Good morning and greetings, NBA fans. Per my psychiatrist’s orders, I was walking along West Cliff Drive last week, hoping that the edge of the continent would help enlighten me as to what to write about. And then, while being serenaded by the crashing waves, chains of pelicans and lost tourists, I remembered my wife telling me that I was soon going to turn 57. Fifty-seven! The number blows my mind. Holy middle age, Batman.

When I think fifty-seven, I usually think Heinz 57 Sauce, not the amount of candles atop my birthday cake. That’s a little too close to the big six oh. And here I am, at age 56, and I still haven’t decided whether I want to be a fireman, policeman or vice-president when I grow up.

So that got me to thinking, at this stage of the game, and we’re talking middle innings, I should write about what I’m grateful for. I’m not trying to get too personal, just trying to give you cyber readers and blog stalkers a little insight inside the mind, the spirit and occasional psychotic breaks that go into making Sunrise Santa Cruz.

Both are my parents are alive and living in Santa Cruz. My father is 92 and my mother, who didn’t breast feed me, is 83. Some thirty-odd years ago, on a hot summer night back in New Jersey with the humidity over 100%, I told my parents they should move to Santa Cruz. I wasn’t sure if they heard me over the whirring of the air conditioner, but a few years later they showed up on my doorstep at West Cliff Drive, wondering if they could stay for the night. Turns out they had sold their house and business, put their stuff in storage and manifest destinied to the west coast.

Well, that one night turned into five months, before I had to have them evicted for too many late night parties. At the time my modeling career going full bore and I needed my beauty sleep. They are now living happily in semi-retirement, enjoying the good life in Santa Cruz while running a small interstate bookmaking operation.

The house on West Cliff Drive, where I spent my wonder years (1975-89), is also where I met my wife, Allison. I was advertising for a quiet, female roommate and she showed up, spied the ocean view and asked when could she move in. I explained to her it wasn’t that simple. She then told me her father had Laker’s season tickets at the Fabulous Forum (3rd row across from the visitor’s bench) and I said, in that case, forget last month’s rent and a deposit, you’re in.

Then, after nine years, we rushed into marriage and the rest is AP World History. She is the greatest thing to ever happen to me, not including the time my freshman basketball coach stormed into the lockerroom at halftime and screamed, “Dammit, no one is playing any defense out there except for Gilbert.” Ah, high school memories.

Our marriage has produced two children and a golden retriever. Jason is a 5′ 10″ high school sophomore, with a 5′ 9″ wingspan, who speaks Spanish like the maitre de at the Tacqueria La Cabana. He is a smart, sensitive, funny kid who someday would like me to pay for his medical school. I still remember the day he told me, “Dad, I either want to be a doctor or the Oakland A’s video guy.” I am extremely proud of him and will be even prouder the day he dunks a basketball in traffic off the fast break.

My daughter Aimee is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed gift from God. She is a gifted artist who also has big ambitions. She told me one day that she either wanted to be a lawyer or a hair dresser. She knows how to make her father laugh. She has the smile, the glow and an aura surrounding her, and most importantly, can throw strikes all day as a lefty softball pitcher.

Which brings me to our golden retriever, Summer. Some say there’s no such thing as love at first sight, but when I saw that tubby, little six-week-old ball of fur, I was hooked, line and sinker. Unlike Jason and Aimee, she hasn’t mentioned any plans for the future, just that she wants to be fed and covered by President Obama’s new health care program.

That’s the immediate family. I’ve got two brothers and an imaginery sister. My brother Paul lives in Marin County and created all the “NBA action, it’s fantastic” promos when he was Director of Video Promotion for the league back in New York. He claims I didn’t speak to him for a week after he beat me in ping ping for the first time (never happened,) and even if he did, it wouldn’t have been more than two or three days.

My brother Brad resides in Boulder, Colorado and is CEO, President and head chef at People Productions, which involves Intelligently Integrated Media and delicious gluten free desserts. My youngest brother is very devoted to his work, as exemplified by the example he sets for his employees by snowboarding in as much fresh powder as possible during office hours.

And finally, as Jennifer Aniston once told me, you’ve got to have friends. Over the past year, through some difficult days, many of you have touched my heart, pancreas and other vital organs. Now, there are way too many of you to mention here, although if any of you had sponsored this blog, you’d have top billing. In any case, I’ll mention a few.
I had lunch on Friday with my oldest non-New Jersey pal, Doug, whom I’ve known for 38 years, yet, still don’t know his last name. I have a incredible friend and confidante named Nancy Mager, whom I speak to almost every day, and who fortunately allows me to call her collect. And then there is my old Garden State pal Steve, who I struck out swinging twice in our minor league championship game and who still remembers the grin on my face. Steve and I go way back, I knew him before there was history.

All right, enough of my life story. For our photo runway, we’re heading over to Natural Bridges State Beach. This would come under the heading, something old, something new. The first three shots are from a sunset from this week back in 2005, before Michelle Obama started going sleeveless. The last three images are from an outrageous night back on October 26, when this cloud formation lit up the western sky and dazzled partygoers, sports fans and focus groups gathered along the West Cliff Drive.

On to some late night humor. “Sarah Palin announced that she’s gonna travel across the country on a bus to promote her new book. She’ll be hard to miss ’cause it’ll be the only bus on the road with a dead moose strapped on the hood.” –Conan O’Brien “On Monday, Oprah Winfrey and Sarah Palin will sit down and they’re going to talk for an entire hour. And I was thinking, too bad John McCain didn’t do that with her before he chose her as his running mate.” –David Letterman “CBS News is reporting that President Obama has decided to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says it’s all part of his plan to finally deliver on the campaign promises made by John McCain” –Jimmy Fallon

“President Obama is traveling to Asia this week. He’ll be making a trip to China. While he’s there, Obama plans to visit the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and America’s money.” –Conan O’Brien “Al Gore was here in New York yesterday signing copies of his new book ‘Our Choice’ at Barnes and Noble. It was strange, Gore wouldn’t write his name. He just signed each book, ‘I’m sorry, tree.'” –Jimmy Fallon “The AMA is urging the Federal Government not to classify marijuana as a dangerous drug and do more research. That’s what they said. It’s a big story, yeah. Yeah, that request came not only from the AMA but also from KFC.” –Conan O’Brien

“Three young Americans have been charged with espionage in Iran after straying into the country while hiking in Iraq. Now, obviously, we all pray for their safe return. But hiking in Iraq? I mean — you know, if you’re hiking in Iraq and Iran, you might want to get a you new travel agent. I mean, who goes hiking in Iraq? What was the rafting trip to Somalia all booked up?” –Jay Leno “Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign because he used prostitutes, will deliver a lecture tomorrow at the Harvard center for Ethics. Yeah, if you want to check out the speech, it costs $500 for half an hour, $900 if you want to stay for the whole hour.” –Jimmy Fallon “Chrysler announced it’s coming out with a new logo that’s going to appear on all of its cars, and they hope it will boost sales. And it should help, because the new logo says, ‘Toyota.'” –Conan O’Brien

That’s it for our mid-November report. I’d like to welcome some new folks to the blog, who I met this weekend at the Autumn Artisans Faire. Glad you’re along for the ride. And thanks to everyone out there who has read this far down in this posting. So enjoy the November skies and we’ll catch you on the far sideline. Aloha, mahalo and later, Peyton Manning fans.

Good morning and greetings, weather fans. Today we are going to go back to my roots. No, I’m not talking my blonde-haired days as a young child growing up in New Jersey but rather what inspired me to create this site-shooting spectacular sunrises over the Pacific Ocean. And today I’ve got a fabulous one for you. This early morning magnificence is from a few years back in late November. As you can see from photo #5, my dog Summer also enjoyed the experience and insisted I call this shot “Golden Dreams.” I’m so fond of photo #3 that I’m using in this year’s calendar for Open Studios. One word describes this morning-epic!

Over the next week or so I’ll be hitting the archives and showcasing a few more feature presentations from Lighthouse Point, starring Dawn Skies, Its Beach and a cast of waves that have traveled thousands of miles to appear in these moments. So stayed tuned because the color and the drama of Santa Cruz’s world class sunrises are coming your way.

Speaking of magical moments, good news for those of you planning that dream vacation in North Korea. This much talked about country, located to the north of the DMZ, is home to a phantom hotel that is stirring back to life. Once dubbed by Esquire magazine as “the worst building in the history of mankind,” the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel is back under construction after a 16-year lull in the capital of one of the world’s most reclusive and destitute countries. They’re literally starving for tourists.

According to foreign residents in Pyongyang, North Korea, Egypt’s Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the three-sided pyramid-shaped hotel whose frame dominates the Pyongyang skyline the same way I used to dominate Mr. Universe contests. The firm has put glass panels into the concrete shell and installed telecommunications antennas, even though the North forbids its citizens to own mobile phones, ham radios or Batman decoder rings.

The hotel consists of three wings, a couple of thighs and a drumstick, rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings that are supposed to hold five revolving restaurants, an observation deck and a miniature golf course. A building crane has for years sat unused at the top of the 3,000-room hotel in a city where tourists are only occasionally allowed to visit but are forbidden to buy souvenirs, post cards and infants.

“It is not a beautiful design. It carries little iconic or monumental significance, but (much like myself) is a sheer muscular and massive presence,” said Lee Sang Jun, a professor of architecture at Yonsei University in Seoul. The communist North started construction in 1987, in a possible fit of jealousy at South Korea, which was about to host the 1988 Summer Olympics. They apparently wanted to show off to the world the success of its rapidly developing economy and its many different recipes for braising short ribs.

A concrete shell built by North Korean architects emerged over the next few years. This proud country put a likeness of the hotel on postage stamps and packs of baseball cards and boasted about the structure in official media. According to intelligence sources, then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung saw the hotel as a symbol of his big dreams for the state he founded, while his son and current leader Kim Jong-il was a driving force in its construction and choice of movies in the hotel’s pay-per-view.

Speaking of Kim Jong-il, or as he likes to be referred to as, the “Dear Leader,” I find something very charming about a diminutive (5’2″,) platform shoe wearing, bouffant hair-styled dictator whose draconian economic policies have caused the starvation of MILLIONS of his people. He is also the commander of the 4th largest standing army in the world and major film buff who is a lover of fast cars, gourmet foods and fine liquors, which are tough to procure north of the 38th Parallel. The Korean people worship this little Napoleon like he is God, but we all know there’s only one God and that was Michael Jordan.

By 1992, work on this non-Holiday Inn was halted. The North’s main benefactor, the Soviet Union had dissolved a year earlier and funding for the hotel had vanished like the San Francisco Giant’s hope for a pennant this year. For a time, the North airbrushed images of the Ryugyong Hotel and centerfolds from photographs. As the North’s economy took a deeper turn for the worse in the 1990s the empty shell became a symbol of the country’s failure, earning nicknames “Hotel of Doom,” “Phantom Hotel” and “Hotel California.”

Yonsei’s Lee, Sara Lee, Bruce Lee and other architects said there were questions raised about whether the hotel was structurally sound and a few believed completing the structure could cause it to collapse. It would cost up to $2 billion to finish the Ryugyong Hotel and make it safe for room service, according to estimates in South Korean media. That is equivalent to about 10 percent of the North’s annual economic output or what a washed-up Shaq earns per season.

Bruno Giberti (no relation,) associate head of California Polytechnic State University’s Department of Architecture, said the project was typical of what has been produced recently in many cities trying to show their emerging wealth by constructing gigantic edifices that were not related in scale to anything else around them. “If this is the worst building in the world, the runners up are in Las Vegas, Shanghai and Fort Lee, New Jersey,” said Giberti.

So if you’re looking for a place to rest your head in North Korea, I hope today’s post has been helpful. I’d like to welcome some new people to today’s blog who I met on Sunday at the Art, er, Wind on the Wharf festival. So enjoy my second favorite Santa Cruz sunrise, these waning days of July and we’ll catch you on Friday. Aloha, summer league fans.

Greetings and welcome to the central coast chronicles. Since we’re all friends here I thought it would be a good time to take a look at our anenomes. All these shots, including the snowy egret at sunset, were taken in tidepools around the arch at Its Beach. When searching the coves and shallow pools to shoot these exotic subjects, I am always amazed at their electrifying colors. They are pounded by waves all day yet don’t seem to be bothered by any of the ocean’s motion. Like a good basketball player they are happy to let the game come to them-they know how to go with the flow.

As my favorite poetry teacher once told me, love thyself, love thy neighbor (but don’t get caught,) and most importantly, love thy anenome. So here are some fresh facts about these wild-looking coastal creatures. The sea anemone is a polyp that looks like a plant but is really a voracious meat eating animal. In order for it to dine it cannot order out-it must wait for its food to swim by and when the prey touches one of its tentacles, it mechanically triggers a cell explosion that fires a harpoon-like structure which attaches to the organism that triggered it and injects a dose of poison in the flesh of the prey. Interestingly, this is the same way I met my wife. This gives the anemone its characteristic sticky feeling while at the same time paralyzes the prey which is then moved by the tentacles to the mouth for that day’s entree. And of course, all entrees come with your choice of soup or salad.

Speaking of food, riots have broken out in several poor nations (Haiti, the Philippines, Bangladesh) during the last month that have United Nation, NBA referees and other officials arguing that the growing diversion of the grain harvest to ethanol fuel is causing a global food crisis. “The reality is that people are dying already,” says Jacque Diouf of the Food and the Agricultural Organization.” Surging food prices, further stoked by rising fuel costs, have triggered protests around the world. The increases hit poor people the hardest, as food represents as much as 60-80 percent of consumer spending in developing nations, compared to about 10-20 percent in industrialized countries and 5-10 percent in super model’s diets.

Global food prices have jumped 83 percent of the past three years as the world’s main agricultural producers have shifted their focus to biofuels. Indian Finance Minister Palanaippan Chidambaram (PC to his friends) has called on industrial nations to cut off all subsidies for such alternative energy production and focus on providing food for the developing world. U.N. statistics say the amount of corn it takes to fill an ethanol fueled SUV can feed a child for an entire year. The U.N also added that the children may get better mileage eating on the highway than while eating in the city. Here’s one more number for you to chew on. 750,000 acres of Brazilian rain forest (equal to the size of Rhode Island) were lost in the last six month in order to grow crops to make biofuels. What are we doing to our planet?

But even if we grow larger crops, soaring food prices that have sparked unrest across the globe are likely to persist, threatening millions of people worldwide. Prices of wheat and rice have doubled compared to last year, while those of corn are more than a third higher. Grain prices have risen as a result of steady demand, especially from China and India, supply shortages and new export restrictions. Here’s the bottom line. Hunger is nothing new. People and children in underdeveloped countries have been dying of starvation for years. That’s a given and horrific fact. We can’t prevent droughts or wars that keep food out of people’s stomachs, but we can give food to hungry children rather putting it into gas tanks. We want to rid ourselves of the dependence on oil but do we want to do at the expense of human suffering? Fast for a day. See what your life is like when you’re hungry. And then just think about how fortunate we are here in America, particularly with the NBA playoffs in full swing.

There’s a lot more to this story, particularly how all this bifuels business actually makes global warming worse, but we’ll save that for another day. In the meantime, be grateful that you don’t live in a place like Haiti where the really poor are subsisting on dirt cookies. Seriously. That’s not something you’ll want to dunk in the glass of milk. So enjoy the day, enjoy Steve Nash, Chris Paul and Deron Williams and most importantly, don’t be your own worst anenome. Aloha.