Last Saturday, I got up at the ungodly hour of 5am and drove an hour and 15 minutes with my friend Chris to go skiing. Yes, you read correctly, skiing in Los Angeles. The actual location was Mountain High, a small ski resort about 80 miles east, in the San Gabriel Mountains. At 8000 feet, mountain high gets enough snow to make it a viable skiing option. The recent rain in Los Angeles, had translated to snow up in the mountains, giving the resort pretty decent conditions. Nothing in comparison to some of the bigger resorts up north like Mammoth or Tahoe, but good enough for an hour and 15 minutes drive from Hollywood.

It was great to be back on skis again and like riding a bike, it’s something you never forget. I haven’t been skiing for a couple of years and then only for a few hours also, so the psychical endurance certainly hit hard. I spent Saturday evening and Sunday recuperating!

It was fun to discover a skiing option so close to home and I have to say, while Mountain High is a very small and overcrowded resort and nothing in comparison to Vail or most European resorts, there is something very strange about skiing down a snow covered slope and seeing the desert in the distance!

So as the new year begins, people all around are making resolutions and planning changes for the year ahead. I can say that 2007 was not a completely fulfilling year for me. It’s hard to get over just how quickly the year passed and it feels like a few months ago that I was celebrating last New Year. A few of the events that stand out from the year in my memory are buying a new car in February, Moving (for the fourth time in four year!) in May and trips to New Orleans and Spain in May and September respectively. Other than that, 2007 feels like a blur of work and planning. What’s the saying? “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans”, thanks John Lennon. But then to quote Tim (Jim for you Americans) from the office, “he also said ‘I am the walrus’ so I’m not sure what to believe”.

With the prospect of more of 2008 ahead then behind, I want to make the most of the year. I travelled a lot less than in ’07 than I would have liked and that’s something I want to change in ’08. I already have a business trip to Seattle planned for March which I am very excited about and I want to add a couple of trips to London, a trip to New York and some skiing to that list over the course of the year. I need to start spending all of my airline miles, rather than just accumulating them!

I hope that the new year brings happiness, prosperity and opportunity for you all.

Lots of love from Los Angeles

Despite the reports on the news that the whole of Southern California is on fire, I am still here and largely unaffected. It seems that the San Diego area, some one hundred miles south, has been hit the worst. A few areas north of L.A. and east also have been burning for the last few days. It is pretty crazy to see the scale of these fires on the local news. It’s not helped by the hot (95F/35C today!) temperatures we’ve been having and the strong winds. It’s also rained probably 5 times this year, which even for L.A. is very little.

While I might be far from any of the fires themselves, that doesn’t mean I don’t see some of the secondary effects. For example, in Los Angeles we have blue skies all year around. The only exception to this rule is when it rains (which is usually few months in the winter) and during June, when the “June Gloom” rolls in and you get a lot of gray, hazy mornings. The fires however, have created some of the worst air quality I’ve seen here. Even though I live twenty or thirty miles form the fires themselves, the city is blanketed in a think gray smoke. The sun occasionally shines through, but then the streets are bathed in an eery orange light. It’s all very weird.

I just took this photo from my office window and although it doesn’t really do it justice you can see just how murky the skies are!

Click to enlarge

The one bonus of all this pollution? Even more amazing sunsets! I’ll try and get a photo of one tonight. 

Here’s a thought for the day…

Don’t go into the toilets at work whilst talking on your cell phone.

a) It’s weird

b) It’s gross

and

c) It’s freaking me out!

It’s especially made worse when I hear the cell phone conversation coming from one of the stalls or, when I work into the restrooms and someone’s standing in there talking on the phone, as if they chose that particular location to make a quiet, private call.

Come on dude, that’s just wrong!

This weekend I finally watched Hot Fuzz, the British comedy about a top London cop who is transferred to a sleepy crime free village, only to discover that there are a series of grizzly murders going on. Having been a fan of the team behind this movie for a long time (writer/director Edgar Wight, writer and star Simon Pegg and actor Nick Frost) naturally I was looking forward to seeing it. There was a lot of hype surrounding it and reviews were overwhelmingly good. So on Sunday I sat down excitedly to watch it. Unfortunately after 45 minutes I gave up. This comedy movie seemed to suffer from a fairly serious problem, a lack of comedy. I realize that this is probably an unpopular opinion as many people loved this film and hailed it as the funniest British comedy since the last one, but I expected more…a lot more.

To better explain my expectations, requires a trip back to 2002 when I was first introduced by my friend Gus to the Channel 4 sitcom, Spaced. The show ran from 1999 to 2001 and in true British sitcom style, only a relatively small number of episodes were made. The show stared the aforementioned Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as part of an ensemble cast and was directed by Edgar Wright. I loved it and watched all fourteen episodes back to back on video. What made the show so funny to me was the mix of pop culture references, filming style and great humor. To me it stands as one of the best British sitcoms, up there with The Office, Fawlty Towers, Peep Show and I’m Alan Partridge. Guaranteed to make me laugh every time I watch it.

Fast forward to spring of 2003 and as I’ve moving to Los Angeles, Shaun of the Dead is released. A British comedy/zombie movie. The movie reunited the old team of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and was directed by Edgar Wright. It was getting a lot of hype but due to their lack of exposure in the states, the movie received only a limited release here and so I missed it. It wasn’t until the following year on a trip back to London that I would watch it at (rather appropriately) Gus’s flat. I was, if I am to be totally honest, disappointed by the movie. Yes it was funny and clever and managed to poke fun at the zombie genre whist actually being a pretty good zombie movie in itself, but it lacked the humor of Spaced.  It was in short, not up to to the standards set by Spaced and certainly not the spiritual successor to Spaced that it could have been. Perhaps if I had never seen Spaced, I would have appreciated it more on it’s own merits. Additionally and almost more disappointing was the fact that Nick Frost was just annoying. His character came across as a crude obnoxious oaf and nowhere near as funny as Sgt Mike from Spaced.

When I first saw the trailers for Hot Fuzz, I was optimistic. the movie looked good and there were several clips from the trailer that were hilarious. The movie got released in the theatres and I missed it, telling myself that it was one of those films that I could save my $12 and wait for on DVD.

Thank god I did. After 20 minutes the trademark quick edits and directorial style that worked so well in Spaced were proving to be an annoying distraction and after a series of who’s who of British comedy cameos, I found myself wondering when the humor was going to start. There were a couple of moments where I found myself chortling, but 45 minutes in I felt robbed. To make matters worse, Nick Frost was again the weak link in the chain and just wasn’t funny. I can’t understand how Quentin Tarentino called him “The funniest man on earth”! This was not a funny movie and had replaced Shaun of the Dead at the top of my list as the biggest disappointment from a team that created such comedy gold in the past. I did what I so rarely do and stopped watching the movie altogether.

Now, I know that many people would tell me that I should have stuck with it, especially since the final 30 minutes of the movie are supposed to be the best, but frankly I don’t care. I expected more. I guess, sadly, Spaced was a hard act to follow. I expect to be part of a very small group of people with this opinion as both Shaun.. and Hot Fuzz were hugely successful and have huge followings. I’m yet to meet somebody who didn’t like them.

Miles’s Rating: 2 stars out of 5 and has the dubious honor of being one of the few movies I couldn’t finish watching.