Category: Petra

Totally Un-Cuddly. Totally Cool.

This weekend I went hunting. As I was going for the largest bear on Earth and some amazing architecture, my “weapon” was the camera.

Starting with the bear, that was easy to find (once you know where to look for it). No wonder, with a height of 23 ft (7 m) and weighting in at 370,000 lbs. (167,8 t) it can not easily be overlooked. This sculpture, made from massive granite boulders, sits in the engineering courtyard at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering in La Jolla. The artist is Tim Hawkinson. The piece was commissioned by the university’s Stuart Collection and erected in 2005.

Most interesting about this sculpture is the fact that seen from a slight distance the bear looks like a cuddly teddy bear. Just cute, sweet, like a toy left by a child on a lawn. Well, a rather largish child. But with every step closer this perception changes. The sheer mass of the piece becomes quite impressive. When one then walks away again and turns around, it is once again a sweet teddy bear. Any moment that child who left it there will come and pick it up.

Cool.

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Waiting For Snow

No, not around here in the Flatland, up on Snow Summit (8,200ft / 2.499 m) above Big Bear Lake.

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It is pretty up there and really, really cold. Temperatures at night are already below freezing. By mid November the skiing season should begin.

Which means, of course, that I will stay away from there for the next 4 months or so. Maybe even a bit longer. Any place with 193 days below 32˚F / 0˚C per year tends to see me rather less often.

An Evening With The Terminator (No Politics Involved)

One of the occasions when the rugby community in SoCal defies all preconception of what a rugby players looks like is the Griffin Awards Ceremony and Rugby Ball. The players (female and male) attend in elegant evening attire, raucous rugger songs are replaced by gentle background music, wine and cocktails are being sipped instead of beer.

An outsider might perhaps notice that most of the attending guests do look rather fit and athletic, more so than one would usually expect to see in a ballroom; but apart from that they do not look one iota different from any nicely turned out crowd one expects when attending a ball.

A very enjoyable occasion it was, this 2007 ceremony. One of the highlights was the guest speaker, Mr. Jerry Collins, aka “The Terminator” of the New Zealand All Blacks.

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To meet such an outstanding world-class rugby player is really something to write home about. Especially when the meeting happens in a ballroom and not on the pitch. After all, “The Terminator” carries his nickname for a reason.

The Trouble With Bambi And Thumper

Many years ago a friend from the US came to visit me in Germany. As a very special treat I took her one evening to a restaurant famous for its delicious and excellent game dishes. However, when I suggested the roasted hare (very yummy), my friend turned slightly green in the face and whispered: “I can’t eat that – it reminds me of Thumper.” A cartoon animal??? I did not even dare to suggest some of the other dishes which involved deer; that might have ended with my friend calling home in tears, sobbing: “They want me to eat Bambi!”

In the end my friend settled for a chicken dish. Apparently there had been no animated movies around with a cute motherless chicken braving the big wild world with the help of some friends.

I remembered this little story while having dinner the other night at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Pasadena. Yes, they do serve venison; actually, it is the only place I know around here that does. They also know how to handle it, my double cut venison chops were superb and perfectly cooked, a real culinary delight of the first order.

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Call me callous and heartless, but I do like Bambi’s mother, especially with blackberry sauce.

Warning: Cat Content

Yes, by all means, go ahead and buy that ridiculously expensive cat bed you saw at the store the other day. After all, you like it and the charming lady there insists that this cat bed is “purrfect” (insert sound of teeth grinding) for your feline friends.

But here’s the thing: No matter how hard you try, no matter how much money you spend – as soon as something is labeled “for the cat” the cat won’t use it. The exception to the rule are feeding bowls. With some nice rigorous training sessions involving a water pistol, and a few weeks time, any cat can learn that feeding from the bowl on the floor is much easier than from the plate on the table. Also the fur stays dry. Cats prefer it that way.

Coming back to that cat bed. There it sits, cute, pretty, soft, warm and inviting. Expensive, too. “Purrfection” (teeth grinding). But then only the best is good enough for a pampered cat. And the cat? Is upstairs in the office, sprawling in her new favorite place. Approach to remedy the situation and you get the “stank eye”.

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Lessons learned:

  1. Never leave a bag of shredded paper unattended for more than 30 seconds if cats are around.
  2. A cat grows an extra set of legs complete with claws when one tries to remove it from a bag of shredded paper.
  3. A cat resting on a bag of shredded paper purrs.
  4. A cat will never rest on a bag of shredded paper you put into the new cat bed. It’s just no fun.
  5. Learn to live with a bag of shredded paper on your office floor. After all, is there anything more comforting than a perfectly happy and contented cat?
  6. You will be the envy of all your acquaintances re. your interesting decorating ideas. “A cat bed for storing magazines? How unusual. What gave you that idea?”

Fallout

By 3 PM today 27 fires were raging in SoCal. They form a blazing triangle from Ventura County inland to San Bernardino and down again to the coast in San Diego. In San Diego alone over half a million people were evacuated and thousands of those will have no home to return to – their houses have burned down.

The city of Los Angeles is safe. We know how lucky we are and blessed.

With all those fires burning the fallout is the smoke. The sky today was grayish-yellow. A rather distinct smell of burnt wood reminds us all that others are less lucky than we are. Sunrise this morning was already quite a sight; come sunset, one could look right into the sun without danger of hurting ones eyes.

Though a phenomenon like this is spectacular, I would have preferred not to have been able to take this photo.

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Cold Snap

So we had the first cold spell of autumn, weather-wise. Which brought on the first cold, sniffles-wise. Because I was not dressed properly, temperature-wise. That’s not the end of the world, there are worse things which can befall mankind.

The slight irony lies in the fact that temperatures in the upper ‘60s are seen as summer in some parts of the world. Those near and dear to me often jokingly say: “But you must be used to the cold, you’re from Germany.” Used to it I was. Like it I did not.

But temperatures are on the rise again. What joy and bliss. Nevertheless it can not be wrong to bring the winter duvet and the warm sweaters out of storage. And for the cold and the sniffles there is a patent remedy at hand:

“If life hands you a cold, drink hot lemon juice with honey.”

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Holy WHAM! POW! Batman

It is always fun to go and see film locations everybody knows. This time the trip was up to the “Bat Cave,” just around the corner. Literally around the corner, as the most famous cave of all caves sits right there in Griffith Park.

Here it is:

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Not too exciting? Well, then take a look  here – with Batman and Robin in action. The clip is short, only 3:31 minutes and quite entertaining, because one sees a few examples of other films, where the Bronson Caves figure too.

To name only a few, scenes in these films and tv series were shot there:

Flash Gordon

Star Trek

MacGyver

I Am A Fugitive On A Chain Gang (1932)

Sagebrush Trail (1933)

Julius Caesar (1953)

The Searchers (1956)

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)

Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959)

Ride The High Country (1962)

Lost Horizon (1973)

The Scorpion King (2002)

As an aside – whenever one sees snow in these movies, it is artificial. Griffith Park might sport famous scenery, but when it comes to snow, the props people have to get to work.