License plate of the day

I was driving along today and saw a woman her 60s driving a Prius with "S MUNCH" on her license plate.

S MUNCH.

Calling someone an "S" munch was pretty popular back in second grade. I wonder if she realized what she was ordering when she got the plates... probably not.

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Paris is free

I'm sure you all know by now that Paris Hilton is out of the pokey and is a free woman. Yep, she served 23 days and is now back in the comfort of Beverly Hills.

The LA Times was able to publish an exclusive copy of Paris Hilton's prison diaries, discovered by John Kenney. Here are some of the highlights.

Day 1: Arrived late Sunday night. So tired. Asked if I could check into my room immediately. Quite possibly the rudest concierge I have ever met. I told him he was fired. Not the effect I'd hoped for. And no, I did not register under the name "Little Miss Whore." What kind of hotel forces you to strip and delouse (maybe Marriott?).

Day 3: So that's what a bitch slap is. Wow. Just … wow. MUST remember not to make that sarcastic face again anytime soon.

Day 7: Mail today. One piece. A small note from Nicky that was actually a Xerox of a text message that her assistant put a stamp on and mailed. She wrote, "Ya know that band from a long time ago, 10,000 Maniacs? There were only, like, five people in that band."

Day 9: What is time? How do we measure it? What does it mean? I find these questions on my mind more and more, especially since someone stole my Audemars Piguet watch. Shame.

Day 19: While walking in the yard today, I was put in the mind of Rilke's "Requiem for a Friend." "For somewhere an ancient enmity exists between our life and the great works we do." This, I feel, is my plight. My life is in a constant struggle with my works: my "works" being staying out late and buying stuff. Also the word "enmity" is a hard one and looks misspelled to me.

Day ??: I have stopped counting the days. I live in the now.

What is freedom? It's not free, that's for sure. It's "free" with "dom." And that seems right to me. I feared prison once. I see it now as a great gift.

(Click here for the full text - registration required.)

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Annoying Tampa fan

The Dodgers just finished playing a three game series against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Dodgers lost two of the three, with the two losses a result of players they traded to the Devil Rays last year. Yesterday, former Dodger Dioner Navarro hit his first home run of the year in the seventh inning to give the Rays a 4-3 win. Today, former Dodger Edwin Jackson pitched well and got his first victory of the year (he's now 1-8). It was frustrating to watch, especially yesterday, when the Dodgers left 15 runners on base.

But worse was some Tampa fan with a bullhorn or something. When the Dodgers were batting, this guy was shouting and it was loud. The Dodger broadcasters even mentioned him, wondering how sore his throat was every night.

The voice sounded eerily familiar... Aaron, was that you???

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European Gigolo?

It's been a while, so I thought I'd share a little nugget from my trip. In Munich, there is a palace called Schloss Nymphenburg (that's Nymphen, not Nympho).

In the palace, they have a room filled with paintings of women called the Gallery of Beauties of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. In the corner, they also have a portrait of King Ludwig himself...



It's tough to see in the small pic, but my sister, her husband, and I all thought it looked exactly like Rob Schneider. I wonder if King Ludwig is the original Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

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Talk about a nagging injury

I still have some more stories and thoughts about my trip, which I'll post at some time, but I wanted to share a story that caught my eye in the news...

Last month, a bowhead whale was caught off the coast of Alaska. Nothing too unusual, except for the fact that it had been hunted before, but survived. Lodged deep inside its blubber was the head of a harpoon. Yes, a harpoon.

They examined the harpoon and found it to be from the late 19th century. Scientists now believe that the whale was 150 years old. Apparently, since only rough estimates of a whale's age can be made by examining amino acids in their eyes, this whale is helping prove that whales can live a really long time.

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Back from Germany

For the past couple weeks, I wasn't really "busy" as much as I was "out of the country." I didn't want to announce on my blog that my apartment was going to be empty for a couple weeks in the last post.

I'm now back in LA after a nice trip to Germany to visit my sister. It was my first time to Europe since early 2001. I was out there for a couple weeks and had a great time. While I was there, my sister and I (her husband had to work) were able to take a road trip through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Austria.

After we got back to Germany, we made a nice side trip to Munich and the Hofbrauhaus. Here's a nice pic of me enjoying one of their smaller beers...



I've got some more pictures of the vacation after the jump.


The weather on the road trip wasn't exactly agreeable the first few days. During our pass through Switzerland and Liechtenstein, we were fighting some rain. On the first night, we stayed in a city called Brand in Western Austria hoping to hike around a nice little lake called Lunersee the following day. Unfortunately, it's in the Alps, meaning we were literally in the clouds...


We actually did hike around Lunersee for a little while, but we could barely see the lake at all. Instead, we headed off to Innsbruck to check things out there. The weather held, but it was still pretty cloudy. I should've lined this pic up better so that the light was around the top of the column.


This is also in Innsbruck, right behind where I took the last picture. I'm curious about how demolition works in a town like this. Do they actually have to take the building brick by brick because it is so close to its neighbor?


We left Innsbruck and headed on the highway up to Salzburg. In Austria, they want you to know how much longer a construction zone is going to last, so they put up signs with smiley faces every kilometer leading up to the end. As you get closer to the end, the face gets happier, letting you know that you should be getting happier.


In Europe, there is a lot of renovation happening. It seems like almost everything you want to see has some scaffolding attached. In order to generate some revenue, advertising space is often sold on the facade of the renovation. This is a picture of the Salzburger Dom in Salzburg with some scaffolding and ads. The building is a church... and those are H&M ads featuring Kylie Minogue on the left and a woman in a bathing suit on the right.


In Austria and Germany (and most of Europe), they are not in short supply of castles and palaces. This is one of them, Schloss Hellbrunn in Salzburg. On the grounds of Schloss Hellbrunn is a giant park that was filled with families enjoying their afternoon and evening.


While visting Salzburg, we stayed about twenty minutes outside of the city in a town called Goling. These are two pics looking out of our window.

This is looking down the street with the hotel sign framing the picture.


This is looking straight across from our window at a restaurant on the other side of the street. I like the sign on the left highlighting the daily specials, which translates into "hits" of the day... (You can click on the picture to see a slightly larger version.)


Near Salzburg is beautiful lake called Gosausee. There are actually two lakes that you can hike between, but we decided on only hiking around the closer one. These are two pictures of the lake and the water. The first has a great reflection of the clouds on the water and the second has some great colors in the lake.



As we headed east from Salzburg towards Vienna, we drove through an area called the Salzkammergut. Here, there are a ton of small, scenic lakes with little towns on their shores. This is Hallstadt.


Before heading into Vienna, my sister and I drove east of town to a region of Austria called Burgenland. This is where my father's family comes from. Here I am proudly standing beneath the flags of Burgenland and Austria.


We finally made it into Vienna... while there, my sister and I visited some relatives - my dad's cousin and his wife, daughters, and grandchildren. It had been about six years since I had seen them all, so we got together for a nice dinner at a Heuriger (an Austrian restaurant adjacent to a vineyard that serves its own wine and a buffet-style dinner).

This is a picture of Stefansdom in Vienna. Again, there's scaffolding, but this time with no ads. This is actually the least scaffolding I've ever seen on the church, even though it's in one of the worst spots - on the spire.


Also in Vienna, this is the Schloss Schonbrunn...


After Vienna, we headed back to Stuttgart, where my sister and her husband live. On the Sunday before I flew back, we took a day trip to Munich, where I got to see even more scaffolding. Somewhere under all this is the Glockenspiel. They've left an opening in the middle of all the work so that you can actually see the clock... but just barely.


What would a trip to Munich be without a trip to the Hofbrauhaus? On my entire trip, I didn't hear much English spoken. Even in the cities, there was a lot of German everywhere. This changed in Munich, especially in the Hofbrauhaus. There were a ton of Americans in there. I wonder why?


After I flew back from Germany, I stayed in Las Vegas for a couple days with my family. I arrived in Vegas on Tuesday and saw this article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday. The article is about increasing tourism in Vegas from Europe, but the pictures are actually of my flight from Frankfurt. My parents were standing to the right of the photographer in the hugging picture.

Again, it was a great trip. I'm now back in LA, refreshed and ready to get back to studying...

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