A Conversation With Gary Oldman

Gary Oldman via

I was talking with my father the other day and as a non-user of Facebook, he asked me what I primarily used Facebook for as he felt that following what your friends were eating and what they were doing to be so trivial that he deemed it unworthy for his time.  I told my dad that while I agreed that seeing a random plate of someone's food and the all too often I'm-posting-about-my-bad-day-to-get-sympathy post can get quite annoying, I primarily used Facebook as my source of news.

Thanks to Facebook and my in-the-know friend Tim, I was able to attend a curated conversation with my favorite actor, Gary Oldman.  The evening, which was presented by Film Independent, was hosted by KCRW's Elvis Mitchell; some of you may know him from his show "The Treatment" which features interviews with different artists from the entertainment industry.

House Watching In Manhattan Beach

"Sunset" by me, iPhone 4s

I've been taking advantage of the current non-winter in Los Angeles - at the time of writing, it's 72 degrees and sunny - by going to the beach whenever I can, even if only to enjoy a cup of coffee and the sunset.  I go to the beach quite a bit, as it's only a five minute drive, and I love to walk the bike path that follows the coast.  There's always a decent crowd of people on the bike path that are just walking, roller skating, cruising or sitting on the wall that separates the concrete from the sand.

While people watching has always been fun for me, my favorite pastime is looking at all of the multi-million dollar homes that line the beach and wondering what it would be like to live in one.  Allow me to share with you some of my favorite mansions that line the Manhattan Beach coast.

Graffiti For Gearheads

Found in Manhattan Beach, CA

The Art Of Letterpress

With almost everything in the media industry being produced by computers these days, it's nice to see how things were done before the digital age.  There's something special about a product that was made manually that just can't be captured by a digital machine.  Filmmaker Danny Cooke has just released a short documentary film about an ages old printing technique called letterpress, where each letter is placed in its position by hand, locked down and then passed underneath an inked roller where the letters literally press ink onto a piece of paper.  Seeing this process of printing is a rare treat as there are only a few movable-type printing workshops left in the world.

Free Beer!!!

Free beer!  Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to tell you a little bit about my religion as you look through my Avon catalog.

Just kidding!

If you live in the L.A area, Guinness is having a free beer tasting event!  You can RSVP for various dates here:  www.guinnessbeliever.com

RSVP soon as spots will fill up very fast!  I'll be at the 9 pm tasting on Feb 2nd if you want to come rub elbows (quite literally as it's probably going to be crowded) with the graffiti artist himself.

Mulholland Drive

It's the things that are closest to us and most available to us that we take for granted.  Some people save for years just so they can take the trip of a lifetime to Disneyland.  For me, it's a 45 minute drive to Anaheim.  Does that mean that I should be any less excited to be at Disneyland than the family who traveled 3,000 miles and spent thousands of dollars to be there?  Of course not.  They do irk me though, when they waddle 5 persons wide at a snail's pace, blocking my pathway to the addictive Disneyland churros, but that's an entirely different story for another time.

Even though I live in Los Angeles, I still keep an eye out for things as if I were a tourist.  There are so many things to enjoy in L.A., but many people push them off because it's in their backyard and they can go there any time.  The problem is, "any time" never arrives for many.

New Year's Resolutions? Fuhgettaboutit!

Another year has gone by and we're back to making new year's resolutions, most of which we'll carry out for about a week or so.  Some of you will start your new year's resolutions now, others will start them next month, and the real procrastinators will start them after March.  According to my friend who owns an Anytime Fitness gym, this is exactly the pattern he sees during the beginning of the year.  Things never get busier as the months go by because the people who started their resolutions in January often give up during February.  The ones who started in February give up around March and so forth and so on.

I always chuckle to myself when people tell me about their resolutions; not because I don't think they'll stick to them, but simply because of the definition of "resolution" itself.