Ah, memories.

When I was small and young and blonde and cute, my mother had a Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies 2 VHS. Almost every morning, she would get up and do all kinds of weird dances in front of our old tube TV while bad late '80s covers of '50s and '60s pop songs played in the background and Simmons yelled things like "four more!" at the camera. At the time, I thought this was normal. Actually, I think it might have been somewhere close to normal in the '90s. Sometimes I'd even join her. This video gave me the impression that it was socially acceptable for white men to wear tiny, brightly colored, striped shorts and hairy-chest-baring tank tops with sparkly crap on them. It also led me to believe that wearing white gym socks with shorts was fashionable. As a result, I more or less dressed like Richard Simmons throughout the summers of my youth. It wasn't a good look, but hey, I was a kid.

Anyway, I feel like Richard Simmons gets a lot of flack from people nowadays. Granted, he's a little flamboyant and, er, eccentric, but you've got to give the guy some credit! He lost about 120 lbs when he moved to LA in the '70s and he's been helping other fat folks be less fat ever since. Also, his forehead is magnificently rectangular. Or at least it was, it's been losing its shape in recent years. Regardless, I've always secretly loved Richard Simmons. He's fabulous, but at the same time, has absolutely no fashion sense, and although his hair may be thinning, he refuses to let go of the frizzy brown Jew fro he's probably had since birth. And you can't say he's just like every other celebrity trainer out there! Despite being 63 years old, Simmons still does his own damn thing, like grabbing a CNN reporter's foot and kissing it passionately on camera, or wearing absurd, not to mention revealing outfits where cameras are present.

I mean, sure, he looks like a weird, red, bedazzled chick, but I'm pretty sure he's perfectly okay with that! Also, I doubt many of you would have the balls to go out in public in that, especially at his age! Actually, knowing the people I know, that's probably not true. Anyway, I don't care what any of you say, I will always love Richard Simmons. He's marvelous.

“I might as well be gay. And not just because I love rhinestones and Barbara Streisand. But because I'm a sensitive person who is supportive of gay people the same way I'm sensitive to grossly obese people and ugly people.”

        -Richard Simmons

You may or may not be aware

Sloths are the greatest things. They're adorable when they're babies and they're just awesome when they're all grown up. As much as 2/3 of a well fed sloth's body weight consists of its stomach and its contents. Sloths are excellent swimmers. The average ground speed of the three-toed sloth is 6.5 feet per minute. This is why they spend most of their lives in trees. They eat, sleep and have babies in trees. Sometimes they even stay in trees after they die. Sloths move so slowly, they're prone to growing algae. Okay, so that's a little gross but this algae actually helps camouflage them from predators in the rainforests. Sloths also have extra vertebrae in their necks that allow them to turn their heads 270 degrees. I'm not sure if this is useful, but it's kinda awesome. And did I mention they're fricking adorable?

I mean look at this thing. It's irresistible. I cannot resist it. It makes me want to make high-pitched girly squealing noises like normal women make when they see puppies or whatever.

But this is infinitely cuter than a puppy. Look. It's got a little stuffed frog friend. I can't handle this much cuteness.

Honestly, just look at its adorable little claws! And its precious shiny little nose! And he (or she?) just looks so damn friendly!

Aaaaah!

Just look at this guy. Not the guy with the mustache. Ignore him. Look at the sloth. He's the important part of this photo. And you can't even tell he's approximately 67% stomach! He's just completely and utterly fantastic!










Now look, there's this sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica.There's one facility in Aviarios and one in Monteverde. They rescue and rehabilitate sloths. It totally kicks ass. Here's a link to their website. And here's a video of some precious orphaned baby sloths at the sloth sanctuary. Enjoy!

Today I did some things

I went to the Getty. And then I went to LA. I took a few hundred photos (not exaggerating). Here are some of them:

Okay, first let me tell you about the time I did that thing with the cheese. That was a few weeks ago. Danny (Savanna's boyfriend) needed some photos of cheese taken for some sort or school thing, and I was happy to oblige. So we went to Trader Joe's and picked up a smelly, runny, gooey, disgusting wedge of bleu cheese. There it is on the ground in the lower right corner.

And here it is again. We drove out to 170th St. or something like that in my sister's sporty new car (it has a G meter), unwrapped the cheese, and slapped it down on the pavement. Then I proceeded to lie in the middle of the road and take photos of it, getting up occasionally to avoid being run over by oncoming traffic, taking this ungodly dairy product with me. My and Danny's hands smelled rancid by the time we were done. Every time I brought my hand up to focus, I smelled it. Ew.

Then my sister ran it over.

If you ever have the chance to personally witness a large wedge of bleu cheese being hit by a Nissan Sentra SER driven by a small blond girl, I strongly recommend you do it. The sound of dense French cheese being run over at 40 or 50 mph by a medium sized sedan is one of the funniest sounds I have ever heard. You wouldn't understand unless you were there.

So anyway, today I went to the Getty with a girl named Bridgette. She had never been and seemed pretty excited about the whole tram thing. There she is. Ain't she cute?

There was a very pretty Asian woman on the tram, but I only got a photo of the back of her head. It's a pretty nice head, don't you think?

I took lots of pictures of Bridgette because I'm a creep like that.

I'll never understand why so many people at the Getty wear backpacks. It's one of the few places I feel out of place due to my method of carrying my belongings. What ever happened to pockets?

So we had to leave pretty early because we had things to to in Beverly Hills. By "things to do" I mean "strangers to take photos of." So I practiced this a bit on the tram ride back to the parking structure.

There's Bertha parked in front of a very nice, large house on Beverly Dr. She didn't fit in very well there, I must admit.

There's a big tree in the little park by the Beverly Hills sign. People have carved things like this all over it. I don't know who Ruth and Gino are, but I hope they're still together because that would be nice. Like, cheesy bullshit chick flick nice. Cute.

I'm really bad at adjusting my shutter speed when the clouds go away. Good thing I'm changing my major, hey?

I'm almost positive she didn't notice half of the pictures I took of her. I'm a creep.

There was a gaudy, hideous Bugatti parked on Rodeo Dr. I guess it belonged to some guy who died. I feel like that's what he gets for defacing such a beastly car in this way. Anything with four turbochargers deserves more respect than this.

Attempting to hone my stranger-photographing skillz.

The Tiffany & Co. storefront is oppressive. I do not appreciate it in the least.

Rodeo Dr. has the classiest fire hydrants I have ever seen. I have to admit they're a little garish, insofar as a fire hydrant can be garish.

I think everyone in this photo, excluding the young policefellow, wanted to punch the aforementioned young policefellow in the mouth. I know I did.

This woman got out of a Porsche Panamera, so I felt the need to follow her for about a block, taking pictures of her ugly oatmeal colored sweater and her too-long jeans.

There was this black man being followed by a cameraman or two, trailing an entourage of sorts and being altogether much too cocky and pompous for someone who looks like they weigh about 145 lbs. But hey.

So then we drove to Hollywood, where there was this woman wearing very nice-looking sunglasses asking for money. I didn't give her any. I did, however, give a forlorn looking homeless man my box of Triscuits because his sign said "I'M HUNGRY." I believed him; he started eating my emergency cracker stash the second he sat back down like it was the first thing he'd eaten in weeks.

I went home eventually. There are more photos, but I'm much too lazy to upload them.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day, you know. I'm going to get up early and make my Mama San breakfast. Because she's awesome. Like, really awesome. I adore my mother, even though I inherited my bad back, lactose intolerance and sausage toes from her. I also got some bitchin' nice teeth and great taste in hair tint from her. She's rad. So here's a pretty photo of my pretty Mama San for Mother's Day.