Listen to a great song of summer—Paloma Ford's new single "Summer in California," with Snoop Dogg and Iamsu

By Jack Brummet, Music Ed.

Paloma Ford was recently featured on Meek Mill's "I Don't Know". The L.A. singer-songwriter has now released a new single, "Summer In California," featuring Snoop Dogg and Iamsu. Give it a listen!

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Tall Things, Part 8: The world's tallest thermometer

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

The world's tallest thermometer is located in Baker, California, in the Mojave Desert.

Actually, calling it a thermometer is a misnomer.  It doesn't have fifty gallons of mercury in a glass tube.  It is an electric sign, posting readings from an analog thermometer, but just a little taller than the ones you see outside of banks and shopping malls. 

The sign is 134 feet tall, in tribute to a record 134 degrees Fahrenheit recorded in adjacent Death Valley in 1913.  The "thermometer" weighs 38 tons and is held together by 125 cubic yards of concrete.  It can display a maximum temperature of, duh, 134 degrees.

The thermometer is planted right next to a Bob's Big Boy restaurant.  You can see it from Interstate 15 in the  Mojave. 

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random bad phone camera shots from Laguna Beach

click to enlarge

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On the road to California

After my travel over the last two years--around 140 flights--I've been pretty landlocked since returning from Asia and Europe, aside from one quick trip to Oregon. Six weeks on the ground! You may recall how at the beginning of all this traveling, I was still needing extremely heavy medication to even approach a plane. I made B.A. Barackus looks like a seasoned traveller. These days I start getting restless when I am planted on the ground too long! Today, I am once again off to San Francisco/Berkeley, and will probably hit Southern California, Boston, and maybe even England and India, in the next short while. Quick trips like this are nice. You can go pretty much alpine style. [Editor's note: Three days later, we read the article/post and the first thing that struck us is Jack Brummet's laughable claim he was going alpine style, as he carried a spare pair of contact lenses, an Apple iPod Nano, Nintendo DS and dozens of games, a Blackberry Curve telephone/palmtop computer, and a real computer (laptop) with a satellite connection, about five different wall chargers and USB cables, two books, art supplies, a change of clothes--and extra clothes even!!!]

My bag will include

• Contact lens stuff (along with a spare pair) and a pair of glasses (just in case everything goes wrong), a toothbrush and paste, floss, and medicine.
• Two pairs of socks and drawers.
• Some pants a/k/a trousers.
• A button down shirt.
• A swimsuit and goggles.
• A quarter zip sweatshirt.
• One t-shirt.
• One iPod Nano.
• One Nintendo DS, five games, and a CyclopsDS cart filled with games.
• One Dell ultralight laptop, parts, and accessories.
• One BlackBerry curve 8130.
• A translation of Grimm's Fairy Tales and High Crimes, an Everest expedition book.
• Sunglasses, pens, pencils, a poetry and sketching notebook

And to make it all even sweeter, I was upgraded to first class on both legs of the trip.

It's always great to get back to the East Bay, although I rarely stay long enough to spend any time in my old Berkeley stomping grounds. I always want to go up into the Berkeley Hills to visit where Claire, Keelin, and I first lived together, in the UC married student's housing, just above the deaf school, nestled in Eucalyptus, and sitting directly on the Hayward fault. We used to feel little tremors and earthquakes daily there. Deer walked down the hills into our yard, and we had a view of the Golden Gate from our window.

Maybe this is no politics Wednesday. It's been a political orgy lately, and today it still feels a little like we've had a surfeit of political news. But that could change any minute. . .
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