July 26, 2009

It’ll Costa Rica You An Arm And A Leg

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — geoff @ 8:41 pm

Good morning and greetings, summer lovers. Last week, we journeyed on a trip south to Costa Rica, where monkeys roam the jungle landscape like Republicans roam the Congressional floor in their campaign in to snuff out plans for national healthcare. Well, today here at Sunrise Santa Cruz, we are raising the skirt stakes as we’re bringing in another guest blogger. He’s been on the pre-med path since exiting the womb, but more importantly, has been shooting with confidence and knocking down his three pointers this summer, which will be of great benefit to the thousands, er hundreds, er, dozen PCS basketball fans and his teammates next season. On that note, I present to you, in his own words, a point guard who loves pushing it up in the open court, Jason Sean Gilbert.

Hola, and welcome to this week’s blog. I was thinking about writing this whole thing in Spanish for bilingual readers, but I would have to re-read my Espanol 2 textbook to figure out how to say “Late Night Political Jokes”. Since my sister did last week’s write up, I felt obligated to share with you my experience of the beautiful Rich Coast (Costa Rica). And my dad was bugging me to do it.

Anyway, our journey first landed us in Arenal; a small town named after it’s active volcano that spits out more fire than Stan Van Gundy during a timeout. This segueways into this week’s backup blog titles “Arenal these Pictures Great” and “Why Arenal the Blogs as Good as this One?” The first picture is the magnificent view outside our window. At night, if it’s not cloudy, one is able to see the red lava on the top like a flame at the end of a candle. And here would be my dad’s first rock and roll reference, The Doors “Light My Fire”.

The second picture (top right) is from a hike that we took to get to the beach one morning. It’s an amazing picture that defines the natural beauty of Costa Rica. These types of shots are almost ubiquitous around the country, just like gallopinto (rice dish served on all the menus), soccer, and mosquito bites.

The next picture is of 11 crocodiles relaxing in Rio Tarcoles (accent on the “i” and “a”). I was talking to our driver (in his native tongue, of course) and I asked him if there were any crocodiles near the Pacific Coast. He said, “Si” and he drove us to the river and parked the car. At first, we couldn’t see them but sure enough as we walked along the narrow sidewalk on the highway, we saw these giant, dinosaur-like creatures. They were scaly beasts that looked almost unreal. They were floating around, wading in shallow waters, not really doing much, kind of like the Golden State Warrior’s defense. It was an incredible site that I had never seen before.

For our next image, we see an iguana. In my in-depth google research, I could not figure out which type of iguana this is. Nevertheless, one day, this reptile surprised us while we were eating lunch and parked itself right under the table, like our dog Summer. It was just two feet away from each of us and thankfully it didn’t try to take any of our legs off. Iguanas do bite although they have very small teeth. We saw many different iguanas during our stay in Manual Antonio, including one across the way up in a tree. This was a green iguana, although some are not green in color. It was beautiful with a reddish hue, or maybe it was just wearing a new Trevor Ariza jersey. (Let’s see how many basketball references I can make in one blog)

The fifth picture is of a toucan we found in the Manual Antonio National Park. I put this picture hear (misspelled for pun) to symbolize all the noise that the birds were making. There was always a background noise of chirping, squawking, and yelping (oh wait, that was my cousin Miles). The birds had a constant rhythm going. The loudest bird noise was from the Three-Wattled Bell birds. They omit a high, screeching sound that gives one a genuine jungle feel.

The last but not least picture is of another capuchin white-face monkey. Aimee did a pretty good job of explaining what they were so I won’t bore you and explain it again. Plus, she stole the better picture. These monkeys were right up above our heads, eating coconuts then dropping it on us. It was incredible how they moved around, jumping from tree to tree with ease. They were very friendly and the tour guide told us we could have reached out and fed them.

All in all, Costa Rica was an amazing experience that I will forever remember. Now it’s time to go back to the blogger who can still hit the three, unfortunately when playing me one on one. Adios!

Thank you, Jason. You know what they say in Hawaii, the papaya doesn’t fall far from the tree. Now on to the important late night political jokes of the week.

“Good News for California. This just came out. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has apparently found a way to close the state’s $26 billion budget shortfall. Now I can’t get into all the details, but in short, Fresno is now part of China. “Gov. Sanford is still trying to recover from his sex scandal. This is the latest. This weekend, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford wrote an editorial apologizing for his behavior. I’m not sure he’s sincere, though, because it starts out, ‘Dear Penthouse.'” –Conan O’Brien “Several weeks ago, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared without explanation for five days. Now of course, as it turns out, he didn’t really disappear. It turns out he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Which is a trail that starts in Maine and ends in an Argentine woman’s vagina.” –Jon Stewart

President Obama recently said that the best way to pay for his health care plan is to raise taxes on people like him. As a result, the government is raising taxes on all half-Kenyan, half-Kansan presidents who were born in Hawaii.” –Conan O’Brien “Did you guys see Michelle Obama last night? She just got a new haircut. It’s the first real cut of the Obama Administration.” –Jimmy Fallon “The Republicans had been running a surprisingly effective campaign against the proposal for national healthcare, but the President found a very clever way to get them on board. Behind the scenes, he offered a key provision that would provide free breast implants for their girlfriends.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“This weekend, it’s very cool. It’s the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing, considered by some to be mankind’s greatest achievement. … Unless, of course, you count the time we put the cheese inside the pizza crust.” “Yesterday, Sonia Sotomayor’s questioning finally came to an end. Sotomayor said that she had received a ‘gracious and fair’ hearing. Her exact quote was, ‘Thanks a lot, you old honkies. I’m outta here. You can kiss my a**.'” –Conan O’Brien The tag Republicans kept throwing to hang around Sonia Sotomayor’s neck was ‘reverse racist.’ They said, you know, it’s reverse racists like her that give regular racists like them a bad name.” –Bill Maher

“Here’s news from Pakistan. They believe now, intelligence believes, that a US missile attack about six months ago killed one of Osama bin Laden’s sons. And the CIA believes that it was the hot-tempered Sonny.” –David Letterman “Walter Cronkite’s influence on the news is still felt today, in that news anchors still wear ties. Other parts of his legacy have become obsolete. For instance, dispassionate reporting is fine for covering the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, but not for an issue as complex as Octomom. Sadly, Cronkite’s passing is not getting the kind of cable news attention I believe it deserves. I watched the coverage this weekend and I didn’t see one helicopter shot of his home. I don’t even think his family has booked the Staples Center yet.” –Stephen Colbert

So that ends our latest installment of “What my children did on their summer vacation.” And speaking of children, congratulations go out to my daughter Aimee, who yesterday celebrated her Bat Mitzvah before a packed house here on the westside. This provided me the opportunity to acknowledge the love and joy that friends and family bring into our lives. It was a tremendous day and one I shall cherish and remember forever, or at least till Aimee says to me, “Dad, this is my boyfriend, Todd.”

As I write this, I can still feel the warm glow eminating from my heart after yesterday’s family affair. So enjoy the summer as it rolls along and we’ll catch you on the warning track. Aloha, mahalo and later, Ronnie Guidry fans.

July 19, 2009

Oklahoma, Arizona, Costa Rica, What Does It Matter?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — geoff @ 9:05 pm

Good morning and greetings, Supreme Court nominee fans. Each week, I parade to the the cyber confessional as we take a look at something from the skies and byways of this cold water paradise called Santa Cruz. Well, today, travel and leisure lovers, we are headed to an exotic land with warm water, a place where iguanas, jaguars, ferraris and crocodiles live amongst the rain forest like ebony and ivory live in perfect harmony.

In late June, I loaned my brother Brad my most valuable possessions, my son Jason and daughter Aimee, and they passported south on a trip of a lifetime to Costa Rica. Despite Aimee’s camera breaking on day two, they still took hundreds of pictures and were left with stronger impressions then Dana Carvey performed on the Tonight show last week. Today we present you with part one of two guest blogs. So without further ado, in her own words, soon to be 12-year-old Aimee Jennifer Gilbert.

When I think about my trip to Costa Rica, the one word that describes it is AMAZING. It was an exotic, wonderland full of creatures I had never seen up close.

My favorite animals were the Capuchin or White-Faced monkeys. As you can see in photo #1,one of the Capuchins is eating a coconut. They were literally right above our heads as they ate. The best part was that after they were done eating the fruit, they would drop the peels on us.

Capuchins are omnivores and eat fruit, crabs, bird eggs and small lizards. Their job in the eco system is to clean fruit off the forest floor. One day, as we were going to the beach we looked up and saw 15 of them in the trees! My uncle said he saw one trying to unscrew a light bulb that was attached to the tree. Another had a baby on its back. Then, all of a sudden, they all jumped off the trees and ran across the street. It was a great, modern, third world country moment.

The second picture is the best from our whole trip. We were on a hike witnessing huge spiders, exotic birds, and forest crabs, when we noticed three sloths in a tree, which is very unusual because you rarely see sloths together. We took this picture with the help of our tour guide by using a telescope.
This three toed sloth was coming down a tree when it turned to us and smiled. Sloths are very lazy and can sleep in one place for three days straight! They curl up around branches or hang by their hands and stay still so predators don’t notice them. Sloth’s hair is often covered with a coat of blue-green algae during the rainy season because it provides a camouflage!

The third picture is of a Jesus Christ Lizard. They are named that because they are known for crossing still waters in a nearly upright position! We saw this beautiful reptile sitting on a log at the beach on one of our hikes.

The last three pictures are butterflies from our first hike in Arenal, which is the home of a very active volcano. Costa Rica’s butterfly species make up approximately 90% of all Central American butterflies. The first butterfly photo is of an Owl butterfly. This butterfly is different from other butterflies because of its unique tan, black and blue wings. It is occasionally a pest to bananas.

The The next butterfly is a version of a Blue Morpho. The Blue Morpho is the most common butterfly in Costa Rica. Seeing all the butterflies was incredible and something I will always remember.

That’s all for now and I hope you enjoyed this guest blog. Back to you dad.

Thank you, Aimee. As you can see, I did not include the always popular “editors comment” after each paragraph, as I wanted Aimee’s voice to come through proud and clear, although I was as tempted as South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford on a fact-finding tour in Argentina.

On to the late night boys. “Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings are under way. It’s interesting. Political experts say that if Republican senators attack Sonia Sotomayor too harshly, they could alienate Latino members of their own party. This may explain with Republicans opened every question with, ‘As a huge fan of Santana.'” –Conan O’Brien “Everybody knows Sotomayor will get confirmed. Even the GOP can’t take her on, because she is the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court, and they don’t want to offend Latino voters. That’s why they no longer talk about the ‘border fence.’ It’s now called the ‘welcome wall.'” –Stephen Colbert

“Today, the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor got under way. And, of course, people have opinions on both sides. Critics of Judge Sotomayor claim that she has a bias against white people. But this morning, she proved them wrong by showing up at the hearings wearing a Coldplay t-shirt and carrying a yoga mat.” –Conan O’Brien “People in New York are especially excited by Judge Sotomayor because she comes from the Bronx. In fact, Judge Sotomayor famously presided over the landmark New York City case, Shut Up vs. No, You Shut Up.” –Conan O’Brien

“I thought it was fascinating how the New York papers covered the All-Star Game and Obama throwing out the first pitch. New York Times said that Obama threw a perfect strike. Daily News said he threw a ball. The New York Post said he was making out with Kate Hudson.” –David Letterman “This weekend is the 10th anniversary of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants.’ President Obama recently said SpongeBob is his favorite cartoon. He loves to watch that silly little guy run around and say crazy stuff, annoying everyone. Reminds him of Joe Biden.” –Craig Ferguson

“You remember Dick Cheney, who was the Vice President for eight years with George W. Bush? And we didn’t think much about Dick Cheney and then one day he goes hunting, boy, that changed everything. Well now it turns out that for eight years, Dick Cheney had a secret hit squad to assassinate al Qaeda leaders. And the team was unbelievable. Here’s who was on the team: Lee Marvin; Jim Brown; John Cassavetes; Telly Savales; and Trini Lopez as Pedro. Now here is the thing. Here are the two sides of this. The ying and the yang. Idea was we’d kill off al Qaeda leaders. That’s the ying, I guess. The yang is completely illegal. But, listen to this. Before you make your judgment, before you decide, if it weren’t for Dick Cheney and his secret assassination squad, Osama bin Laden would be alive today.” –David Letterman

So that’s it for part one of riding the roller Costa Rica. I would have loved to been riding shotgun on this photo journey, but I’m highly allergic to piranhas. Next week it’s Jason turn, as we’ll swirl inside the mind of a 15-year old point guard on his first adventure outside the country.

So enjoy the long summer days and we’ll catch you down the third base line. Aloha, mahalo and later, Derek Jeter fans.


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