'd been hit and overheard this:

Guy 1 (playing on the opposite court): Hey, baby, how do you know you're in LA?

Guy 2 (my court):

Guy 1: You're on a cellphone while playing dodgeball.

And sure enough, there was a guy in the other court holding a ball under his arm and talking on his phone. He hung up a minute later, managing to not get hit during his conversation, though also making no attempt to throw the ball.

Beverly Hills farmer's market

My dad, sister and I went to the Beverly Hills farmer's market this morning in search of kettle corn and produce. Normally we'd go to the Mar Vista or West L.A. markets on Sunday, but we were on our way back from breakfast at Milk, a fabulous ice cream shop/bakery that also has tasty, oversized sandwiches and salads.

Normally at a farmer's market the preponderance of goods sold are fruits and vegetables, with related cheeses, milk and breads also for sale. But half of the Beverly Hills stalls were related to health and beauty and had nothing to do with food. There were booths with information on how to have your hair naturally colored, teeth whitened or straightened and other beauty/health enhancing services.

When we finally got to the produce we were confronted by strawberries costing $23 for six cartons, $2 avocados and $4 artichokes. There was one intimidating booth that didn't even have prices. My sister and I concluded they'd followed the lead of the nearby Rodeo Drive shops, where if you have to ask . . . But if we had asked they probably would have discreetly directed us to the West L.A. farmer's market, we decided.

My dad got a massive bag of kettle corn (reasonably priced at $6) but we skipped the extravagantly-priced produced. As we were leaving, we walked by people learning more about alternative health options and other services to lose weight and look younger. But the tanning booth was full service: There was a man standing with his shirt off getting a spray tan in full view. I've never been tempted to visit a tanning salon and even if I were I'm not sure I would have chosen an open air booth exposed to gawkers like me to get a fake tan. But perhaps the it was cheaper because of the low overhead. The tan actually looked pretty authentic.

We ended up at the West L.A. farmer's market on Santa Monica Blvd., where the price points are more to our liking: three baskets of strawberries for $5 and three bunches of beets for $4.