There is actually something called pork sponge

It had been a really long time since I had gone tide pooling, very close to a year and a half when I had visitors from Minneapolis visiting.  I have been tidepooling a handful of times, as you have seen on this blog, often visiting Malibu Lagoon. We thought it would be nice to try some place different. I asked a California native a new place to go. He recommended Broad Beach, a little further up the Malibu coast's 27 miles of coastline.  As we passed Moonshadows and the rows of beach cottages, I remembered that many of these houses were featured on the Star Tour I went on when mom was visiting.  Strangely, no one was outside signing autographs like usual.

Broad Beach is a little harder to find and a bit daunting, because although there are public access points to the beach they are hidden between rich people's houses and even though those access points are in fact public, the residents may try to dissuade you. That didn't happen to us luckily. If it does though, you definitely have the right to be there.

We made it there just as lowtide was happening. When the tide receeded, it didn't reveal pools like the other places we had been, but rather revealed tide boulders. Hidden in and around those black jaggedy boulders were all kinds of things I wasn't expecting. Attached to the lower parts of these boulders were dozens of sea stars attached together like a blob as shown above.  I found something new (pictured right) which looked like some sort of alien armor in a sci-fy movie. It has a fancy Latin name I am sure, but it is more commonly called "Pork Sponge" I wanted to touch it, but didn't.

There are a few small caves and arches carved out of the rocks not a lot of room to walk around in. T spotted a few fossils and pre-historic tide creatures.

As we walked around the boulders we heard clicking clicking clicking and when we looked closer in the small canyons in the rocks we saw little crabs hiding clicking their claws, most likely from the birds that hang out during low tide to see what they can come up with for an after lunch snack. They would squinch up a bit more as our shadows passed them. I wish my camera could have caught the amazing reddish pink of its claws.

I hope to go tide pooling more often because I miss it. Until next time sea creatures.

Notes from the amazing Mandu

The Amazing Mandu's foray into blogging has been fantastic but brief. Since she is not blogging, I asked her to write me an update on Charley, since I am sure that everyone is waiting for some news about what she is up to.

She is super smiley and happy all the time. She does the open mouthed smile like Nora.  She likes to be sitting up so that she can see what is going on all the time (she has those crazy abs like Evan had).  When we go to watch Evan play hockey, she cries if I turn her away from the ice. She likes to watch all the kids skate around in their bright jerseys.  She likes to sit in her chair and swing and talk to her friends (her friends are the little animals that hang down from her chair and swing).  She gives them an earful, especially if she hasn’t seen them all day.

I'll try to keep the updates coming.

Steak and boulders

The book club I am in recently read Hollywood by Charles Bukowski, which is the somewhat fictional story of his life being turned into the movie Barfly.  It seems like every few pages Musso & Franks is mentioned. I had never been, and always wanted to try it. So we went to celebrate what we thought was his birthday, but ended up being the anniversary of his death.

Musso & Frank's opened in 1919 and has been a celebrity favorite ever since. Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, the Fitzgeralds, etc. When I was there Friday I saw Debra Jo Rupp, who you may remember as the mom in That 70s Show.

They make a darned good martini and are quite famous for it. (And it is only $9.50, with a pony, which is pretty economical in these parts)  I got a steak, which was good, but it wasn't Taylors.

Los Angeles is filled with wonderful and strange things. The new and newsworthy thing that everyone has been talking about, no, not you Lindsay Lohan, is the LACMA Boulder, which more technically should be called Levitated Mass.

Levitated Mass is a Land Art piece consisting of a concrete hallway with a 340 ton rock monolith hovering above. This rock was cut from a quarry in Riverside California and moved extremely slowly to LACMAs location in Los Angeles. They published the slow moving route and the rock even had a twitter and facebook account, which was an excellent example of brilliant marketing, because if you think about it, who really cares about a rock?  But people totally did, people were following the parade for miles, there was a Block Rock party with bands, there were people who proposed in front of it. It was truly strange.

I had to see what it was all about, and since it was rolling through my neighborhood, it would have been silly not to.  I met a neighbor after that huge meal at Musso's and we walked to Western to watch it come by. I was surprised at how many people had come there to meet it, even more surprised that people had no idea about it.

We met it at Western and 8th and walked with it for a few blocks, as seen in the photos, picked up more and more people, who were waiting to see if it were possible for it to turn onto Wilshire, people were videoing it with their phones and ipads. Some loon ran around it with an American flag and people were holding up signs that said:

"God hates rocks, god loves scissors"


You have to love how creative people are here.


I think that I may have been on the local Korean news channel laughing.

Spring Forward, Fall back

It has been several weeks since I have written. I think my problem has been that I haven't known where to start. So I think what I will do is start with the most recent and work backwards. Logical I think.

I have a lot to say, so get ready for a lot of posts.