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.