June 16th!

Happy Anniversary to my beautiful wife,Happy Birthday to the homie Daniel Ceballos and happy first Vlog to you!

Root,Root,Root for the away team...

Growing up in the great Los Angeles area and now living just outside it I have taken a lot of guff over the years for my choices in sports teams. I am huge Red Sox fan,I love the Celtics and have cried over the Packers. Let it be known,I root for the Kings and the Clippers and the Dodgers will always own a piece of my heart but at the end of the day I am rocking my Red Sox hat backwards with a Paul Pierce jersey faded from too many washes. Why do I follow these teams? Really,I don’t have a reason. I chose both Boston teams long ago while they were in the midst of crazy losing seasons. I chose them because I like the way there upper management promoted playing as a team over super stardom. I chose them because even though I have lived in and near L.A. at the end of the day it’s just a city and sports are something different and more in there own way. As a chubby kid playing basketball watching Larry Bird dominate a game with more smarts than skills inspired me. Watching Pedroia win a AL MVP at under six feet reminds me that hard work goes a long way. As much as I love L.A.,eating hot dogs at Pinks,nights on the beach while planes fly over my head by LAX and the break a mountain trip can give after a stressful week ultimately,L.A.,has shown me more of what I don’t want to be more than what I do want to be. It has shown me greed, drugs, gangs, fear and hate. Maybe I read to much Dostoyevsky but at the end of the day I don’t want millions of dollars, I just want my questions answered. I don’t want to be a lone gun but would rather be a part of team that will go all out for each other. Sports, just like music, fashion and food is all preference. If you root for the home team, awesome! If you don’t, awesome! If you don’t root at all....awesome! At the end of the day all that matters is whatever you do,do it with all you have. 

Grand Slam..... breakfast?

Last year I had the privilege of attending Manny Ramirez bobble head night at Dodger stadium on a beautiful Southern California night. The weather was perfect. The beer was cold, the hot dogs oversized and as I leaned back in my chair the atmosphere was ripe for something big. As the game went on there was nothing to get really excited about,decent pitching,good defense but that was about it... Than the man of the hour himself was brought in to pitch hit on his first day back after being suspended 50 games for an illegal substance. As the locals all rose to there feet and the pitcher and the catcher conversed on how to pitch him the makings for something awesome were all in place. The bases were loaded,the bobble heads were jiggling in there new owners hands and than it happened. A first pitch grand slam that blew the game wide open. The stadium shook like a small earthquake and you could already hear “I Love L.A.” being cued in the sound booth. Grand slams are amazing. There is no other sport where the defense has the ball and also no other sport where bases loaded means any plate is a forced out. The power and pure amazing-ness of the grand slam is even to big for baseball to contain. Denny’s has made a fortune off there grand slam breakfasts and a decent amount of that has come from my pockets. I may never hit a grand slam but I have eaten several and although no Denny’s meal has anything on watching Manny slam the ball out of Dodger stadium just ordering a grand slam takes my mind somewhere straight out of “Field of Dreams” and I can’t help but hum “its just another perfect day...I love Denny’s,err,I mean L.A.”.