Branching out

What you're looking at here is a stunning tree called a Forest Pansy. Its different color leaves throughout the year make it as unpredictable as it is beautiful.

You might be able to tell from the skateboards, barbecue and dog poop scooper against the fence that this particular picture didn't come from Homes & Gardens. Nope, in fact this is my very own back yard.

I've always loved the Forest Pansy tree. And on day 2 of hunkering down and self-isolating, I thought I'd wander out back and have a look at this tree since it always makes me happy. I can't help but notice the colorful heart-shaped blooming buds (Note to Rich Siegel: Heart Shaped Blooming Buds, Roxy '07), the shape of the crown, the slight bend in the trunk where it leans towards the sun.

Apparently what I failed to notice is this branch sticking out like the Night King's spear over the walkway.

I finally saw it when I turned around from the other side and walked right into it. Fortunately I wear spectacles (OSHA would be so proud) so it didn't take my eye out.

What it did do was gash my gigantic forehead (ad space available - great rates!). I hardly gave a thought to the fact this open bleeding wound on my forehead was like a big welcome sign for the coronavirus. I can only hope the tree isn't contagious.

I'm not sure, but I don't think this blatant Forest Pansy attack will leave a scar. Growing up on the mean streets of West L.A.—north of Wilshire—I already have enough of them.

So while we ride out the coronavirus storm sequestered in the house, I'll still look at the tree and admire its beauty and calming spirit.

Except maybe I'll do it through the window.

The silver lining

Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you that besides being hilariously funny, unreasonably talented, brutally handsome and, what's the word...oh yeah, humble, they'd also say I've never exactly been one to look at the glass as half full.

Especially if it's full of an infectious agent that's shutting down Italy and making lines at Trader Joe's even more unbearable than usual.

But here's the bright side, and I can't help but smile about it. I was under the impression my beautiful, intelligent, talented and wickedly funny daughter who just left this past Tuesday to head back to school in Iowa (don't get me started) wouldn't be returning to a city with over 5000 people in it until the end of May.

Funny what a difference a couple days make. She's coming back home this weekend.

Unless you have stock in toilet paper, bottled water, Cold-Eeze or surgical masks, it's understandably been hard to find any good coming out of the coronavirus pandemic. But from where I sit—in my house, bingeing Succession and eating old-fashioned chicken salad from Gelson's—I think a lot of good will come of it.

For starters, because of the new normal, families will be forced to spend family time together. With it not being safe to go out into the world, parents and kids will rediscover the art of talking to each other around the dinner table. Or just all being at the dinner table at the same time. Perhaps there will be precious times when it's screens down, and the joy of playing board games and cards will be rekindled. And maybe, just maybe, they'll do some household chores if for no other reason than it's something to do. I can dream can't I?

I also believe kindness and a sense of unity will start to wash over people. Look at me being all optimistic. But there's no getting around the fact this virus doesn't discriminate—it's looking for you no matter who you are. So instead of tearing down each other, now we all have a common enemy to direct our attention at. Well, ok, a second common enemy if you get my drift.

Then there's the traffic. The streets of Laredo are empty now, so when we do have to venture out it'll be much smoother sailing than if everyone were going into the office. Not that I want to do a lot of driving around, because that would waste gas and then I'd have to touch the gas pump to fill up. I could use the squeegee paper towels they have, but that might be awkward. Unless they have Purell at the pump. Hmmmm, I'll get back to you on this one.

I may have digressed here.

The point is while I'm sad about the reason, I'm happy about the fact my girl is coming home for summer. I know there are lots of movies we didn't get to watch when she was out here last week on spring break, so I'm sure we'll catch up on a few.

As long as they're not Outbreak, Contagion or Andromeda Strain.

Cirque Du Coronavirus

Pandemic shmandemic. I roam through life unfrightened and undeterred.

Case in point: I took my first post-coronavirus panic outing yesterday. The family and I decided to spend the afternoon in a closed tent with about 2,000 of our closest, hopefully uninfected friends. We saw VOLTA, the current Cirque Du Soleil production in their big top, which is set up at Dodger Stadium.

It had everything to make the CDC and World Health Organization shake their hazmat-covered heads.

Crowds of people. Closed space. Different nationalities. Surfaces like chairs and armrests that've been touched by thousands of people before us. Port-a-potties that, shall we say were less than spotless.

It was a recipe for disaster. And yet, we all seemed to have gotten out just fine. There was a vague awareness of everyone being a little more cautious not to be in each other's faces, and no matter when you looked it was always rush hour at the hand washing stations outside the restrooms.

I fully expected lots of empty seats from people who'd decided not to venture out in public. I was also sure I'd see surgical masks everywhere I looked. I only saw one, and there wasn't an empty seat in the house.

Only two things reminded everyone of the current cautions. First was before the show when a young child sneezed, and every head within earshot snapped around to look at him waiting to see what was going to happen next. The other was the clown who came down the aisle before the show, and interacted with me by running his gloved hand up and down my sleeve. It made me a little nervous, although the coronavirus was probably the least of the reasons why.

The show was great, and I couldn't help but be amazed by how similarly built the performers and I were. It was like looking in a mirror.

I definitely don't want to minimize the virus and the cautions to be taken, but life just can't stop because of it. And besides, the precautions aren't that hard to abide by.

For starters I've been washing my hands like Howard Hughes since I can remember. And because I've never been a fan of knuckle crushers or sweaty palmed frat boys who shake my hand like it's a dry water pump in rural Alabama, I'm just swell with handshaking going the way of the Zune. Bottles of Purell? Check the center console of my car - I've pretty much cornered the market.

So here's my take on it all: with or without the virus, life is a high-wire act. Let's not go out of our way to turn it into a real circus.

Light at the end of the day. Again.

I feel like this is going to be one of those posts I wind up putting up every March. It's time to "spring forward" again, as we turn our clocks ahead one hour this Sunday.

But to hear some people gripe about it, you'd think they were being slowly waterboarded at Gitmo. I don't understand the problem, so much so that I even wrote about it. Truth be told if I wasn't going to lose an hour this weekend I'd probably be writing a brand new post instead of recycling this one. But I am so I'm not.

I think you'll enjoy this. But you're about to lose an hour, so read fast.

I hope you're sitting down. I don't know how to break this to you, but my Jedi instincts tell me the best way is to just come right out and say it: there are a lot of babies and whiners on the internet.

I know, I'm as shocked as you are. Shocked.

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter in the last couple days, like me you've probably noticed an ungodly amount of posts talking about how much people hate daylight saving time. How they just. don't. understand. why we have to change the clocks at all. How they're soooooo tired because they lose one hour in 24 out of one day in 365.

I'd like to promise all of you complaining about it that this is not the worst thing that will ever happen in your life. Trust me.

As you might've guessed, I happen to be a big supporter of DST. And I can't even begin to understand why everyone else isn't. There are so many more reasons to like it than not.

Let's start at the wallet. The fact it's light until almost 9 means electric bills go down. Way down for at least six months. Who's against that? Whiners? Anyone?

Next, the hideous commute I'm up against every night seems to get a little easier, because for some odd reason drivers are able to navigate better when they can actually see the road and what's around them. Body shops don't do as well during DST, but they make it up when we Fall Back.

Finally, and this may just be me, but I seem to have more energy. The longer it's light out, the longer I think it's not time to settle in for the night. I'm out and about longer getting more done. Not just more of what I have to do, but more of what I want to do.

So for all the whiners out there bitching and moaning about switching All The Clocks In The House! ahead and losing your precious hour, I say this with love: just shut up.

You'll get your hour back in November.

Look at it this way. Now that the day's longer, you'll have more time to think of something else to complain about.

Quarantine Canteen

When life hands you easily transmittable viral diseases that could potentially be pandemic and destroy life on earth as we know it, make lemonade. Alright, so that's not actually the saying but you get the gist.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock—and if you have been you're probably wondering where all the Republicans went (hint: they're in the senate)—you know there's a new threat in town. And its name is Coronavirus (Rap name: COVID-19).

Don't get the wrong idea: I don't want to minimize the impact of this very real outbreak. All of us should be reading and following precautions the CDC is suggesting:

Washing your hands like you're Howard Hughes.

Not touching our faces or anyone else's.

Fist and elbow bumping instead of shaking hands.

Using it as an excuse to stay home and binge shows on Netflix.

Sure the Coronavirus is going to be serious and alter our daily routine in ways we can't even imagine yet. It's the first pandemic for most of us. And you know what they say, you never forget your first. Still, I don't think it's all bad news. The way I look at it, one man's pandemic armageddon is another man's money-making opportunity.

Because there just aren't enough Rainforest Cafe's, Planet Hollywood's and Hard Rock Cafe's, I'm thinking what the world needs more of than anything else right now is a Coronavirus themed restaurant.

Presenting my idea for a pop-up called the Quarantine Canteen.

Hear me out. Much like the Breaking Bad Experience pop-up in L.A. a few months ago, the waitstaff will serve you in hazmat suits. If you order a shot at the bar, it'll be poured from a syringe. The only available beers will be Corona Extra, Corona Light, Corona Familiar and Corona Premier. Every booth will have a thick, plastic curtain to separate your party from the other diners. And TV's throughout the restaurant will be playing ER, Grey's Anatomy and General Hospital.

I don't have all the details yet, but I'll keep working on it. Just as soon as I shake this cough.

Leap at the chance

It happens every four years. Not the election (although that can't get here soon enough), not the summer Olympics and not the World Cup. What am I talking about (a question I get all the time)? I'm talking about Leap Year.

Why is this year different than the three years before it? Because as you probably know, during leap year February has an additional day. So instead of 365 days, in leap years there are 366. Thank you Captain Obvious.

Since it's such an infrequent occurrence—like me exercising or Scarlett Johansson returning my calls, there are a few interesting facts about a leap year:

What do you call them? People born on February 29th call themselves Leaplings. Or Leapsters. Or Leapers.

Never tell me the odds. The odds of being born on February 29th are 1 in 1,461, or .068 per cent.

Happy birthday to you. Leap year babies actually get to have birthdays the other years. As a rule, they usually celebrate it March 1st.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's his birthday! Superman was born on February 29th.

I was curious why we even have leap years—who isn't, amirite? So here's a little explanation I grabbed off the interwebs:

Leap days keep our modern-day Gregorian calendar in alignment with Earth's revolutions around the Sun. It takes Earth approximately 365.242189 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds, to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year, and it starts on the March equinox. However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year. If we didn't add a leap day on February 29 almost every four years, each calendar year would begin about 6 hours before the Earth completes its revolution around the Sun. As a consequence, our time reckoning would slowly drift apart from the tropical year and get increasingly out of sync with the seasons. With a deviation of approximately 6 hours per year, the seasons would shift by about 24 calendar days within 100 years. Allow this to happen for a while, and Northern Hemisphere dwellers will be celebrating Christmas in the middle of summer in a matter of a few centuries. Leap days fix that error by giving Earth the additional time it needs to complete a full circle around the Sun.

So not only is this blog wildly entertaining to read, it's also educational. You're welcome.

Leap years are like daylight saving, except instead of springing forward an hour you get to do it for a whole day. Ok, so analogies may not be my strong suit, but you see where I'm going.

My point is you have an extra day to do something you like, be nice to someone, forget all about pandemic diseases that may wipe out the entirety of mankind with a sneeze, and not listen to news about the unstable genius and his incoherent orange ramblings.

As everyone says to the bride, this is your day.

So do with it what you will, and make it one to remember.

Because no matter how you decide to celebrate your extra 24 hours, you'll only have four years to think of a way to top it.

All alone in the moonlight

Here's what I love about my friend Nicole. When I confessed to her, somewhat quietly and definitely with a heapin' helpin' of personal shame, that I actually wanted to go see the movie CATS, without missing a beat she said, "I DO TOO!" So right then and there we made a date to get liquored up (the only way to enjoy it) and go.

Sadly, by the time we were ready to make a night of it, CATS was out of the theaters (tried for an "out of the bag" joke here, I just couldn't make it work).

Anyway, this post was going to be all about how awful the movie is, the horrible reviews, the millions it cost Universal, why I wanted to see it and how on her worst day Nicole is a far better writer than I am (although I wasn't going to dwell on that).

But on the way to looking for an image to go with this post, I ran into a bunch of CATS parody posters.

If you know anything about me—and I believe you may know more than you want to by now—you know I'm a dog person. I'm constantly overdoing it with posts on the interwebs about my Hide-A-Sock terrier Lucy, and my second German Shepherd Ace.

By the way, you can read all about my first German Shepherd Max in a tearjerking yet heartwarming story I wrote for a book called Gone Dogs, which every dog lover should have sitting on their coffee table, and every dog lover's friend should be buying them. What's that? Oh sure, you can buy it here.

I may have digressed a bit.

So anyway while I was looking for the CATS movie poster for this post, I ran across several parody cat posters. Apparently there's an entire cat underground that spends their days on Photoshop making these posters. Any one of which I'm guessing is better than the CATS movie.

So for your pleasure, here are a few I found that I'm pretty sure are more entertaining than the movie.

And Nicole, one word: Cable.