Good morning and greetings, NFL fans. Well, it’s been two weeks since I last addressed my cyber constituents and I’m relaxed, rejuvenated and as excited as Sarah Palin at a Gucci outlet store. During my time away, I was able to cleanse my mind of any impurities and once again focus on the important things in life, like return of the “Sons of Anarchy” on FX, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO and most importantly, New York Giant’s football. Or simply put, in the words of the Emmy award winning Seinfeld episode, I am “Master of My Domain.”

As I mentioned in my email blast, we’ve got lots of new folks checking out this important parcel post for the first time. I thought then it was only appropriate that we start the photo parade with a sunrise that was of the mind-blowing variety. This is the type of morning sky that makes me want to jump out of my bunk bed, rip of my Serena Williams pajamas, grab my skateboard and head down to Its Beach. No matter that the water is colder than the trail of Osama Bin Laden-this is the early morning experience that yours truly, the creator and fashion consultant to Sunrise Santa Cruz lives for. As you know, I don’t ask for much in life, maybe a just little dial tone in the morning. It’s like the old Rodney Dangerfield joke. “I woke up, my button fell off my shirt. I grabbed my briefcase, the handle fell off. I was afraid to go to the bathroom.”

So I would put this sunrise in the world-class category. What made this dawn explosion of clouds, sky and reflection was the happenings the day before, when a huge swell hit the central coast that left a large pool (or was it a pond?) of water at the bottom of the steps at Its Beach. So I was able to catch the reflection of the clouds and lighthouse (photo #3) in a spot that 363 days of the year would have been as dry as Kansas at low tide. And if this shot looks familiar, perhaps you saw it in this year’s Open Studios Art Tour calendar. That’s right, sports fans, another year of Open Studios is on the horizon. More on that later.

Moving along, in photo #5, we are now looking west as the sky is streaming with ribbons of pink. Never have a seen so much color in the western sky at this early hour. It’s moments like this of extreme color and light that make me proud to be an American and an American League fan. I was then carried by a group of Tahitian dancers over to Steamer Lane to shoot the sun rising up over the mountains of Monterey. All in all, quite a memorable morning on the cliff. As they say in commercials for the NBA, “Santa Cruz, where amazing happens.”

Now that my camera is finally fixed and I’m back in men’s clothes, I’m once again ready to pull the trigger on the colors and sights along the westside, bringing you the best of what I see and experience in my first lifetime here on one of my favorite planets in our solar system. And big surprise, what I’m looking for is the spectacular. I’ll settle for very good, but what I’d like is the incredible. And if I can’t get that, I’ll settle for the Yankees winning a least one playoff series, although the World Series would be a nice gift for October. Along with a new 72″ HD TV.

On to our late night political humor. “President Obama made his big healthcare address to a joint session of Congress last night. It went pretty well, except for one weird part in the middle of it, when a congressman from South Carolina suddenly yelled out, ‘You lie!’ It’s amazing this guy was able to sit through seven years of President Bush telling him everything in Iraq is fine without a peep, but last night, he yells out, ‘You lie!'” –Jimmy Kimmel “Barack Obama, of course, is not the first president to have ‘you lie’ yelled at him. Bill Clinton got that all the time, but only from Hillary. And that was only after he came home and told her he lost his pants in a tornado. Back when George Bush was president, Democrats in Congress, to be fair, would occasionally go ‘Boooo!’ But President Bush never took it personally, he just thought Congress was haunted.” –Craig Ferguson

“President Obama is giving a lot of very important speeches. He gave a speech about healthcare tonight, and yesterday he gave a pep talk to students. He told them that in order to succeed they need to work hard and study hard. Then today, former President George W. Bush presented the rebuttal. The president keeping busy. Yesterday, at the White House, President Obama welcomed the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. Yeah, when asked if he likes hockey, Obama said, ‘What black man from Hawaii doesn’t?'” –Conan O’Brien “It was big night on television tonight. And instead of showing President Obama’s healthcare speech that was on tonight, Fox aired its season premiere of ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’ I guess they wanted to give viewers a choice between hearing what’s wrong with our country and watching what’s wrong with our country.” –Jimmy Fallon

“Here’s kind of an interesting deal. You go onto the eBay, and you can bid on having dinner. You fly to Alaska and have dinner with the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. And the bidding starts at $25,000. I know a lot of people think that’s a pretty steep price to pay but you get an appetizer, you get entrée, and ammo. And for an extra $1,000, she’ll treat you like John McCain and cut up your meat. And they say now, unofficially, that for extra thousand dollars, she’ll actually shoot the main course. Dick Cheney is talking about maybe running for president in 2012. He’s got a great campaign slogan. It says, ‘Are you better off now than you were four heart attacks ago?'” –David Letterman “The University of Wyoming will open the new Dick Cheney Center for International Students. “The Dick Cheney Center for International Students. It’s just two buildings over from the George W. Bush Institute for Pretzel Safety.” –Jimmy Fallon

So that’s ends our regularly scheduled broadcast. Yesterday’s NFL Sunday was a rare double dip as in the words of my son, Jason, “How often do the Giants and Raiders win on the same day?” And congratulations go out to my old pal, Peter Vecsey, who last week was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame. In his honor, I give you this quote. “If you can’t say something nice about someone, come sit right here by me”-Alice Roosevelt Longsworth. So enjoy the day and be grateful for what you have, like family, friends and TiVo. We’ll catch in the batter’s box. Aloha, mahalo and later, Eli Manning fans.

Greetings and welcome to the light side, photo lovers. Santa Cruz, California is known for its world class sunsets. But being an early riser, I’m partial to its world class sunrises, which are not quite as popular and seen but just a lucky few. That’s where this site steps up to the plate. I’ve been photo blogging since last August but have been digitally involved since 2005. So I think it’s only right that we sometimes go back into the time tunnel and take a look at some pasterpieces that have never seen the light of the blog day.

This little jewel is a sunrise from back in 2006. It was a spectacular morning with an incredible array of colors down at Lighthouse Point. As you can see from the first shot, my dog dug this early morning light show and insisted I name this shot “Golden Dreams.” Much like my Freudian therapist, once she gets her mind set on something there’s no changing it. Anyway, throughout the summer (no pun intended) we’ll be revisiting the past to check on the magic and magnificence of yester year. Or to quote Ralph Kramden of
“The Honeymooners” to his wife Alice, “You can’t put your arm around a memory.” Replied Alice, “I can’t even put my arm around you.”

Now Ralph Kramden was a guy who liked to eat. Which brings us to our subject du jour. According to a government study, Americans today waste an astounding 27 percent of food available for consumption. It happens at the supermarket, in restaurants, taco bars, vegan buffets and in very own kitchen. A federal study found that 96.4 billion pounds of edible food was wasted by U.S. retailers, food service businesses, consumers and Hollywood caterers in 1995. That’s about 1 pound of waste per day for every adult, child and sumo wrestler in the nation. And that doesn’t count food lost on farms, by processors, wholesalers or in my Scooby Doo lunch box.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage, minor blemishes and dedicated shoplifters. Restaurants throw out what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to Chinese leftovers to that brie cheese that’s turning moldier than Napoleon’s troops at Waterloo. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture said that 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products, sweeteners and Pringles make up two-thirds of the waste. Dick Cheney and Halliburton make up the rest.

The study didn’t account for the explosion of ready-to-eat foods now available in supermarkets. We’re talking rotisserie chickens, macaroni and cheese and potato wedges the size of Gary Coleman. A more recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 39 million tons of waste each year. This is about 12 percent of the total waste stream where ironically I do most of my fly fishing. All but 2 percent of the food ends up in landfills. This rotting food produces methane, a major source of greenhouse gas that is giving carbon dioxide a run for the money at the pump.

America’s Second Harvest, the Nation’s Food Bank Network, reports that donations of food are down 9 percent but the number of people showing up has increased by 20 percent. In England, a recent study revealed that Britons toss away a third of the food they purchase. This includes more than 4 million apples, 1.2 millions sausages, 2.8 million tomatoes and a 7.5 million English muffins. In Sweden, families with small children threw out about a quarter of the food they bought not including Swedish pancakes, Swedish
meatballs and an assortment of Danish.

Eliminating food waste won’t solve the problem of world hunger, greenhouse gas pollution or the lack of quality sitcoms on network TV. But the Department of Agriculture estimated that recovering just 5 percent of that food that is wasted could feed four million people a day. Recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people. That’s a lot of hungry people and there is nothing funny about hunger. Now the country of Hungary, that’s a different story.

There are efforts to cut down on the amount of food people pile on their plates. A handful of restaurants are offering smaller portions on bigger plates. And a growing number of college cafeterias, after viewing the John Belushi led food fight in “Animal House,” have eliminated trays, meaning students have to carry their food to the table rather than loading up a tray. Next to go are knives, forks and straws. The biggest problem for people fighting the food waste problem is the attitude, “Why should I care? I paid for it.” I believe the rising prices of food are the answer to that. Then again, obesity doesn’t grow on trees.

So that’s it for another Wednesday experience. Tune in again on Friday for our Father’s Day tribute. So enjoy the color and remember to think about what you might be able to do to help make this world be a less hungry place. And congratulations to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers for beating the Celtics on Tuesday night and hopefully turning the NBA Finals into an event worth watching, or at least TiVoing. Good night and good luck, Yankee fans.