Good morning and greetings, back to school fans. That’s right, the new school year begins for us today and I haven’t seen my teenage toddlers this excited since “The Office” went into syndication. For us graduated students, this means that Indian Summer must be on the way, because we’ve had enough of this Indian Winter. But through the clouds and fog and the non-stop chatter from LeBron James, the birds are still singing and the flowers are blooming. And that’s where our magical mystery tour takes us today.

Welcome to Sunrise Santa Cruz’s wonderful world of color. As I cruise the westside along Delaware Avenue listening to the Doobie Brothers on NPR while thinking of ways to make this world a bitter, er better place, I often pass a front yard that explodes with pinks, purples, oranges, yellows, reds, downers and seconals. It is truly dahlia central, or for you Clint Eastwood fans, “A Fistfull of Dahlias.”

Well, hello dahlias. These tuberous perennials are spectacular summer and autumn flowering plants who are native to the mountains of Mexico, Central America and ridge in northern New Jersey. They are also, along with the lovely Selma Hayek, the national flower of Mexico and a particular favorite of the Gulf Cartel, who are big on sending flowers along with a message to that special someone. And for you City by the Bay fans, the dahlia is the official flower of San Francisco, joining garlic fries and green onion pancakes.

In the 16th century, those fun-loving Spanish conquistadors, while busy pillaging and wiping out the Aztec Indian nation, took some time out from their conquering to seach for the perfect chips and salsa to go along with a super burrito. They also managed to do a little exploring and turned these little side trips into a collection of new world plant life, while at the same time terrorizing and enslaving the Aztecs and completely taking the fun out of Cinco de Mayo.

These brilliant flowers were discovered growing wild on the sandy hillsides of Mexico, along with early sketches of the Frito Bandito and a Carlos Santana acoustic CD. The Aztecs gathered and cultivated the dahlia for food, ceremonies, as well as decorative items for open houses, pagan weddings and bar mitzvahs.

The dahlia is named after 18th century Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, who was a lovely man and quite a salsa dancer. And because of his striking looks, it was from this Swedish cupcake that the expression was coined, “Hey, dahlface.”

In 1872, a box of dahlia roots were sent by FedEx overnight from Mexico to the Netherlands along with a crate of flour tortillas. Only one of the plants and a chicken quesadilla survived the long journey, but it produced brilliant red flowers with petals that were pointed and rolled back that were later very popular with red light district shoppers and guacamole fans.

Nurserymen, kindergarteners and first graders from all over Europe bred from this one plant. These are the progenitors of the thousands of varieties of today’s modern day dahlias. As you can see from today’s photo six-pack, they are an incredibly exotic and wild looking flower, which is the same way I would describe my daughter Aimee in her formative years.

For flower lovers and Salvador Dahlia fans, dahlias symbolize commitment, long-lasting bonds and treasury notes. When given as a gift, the dahlia expresses sentiments of dignity, elegance and the fact the giver didn’t want to spend more than $10. For me, dahlias represents the fabulous and outrageous color that the Commisioner upstairs gives us during the summer season. Throw in a few roses and the fruitopia of watermelon, cantelope, won’t commit, cherries, peaches, nectarines, U.S. Marines and the joys of New York Yankee baseball, and this is what makes the canine days of August so delightful.

Here’s a little taste of the late night. “According to the Wall Street Journal, there is a growing movement among Democrats to replace Joe Biden as VP with Hillary Clinton in 2012. Do you realize that if that happens, for the first time Hillary will be directly under a president.” –Jay Leno “President Obama had a 24-hour vacation on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The president was there to promote tourism in the Gulf. He even jumped into the Gulf to prove it was safe. Unfortunately, he did a cannonball right onto a pelican.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Al-Jazeera’s English-speaking channel was nominated for an International Emmy. On the red carpet, Joan Rivers will be like, ‘Who are you wearing? And why is it ticking?'” –Jimmy Fallon

So that’s my tribute to the Dahlia Lama. Remember, laughter is an audible expression or the appearance of happiness that may ensue from jokes, tickling or reading hybred photo blogs. And birthday wishes go out Wednesday to my old Santa Cruz pal Joel Serber, who’s now living in Portland and still can’t believe the Blazers didn’t draft Kevin Durant. We’ll catch in the bullpen. Aloha, mahalo and later, Roger Clemens fans.

Good morning and greetings, summer days fans. The weather has certainly turned for the better, as the fog and marine layer have temporarily left the building, leaving sports fans with blue skies, warm breezes and a pollen count that’s higher than my cholesterol was after a summer full of Yankee games, Shakespeare in the Park and chocolate Haagan-Dazs bars.

So it was a nice change of pace last Wednesday, when I went for a walk to have it misting on West Cliff. I thought to myself, how many places could it be sunny and warm one day and having this wonderful moisture in the air the next? We are blessed with having relatively mild weather all year round as that’s what you get with a Mediterranean climate-cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers. Santa Cruz, where the redwoods meet the sand, the sea and the homeless.

June has always been a great month on the nature front. On that Wednesday stroll along the coast, my power-walking wife and I saw the usual array of otters, sea birds, and some porpoises or dolphins doing flips into the water. A friend walked by and told us that whales had been spotted cruising up the coast. I thought to myself, how lucky we are to live alongide Monterey Bay, the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. Now, if they could just warm up the water and get rid of that kelp, I might actually put my toes in the water.

So for today’s photo pleasure, we go back to last week, when I performed a reptile rescue just outside of Natural Bridges. I was driving home from a windsurfing outing when I spotted this beautiful snake (photo #1) in the road. I quickly pulled my electric car to the curb and dashed into the street, as this fella was sitting there happily sunning himself, but at the same time in danger of being squished like a slow-running native during an elephant stampede.

For a moment I thought about picking him up, putting him in a basket and carrying him to the sidelines, but when I approached he was curled up and appeared ready to strike, so I decided to play it safe and let him slowly work his way to the sidewalk while I redirected Stevie Winwood and traffic.

Well, in less time than I would take to pop in a Tawny Kitaen Whitesnake video, a woman stopped her car, walked over to the snake, picked him up and brought him over to the grass. She informed me that this was a gopher snake that could be found all over the Wilder Ranch area. Although I was still a bit rattled, she assured me it was safe to take off my catcher’s mask. Still noticing that I was a bit reticent, she queried, “Are you a man or a mouse?” I replied, “Put a piece of cheese in front of me and you’ll find out.”

So in honor of my snake charming experience, I thought I would feature some other westside wildlife. Last week, as we were walking through the Pogonip, I spotted a gorgeous coyote in the meadow. When he turned back to look at me, I was just amazed by the incredible character of his face. Kind of a combination of Yul Brenner and Peter Coyote.

We then ran into some folks who live in the area, who told us they see coyotes all the time, and that at dusk they can be spotted in packs of three to five to seven. Or was it twenty-five or six to four? They then warned me to stay off the path at dusk as the mountain lions hit the trail and with my sinewy muscles and slender physique, I could be mistaken for an antelope or young gazelle.

Due to global warming, I wasn’t carrying my camera on this jaunt so instead I’m showcasing a coyote I spotted last June outside Natural Bridges State Park. It was lightly raining that morning and you can see that his coat was pretty wet (photo #3.) I offered him my poncho but he wasn’t interested. After I had him sign a release, he let me take a few shots before running off (photo #4) and scurrying under a hole in the fence back into the park.

I then photographed that fattest squirrel I’ve even seen, whom I’ll call Jenny Craig. We stopped and talked sports, politics and Oprah. She was a fascinating rodent who spoke three languages and had traveled all over Europe. This little chipmunk was an amazing conversationalist who gave me a whole new perspective on storing nuts for winter.

I shot the great blue heron in pond just north of Natural Bridges. I see these birds all over town, and I spotted one in the ocean on a walk along West Cliff last week. Unfortunately, when I returned with my camera, the long-necked beauty was gone, so we’re going with another contestant. These birds are beautiful to watch in flight, as they move in the same motion that my son Jason does when he’s jump serving. As his mother whispers to him every night before heading off to volleyball dreamland, “good-night and side out, my son.”

On to the late night. “Using electron microscopes, scientists have now discovered the slowest moving thing on Earth. Turns out, it’s the White House responding to the oil spill. BP — they are spending $50 million on an advertisement budget to try and put a PR spin on this whole thing. Like, you hear what they said today? This is unbelievable. They said fishermen down there are catching tuna that are getting 35 miles per gallon.” –Jay Leno “BP was kind of bragging about it today … the top hat. Oh yeah, they put a top hat on it, was collecting about 6% of the oil. Yes, they found a solution that stops as much oil as the margin of error. It lets 94% of the oil through. It was built by the same people who built the Mexican border fence.” –Bill Maher

“The oil spill is getting bad. There is so much oil and tar now in the Gulf of Mexico, Cubans can now walk to Miami. James Cameron has volunteered to go down to the Gulf of Mexico and consult. I love it when a guy who’s an expert in fake disasters gets involved. And if that doesn’t work, they’re going to contact Superman and he’s going to weld the pipe with his X-ray vision.” –David Letterman “People want (Obama) to be madder. His press secretary said he was enraged today. He was on Larry King, last night, and he said, “I am furious.’ He said ‘I am so angry, I have asked Rahm Emanuel to unleash a string of obscenities on my behalf.'” –Bill Maher

“Al Gore and his wife, longtime married couple, are separating. Tipper Gore. And they may get a divorce. Apparently what happened, they experienced global cooling.” –David Letterman “After 40 years, Al and Tipper Gore have split up. Nobody knows why, but there is a rumor today that Al came home early last week and found another man’s carbon footprints. “Rush Limbaugh is getting married this weekend for the fourth time … It’s a traditional wedding. Well, not that traditional. They say instead of throwing rice, throw Vicodin.” –Bill Maher It was so romantic. First, the couple wrote their own vows and then they wrote their own prescriptions.” –Jimmy Fallon

“Here now the official Rush Limbaugh wedding announcement. Rush Limbaugh wed Kathryn Rogers in a quiet Florida ceremony on Saturday. The bridegroom is a controversial radio host and an influential opinion leader in the conservative movement in the United States. The bride is clearly insane.” –David Letterman
“Rush Limbaugh got married over the weekend. This is actually his fourth marriage; he blames the first three breakups on Obama.” –Craig Ferguson
David Letterman’s “Top Ten Things Overheard At Rush Limbaugh’s Wedding 8. “Do you take this woman to be your future ex-wife?” 6. “They have a tent in case it rains. No wait, those are Rush’s pants” 2. “It’s ironic that a guy named ‘Rush’ takes 20 minutes to walk down the aisle”

That’s our mid-June report. I’m not going to mention the oil spill, but like my upcoming 40th high school reunion, it’s constantly on my mind. So with the Lakers in a must-win situation, enjoy game six of the NBA Finals and we’ll catch you playing the box and one. Aloha, mahalo and later, Paul Pierce fans.

Good morning and greetings, offshore drilling fans. It’s not a pretty scene off the coast of Lousiana, as millions of gallons of bubbling crude, black gold, Texas tea are spilling out into the ocean water off the coast of Louisiana. In the words of Bill Maher, “the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of Texaco.”

It would be nice if we could send those Goldman Sachs boys down there to clean up the mess, but they only seem to be interested in profiting from other people’s misfortune while denying any wrongdoing. Watching Senator Carl Levin and his gang grill those executives was truly stunning political theatre. I haven’t seen that kind of anger from our elected officials since they upped the prices of smoothies at the Senate Snack Shack. As Olivia Newton John once told me about Wall Street, “greed is the word.”

As many of you know from my CB handle, I like to think of myself as “Mr. Positive.” When I look at my sippy cup, it is always half full. With this in mind, the other day my wife sent me an email describing the 89,000 ways sugar is bad for you. This was followed by a report on NBC News on the evils of added sugar and its relation to heart disease. A few days later came another NBC report on our over intake of salt. My first thought was, I’ve got to stop watching so much news. But then it hit me like a Muhammad Ali left hook-when did everything besides TV become bad for us?

Now, I don’t mean there aren’t still good things in life, like the smell of a rose, the laughter of a child or TiVo, but I’m referring to our more basic needs. Without going into any depressing details about our air, food, water or Chinese food, it seems as though the basic things we ingest all contain materials that are not good for us. Even the sun is harmful. My question is, what happened? In the words of the group Ambrosia, “how long has this been going on? Why is McDonald’s not a happy meal?

So as of late, I’ve been watching my added sugar intake like my golden retriever watches the Judge Judy. They say women can handle 100 grams a day and men 150 grams. The report said a can of soda had 170 grams of sugar with no nutritional value. In that case Mountain Dew, I say, Mountain Don’t. They also said one scoop of vanilla ice cream contained 92 grams of added sugar. Since that day, I’ve stuck with chocolate. And you know, dark chocolate is good for you. Yeah, the Easter Bunny told me that.

The bottom line is, I LOVE SUGAR. I love sweet and sour sauce or when someone says I’ll keep it short and sweet. Chocolate, cookies, chocolate, anything sweet works for me. But one of my daughter’s vocabulary words last week was moderation and that’s my new key. I’m going to have my blood tested today to check my cholesterol levels and then I’m seeing my doctor next week. So it could be goodbye, my old friend sugar, it was nice knowing you. But do me a favor, please leave me your forwarding address.

On to this week’s photo regalia. Last Tuesday brought us one last day of April showers. Since I didn’t have anything in mind for this week’s lineup, I laced up my hiking boots and headed into my front yard to shoot some flowers in the rain. And then to make it into a cardio workout, I walked around the block to complete the neighborhood watch package. You can see that a little precipitation performs wonders on the photographic front. Or as Lili Von Shtupp would say about photo #4, “a wed wose. How womantic.”

Let’s head to the late night action. “Last week, President Obama gave a speech in New York City about his plan to reform these rules on Wall Street. And one embarrassing moment. When the head of Goldman Sachs was going through security, he was asked to empty his pockets and five Republican senators fell out. During the economic meltdown, employees at the SEC were using government computers to watch pornography. Ironically, while they were watching porn, the other employees were watching Goldman Sachs screw the entire country. One good thing came out of this volcano in Iceland. Economists say consumers can expect a huge drop in the price of lava lamps.” –Jay Leno

“Former President George W. Bush is working on his memoirs. The title is ‘Decision Points.” It narrowly edged out his original title, which was ‘My Bad.’ Crown Publishing has given a November release date for what they’re saying is an incredibly honest account of key decision in the President’s life. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to smooth vs. crunchy.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Former President Bush is writing his autobiography about his eight years in the White House. He’s not done with it yet, but he’s already put up the mission accomplished banner.” –David Letterman ”

David Letterman’s Top Ten Thoughts That Went Through George W. Bush’s Mind As He Wrote His Memoirs
9. ‘Is 36 pages enough?’ 6. ‘How cool is it that I was president? Come on, up high!’ 4. ‘Chapter Eight: The day I went 5-for-5 in White House T-ball. And no gimmies. All ropes!’ “1,000 signed, cloth-bound copies will be sold for $350 each. Each one will say: ‘Thanks for reading about my decisions. Sincerely, Dick Cheney.'” –Jimmy Fallon

“You know what happened today down in Washington, D.C.? The world champion New York Yankees visited the White House. It was a beautiful day. President Obama charged them $25 for a hot dog and a warm beer. It was quite a change for the New York Yankees, going from ‘The House That Ruth Built’ to ‘The House That Bush Wrecked.’ Here’s a nice story. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, took the weekend off. They went hiking in North Carolina. Had a great time. And so he wouldn’t get lost, Obama left behind a trail of cigarette butts.” –David Letterman

“Arizona’s Governor had been stalling on signing the immigration bill. She said it did not reflect any ambivalence. She just wanted to make sure her pool was clean and her lawn was mowed before she signed.” –Bill Maher “The movie ‘Avatar’ is out on DVD today. James Cameron wanted it to be released on Earth Day because nothing says ‘save the planet’ like millions of plastic DVD cases.” –Craig Ferguson “President Obama is now considering giving approval for the development of a hyper-supersonic missile that can reach anywhere in the world in an hour. It’s a joint venture between the U.S. military and Domino’s Pizza.” –Jay Leno

So that’s the first blast of fun and color for the new month. For NBA playoff watchers, April was fairly fantastic. Let’s just say I’m not unexcited about May. And let’s hope that they can put a cap of that oil well or this newest spill will make the Exxon Valdex incident look like a plate of Baked Alaska. We’ll catch you along the baseline. Aloha, mahalo and later, Deron Williams fans.

Good morning and greetings from this cold water paradise. Lately, a day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t seen a great blue heron. I spotted one this morning at the lagoon at Natural Bridges. They are beautiful birds with wing spans that would make both Yao Ming and a pelican jealous. I shot the first two photos this week right down the street from my lovely abode. I spied the next heron in the marshes at Four Mile Beach then it’s back to Natural Bridges. The yellow flower experience is from an open field on Delaware Avenue but it’s the last shot that’s the most unusual. I’ve only seen a great blue heron once in the ocean when this good looking fellow flew in very early one morning for a photo session at the arch at Its Beach. I paid him scale, he signed a release and we were both happy.

So on to the news of the day. Let’s play the Bush administration’s favorite game, “who wants to be average?” According to Time Magazine, the average U.S. household has 2.6 members not including pets, squatters and that friend who never knows when to leave. Our average age is 36.6 and while 17% of us exercise for well over one hour a day, the rest of us don’t even break a sweat. The vast majority of Americans believe in God and more than 90% own a bible. I don’t know what percentage own a gun but I’ll take a shot that it’s huge.

If you are an American at some point today you will say a prayer (perhaps at the free throw line,) use floss, and shower for 10 minutes. All you lovers of the outdoors will spend 95% of the day indoors and 2.5 hours online. You will also consume 20 teaspoons of added sugar and not save any money or souls. On weekends, people spend 1.5 hours reading while those aged 15 to 19 will spend seven minutes, much of which on instructions for iPods usage or text messaging.

On Thanksgiving, 88% will eat turkey but never visit the country. While most Americans prefer white meat the rest of the world (and yours truly) prefers dark. The average family has more televisions than people but we spend the same amount of time watching them as we did 40 years ago, just not laughing as much. Parents are both working harder and spending more time with their children, especially fathers, who spend 153% more time each week on child care then in 1965. Time with the wife (or husband) has dropped as pure spousal time is down 26% since 1975. On the other hand, time spent with mediators, lawyers and divorce proceeding is off the charts.

For you all brewski lovers, North Dakota ranks first in average beer consumption per person (they had to be first in something) while Utah is last. Large families are vanishing: only 10% of American households have five or more people. In 1970, 21% did. On the average, Americans sit in traffic 38 hours a year, wasting an estimated 26 gallons of gas per person. That’s life in the slow lane. I’m just glad that we’re not being held captive by the oil producing countries and that they money we’re paying for this black crude isn’t being funneled to terrorist groups that want to kill Americans. I was almost going to make a comment here about the Bush administration and the spiraling cost of gasoline but why spoil a good paragraph?

71% of American households have an internet connection, up from 50% in 2001. That still leaves about 31 million homes offline not reading this blog. Americans go to an average of 5 to 8 movies a year, spending 10 times more at theaters than all all major professional sports combined, which includes beach volleyball, roller derby and women’s professional wrestling.

The U.S. has 612,020 fast-food cooks but only 392,850 full-time farmers. Americans spend more in restaurants ($390 billion) than they do in grocery stores ($364 billion.) And finally, your fellow Americans spent $155 billion of alcoholic beverages last year, buying enough for every person to down 7 bottles of liquor, 12 bottles of wine, 230 cans of beer and a bag of pretzels. That may sound like a lot, but one-third of American adults don’t drink as the U.S. ranks 40th in the world in alcoholic consumption per person. For whatever reason, Luxembourg (who even knew they were a country?) is number one, followed by the Czech Republic and Ireland. So now we know why Irish eyes are smiling.

What does this all mean? I’m not really sure, just that I may have pumped out an average blog, which I do on the average of three times a week. That’s my batting average. So get ready for game one tonight of the western conference finals between the Spurs and Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. We’ll catch you for good Friday. Enjoy the herons and remember to play your man straight up. Aloha.