Travel

Draft your legal documents and sign them over a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Invite hundreds and spend thousands on your wedding. Get your license and have your witnesses witness it. Have your honeymoon in the Caribbean and live happily ever after your divorce is finalized – but for cryin’ out loud, do it in private! It’s an outrage that part of my newspaper is committed to non-news items like engagements (many of which will never materialize) and marriages (half of which will implode before you can say “I do…wish I’d married your brother”). As if that weren’t enough, in 20, 50, even 75 years, roughly a third of these duos will make us hear about it all over again under the guise of anniversaries. Pearl Harbor has an anniversary, too. Need I say more? The local government dutifully tracks these non-news events, going so far as to make them part of the public record. Public! It’s no subtle reminder just how depraved the
(Read the full post about ‘Satire: The Case for Banning Heterosexual Marriage’…)

There’s nothing like receiving a Christmas album in early January. The management of Tommy James sent me his I Love Christmas release as a gift for reviewing his compilation album, 40 Years: The Complete Singles Collection (1966-2006). And so here we are. The career of Tommy James has now passed the 45 year mark. He is best remembered for his work with the Shondells. They produced 19 chart hits between 1966-1970 with “Hanky Panky” and “Crimson & Clover” both reaching number one. Following the dissolution of the Shondells; Tommy James has remained active in the music industry. He continued to record and tour and has released 13 solo songs that have reached the American charts. 2004 found him issuing the CD single “I Love Christmas.” Four years later he released a full Christmas CD by the same name. He combined some traditional Christmas hymns with some well known holiday pop songs and then filled out the album with three original tunes. He
(Read the full post about ‘Music Review: Tommy James - I Love Christmas‘…)

With the big game coming up, you’ll need all the best ideas and recipes for a super bowl of guacamole - and they can be found at FoodNetwork, the No. 1 food and cooking site on the Web. Are you a guacamole greenhorn or an avocado aficionado? No matter, FoodNetwork will help you guac your socks off just in time for the biggest snack day of the year: Super Sunday. FoodNetwork is your one-stop-guac-shop for every party snacking need with guacamole recipes, guacamole troubleshooting, guac news and trends, and a “Guac of Fame” contest. Let’s see some of the great things FoodNetwork is dipping into: В• Nearly 200 Guacamole recipes: When searching how to make guacamole, look no further than FoodNetwork, where guacamole recipes abound from the quick — like Rachael Ray’s “Guac & Roll” recipe — to the easy, like Alton Brown’s version (FoodNetwork’s most popular guacamole recipe). Ellie Krieger’s “Chunky Guacamole” is a low-cal alternative, while Tyler Florence’s dip offers a
(Read the full post about ‘Go Guac on FoodNetwork for Super Sunday’…)

How do you celebrate Martin Luther King Day? Do you use this day off from work or school to volunteer for your community or to help those in need? Do you take the time to reflect and engage in conversation about the impact that America’s greatest civil rights leader has had on society? Do you read about his life or watch his speeches? However you commemorate Martin Luther King Day, the fact is many people don’t. Many view the third Monday of January as an excuse to sleep in and perhaps “have a dream” of a different sort. The holiday gets lumped in with President’s Day, Veteran’s Day, Labor Day, and Columbus Day as just another day off. Dr. King is taken for granted simply as the “I have a dream” guy, and not seen as the man who sparked a movement that changed the course of civic and social America. How could this be? Although America has a long way to go in the battle for civil rights and equality for all, we have made great strides since the early days of the movement. Perhaps this
(Read the full post about ‘On Martin Luther King Day, Bring Back Segregation’…)

Though I know it's a bit after the holidays, this CD is one that can exist after the holidays. Enya released And Winter Came in November 2008 after two years of work. And for a person who has an allergic reaction to the typical shopping mall style of holiday music, this was a breath of fresh air. I've loved Enya's music since she released Watermark back in 1989. Her haunting Celtic flavored tunes have graced my CD collection for years. So, when And Winter Came I was only a little apprehensive about Enya's spin on holiday music. Was I right in being apprehensive? Not a bit. Though the album was initially planned as a collection of Christmas songs, it evolved as Enya, Nicky Ryan, and Roma Ryan worked on it in Enya's studio. The album created as a result of this continued 20+ year collaboration of musicians provides a mix of some Christmas music, as well as winter or holiday-themed music that blends beautifully. And Winter Came is comprised of twelve songs, including
(Read the full post about ‘Music Review: Enya - And Winter Came‘…)

If you’ve had enough White Christmas, or perhaps Red Christmas from blowing your budget, your luck is about to change. Now you can look forward to a Green New Year. While across the globe, an economic crisis has put a damper on spirits and bank accounts, there is a glimmer of hope this New Year, and it’s called collard greens. A traditional New Year’s dish in the Southern United States, collard greens are believed to bring a year’s worth of good fortune when eaten on the first day of the year. And while the borders are still open to free trade, this is one more custom I am going to borrow from my American cousins. These large leafy vegetables, resembling greenback dollars, are one of the oldest members of the cabbage family, dating back to ancient Greece. Trying to get my hands on a bundle was more difficult than scoring a sold-out Star Wars Light Sabre. I called every grocery store and specialty produce market in the book, inquiring about these lucky leaves.
(Read the full post about ‘Good Luck With New Year’s Greens’…)

Oh… how painful it was to discover one day, that a snowman melts in the sun. That bruised hearts do not heal as fast as skinned knees. That Sean Connery is unattainable. And, that there is no Santa Claus! The disappointments were much more when I was growing up emotionally, finding that happiness is fickle and pain so inflexible. That sex is just a consolation for not having love. The recurring disappointments of 'Ah… I thought he was “the one'. However, paradoxically it also gave me the ability to never forget one thing in life, and that is my belief in miracles. I realised over the years that miracles have a strange way of coming into reality only when one trusts in their possibility. Miracle is akin to faith. Faith that breaks a heart, in order to make it whole. As a child, I was repeatedly told about the story of Abraham in the Holy Book, and how faith surpasses all doubts. When Abraham was asked to make a sacrifice to prove his love for God, he walked
(Read the full post about ‘The Gift of Love’…)

I hadn’t been in contact with my friend and former colleague for a while, but with his company filing for bankruptcy protection recently, I sent him a short email. He was surprisingly upbeat considering that and the recent passing of Proposition 8. If anyone has reason to feel glum, certainly it would be the men of the Gay Men’s Choir of Los Angeles. Yet their show, It’s a Fabulous Life: Holiday Songs in the Key of Life, which opens their 30th anniversary season, is funny, touching, and, as one would expect, a touch campy. For one weekend only, Dec. 20-21, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, the two-hour show includes a few personal stories interspersed throughout musical numbers and some short dance numbers. The show opens with Joy to the World and Santa Claus Llego a la Cuidad but also includes Kislev Cowboys — a mildly sexual-innuendo filled song based on “My Dreydl” with choreography by Billy Rugh, featuring Arron Rothbart and a few cowboys: Rod Andrada, Christopher Durbin,
(Read the full post about ‘Concert Review: The Gay Men’s Choir of Los Angeles - It’s a Fabulous Life: Holiday Songs in the Key of Life‘…)

This is the time of year when college students, especially freshman, make the grand migration home, from campuses across the state or across the country. College freshmen in particular seem to need the comfort of the ties to their recent high school past lives. It’s a different story for the parents. In addition to preparing for the holiday celebrations and the stress of end of the year business, parents are busy stocking up on grocery items that they haven’t had to buy for three months. It’s the case in our household as well. There was a lot more parental consternation when my older child first went away to college three years ago. (Note to daughter: it has nothing to do with who loves who more.) He was, after all, blazing a trail of independence to which my husband and I were unaccustomed. While our children’s lives were by no means privileged, they enjoyed a reasonable buffer from the harsher realities of life, and there was more than the usual amount of
(Read the full post about ‘The Return of the Prodigal College Freshman’…)

At the risk of sounding like the Grinch — and not for the first time, I might add — I have to admit that I've often had mixed feelings about holiday music. I didn't always have a problem with it. While I was growing up, the sound of Christmas music coming from the radio or record player meant that one of my favorite times of the year was approaching, and like most kids I was tickled pink. Never mind that it was for all the wrong reasons — Christmas presents, a long break from school, Christmas presents, tasty goodies everywhere, and of course, Christmas presents. I think the proverbial worm started to turn (or should I say crawled out of the Yule log?) in the early '60s when I found myself working as a young DJ on a small radio station. As the holidays approached, we kept programming more and more of the festive tunes into our broadcasts, and I began to hear the music in my sleep — and I don't mean I was snoozing at the controls. By the time
(Read the full post about ‘Retro Redux: The Grinch Takes On Holiday Music’…)