Dog on Shoes, in Venice CA.

In the spirit of the “Daily Puppy” website that some of you may be familiar with, I present the Markasaurus “Tuesday Pet Pal” feature, that may or may not ever be repeated. I took this photo in Venice, CA on my recent trip. This dog s sitting on the shoes that are displayed in the bottom of the store window while someone puts up a new display.

I should mention that the most popular post I’ve ever written was about the Black and White Tegu, a large semi-aggressive lizard that some of you might remember from last August. It makes up over 3% of the pageviews for the entire site, and is the top landing page behind the index. If anyone knows anything about why these animals are so popular I would love to hear an explanation.

Rite Aid Beverly Hills, at night.

Yes, that’s right (or should I say “Rite”). Not only is there a Rite Aid in Beverly Hills, they actually call it “Rite Aid Beverly Hills” with “Beverly Hills” written in script on the sign as if it were a Bentley dealer or Cartier. Upon going into the store, it was mostly good old Rite Aid- sunscreen, medicine and snack food as far as the eye can see. There was an ice cream parlor inside too, but I have seen those in other Rite Aid locations. It’s not like they were selling caviar and pate flavored soft serve or anything either, it was just regular ice cream.

This picture depicts a display window on the back of a trashy lingerie shop on La Cienega Blvd. in West Hollywood. What was I doing at a trashy lingerie shop? I was on my way to the organic vegan restaurant next door, of course. Note that one of the mannequins in this photo is disintegrating. I don’t have any theories on that, or at least any theories I could reveal in a family-oriented blog like this.That’s the best part about LA- you’ll find insane juxtapositions of high and low culture, good taste and bad, or hippie food and pervert mannequin fetish all on the same block (oh, wait, this is starting to sound like my Master’s Thesis).

As long as we’re on the subject of weird juxtapositions in Los Angeles, don’t white plaster statues of men with American flags make you want to run out and buy a suit?

Santa Monica Topiary Dinosaurs, proudly guarding the Promenade.

Yes, even Los Angeles has dinosaurs. Of course, they are made out of shrubs and shoot water from their mouths while people casually eat frozen yogurt and shop at an outdoor mall. This is one of the many highlights of last weekend’s trip.

Another highlight of the trip was visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I’m sure many of you have heard of it by now. It’s a museum that is really more of a conceptual art project. While it projects the trappings of an “official” museum, you never quite know whether the things on display are real or not. You also never really know why they are on display, as much of what’s in the museum looks either obscure, insignificant or both. Long story short, I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice. If you are passing through Culver City, give yourself at least an hour and a half to see the displays and more than that if you want to read everything (actually you would need a whole day for that).

One of the displays featured this glass case with a dog’s head inside. Through a series of prisms, the image of a man fidgeting in a chair and barking is projected into space so that when you look into the case, he appears to be in the dog’s head. Then he starts barking. It’s priceless, and this one exhibit is worth the price of admission alone.

Cheesosaurus, originally uploaded by mark.hogan.

My birthday is still slightly more than a month away, but my friend went to Wisconsin this week and couldn’t pass up this dinosaur-shaped cheese souvenir. The real question is, will I be able to slice it so that the cheese that comes out is still shaped like a dinosaur?

Mountain Lion/Rattlesnake warning at Mt. Tamalpais State Park

When venturing into the outdoors, there is always a certain amount of risk involved. I think people used to take that for granted. The State of California (probably because they don’t want to be held liable) recognized that people probably aren’t as savy as they used to be, and therefore has posted signs about every dangerous animal you could possible encounter on your adventures into the wilderness.

Mountain lions and rattlesnakes are, to some small degree, avoidable while hiking. Especially rattlesnakes- at least if you are aware of them you can watch where you step and take precautionary measures. The sign about mountain lions at least tells you to wave your arms over your head and try to scare it away. I really don’t understand this sign:

Shark warning at Stinson Beach

“A shark attack occurred here in six feet of water.” Oh great. Something tells me waving your arms in the air isn’t going to do the trick if an 18 foot long great white thinks you are a seal.

Finally, my favorite sign from the Montreal Bioshpere:

Don’t touch the otters!

A winter storm at Sierra-at-Tahoe

Perhaps you’ve read the book or watched the movie called “Alive”? If you haven’t, it’s about a group of football (soccer) players. Their plane crashed in the Andes Mountains and they had to survive in the snow for a long period of time until they were rescued. They ended up eating some of the dead because they had no other food.

The same thing almost happened to me this weekend. I went snowboarding at Sierra-at-Tahoe on the Bay Area Ski Bus in the middle of a fierce winter storm. The conditions were great, but during the course of the day the weather became so bad that avalanche control had to close Highway 50, preventing us from making a return to civilization. Our rations were running low (see photo) and morale was sinking. The bar at the resort ran our of Sierra Nevada beer and happy hour was drawing to a close.

Luckily, the road reopened and we were able to get out of the mountains and home by 11pm.

On Saturday, Natasha and I drove to Truckee, CA to see the snow and go snowshoeing. I didn’t realize that it was going to be nearly 50 degrees outside, which is approximately the same temperature as our kitchen in the morning. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very “wintery” experience, but was fun nonetheless.

We rented snowshoes at a place called “The Backcountry” and then headed to the other side of the I-80 to Donner Memorial State Park. The park has a small museum, camping, and cross-country ski trails in the winter. It is located at the spot where most of the Donner Party spent the infamous winter of 1846-1847.

The trail takes you to the edge of Donner Lake, along the shore, and then back to the museum. I think it is about a 2.5 mile walk. It is flat, and would have been pretty easy had we not been snowshoeing through heavy slush.

After our expedition in the wilderness, we headed to Truckee where we ate some “food” at a place called “Coffee And.” If you are a vegetarian, you might want to consider other options. It’s a pretty classic small diner-style restaurant where you get eight ounces of Italian dressing on a handful of iceberg lettuce and a cup of coffee in a questionably clean mug. They did have veggie burgers though, so I have to give them some credit.

I finally saw the otter exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Saturday. Natasha and I went there for the afternoon, and I also had the pleasure of seeing the giant, filthy stuffed otter in the picture displayed above. It was in a store down the street, and it looks like it’s been getting a lot of lovin’ from the kids. The aquarium was fun, but pricey. At $24.95 for admission, I almost think they should let you take an otter home with you for a week or two. The penguin exhibit was closed too, which I could see being a big disappointment for some people (not that I wasn’t disappointed, but I was really there to see the otters).

They also had a baby White Shark on display for the third time. They have a White Shark research program that has been taking young sharks accidentally caught in fishing nets and keeping them in captivity before releasing them back into the ocean. It was a little unclear whether or not the shark was going to be on display because a staff member was overheard saying that the shark “didn’t get along” with one of the turtles, which I took to mean “ate the turtle,” since disagreements with Great White Sharks don’t using end with verbal altercations.

While on the subject of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, how about a shameless plug for an academic paper I wrote a few years ago on the subject of Aquariums? Available for the first time on the internet, my paper The Public Aquarium: Fish as the Other “Other” looks into the birth of the aquarium during the age of the great exhibitions, and how it has evolved to its present form (using Monterey Bay as a key example). Sorry if the formatting of the paper isn’t the greatest, I think I exported out of Word to an HTML file and never really cleaned it up enough. I did make sure all the images were working, if you manage to make it to the end.

Before going to a Superbowl party at my friend Matt’s house, I went to a laundromat in the Castro called “Sit and Spin” where everyone was engrossed in a dog show televised on Animal Planet. This was followed up by the “Puppy Bowl,” which is a contest between two teams of puppies on a miniature football field (You can watch the highlights on the Animal Planet website). They also had slutty kitten cheerleaders for the halftime show. These talented young cats certainly had more energy than Tom Petty did at the real halftime show…

It was a snowy day at Sugarbowl yesterday when Markasuarus went skiing with the Bay Area Ski Bus. Not that I didn’t enjoy it. While everyone else was complaining about how it was snowing and cold and huddling in the lodge, I was out enjoying the winter weather. I did manage to slightly injure myself, but I shouldn’t have been trying to slide a rail on my third run of the day after not snowboarding for a year and a half.

My favorite sight of the day was not out on the slopes, despite the beauty of the snowy mountains. It was inside the door of the lodge. For some reason this is the only snowboard that was inside the entire lodge, even though it is expressly forbidden to bring your skis or snowboard inside:

Point Reyes, January 2008, originally uploaded by mark.hogan.

Wow! What a great time of day to go hiking. I highly recommend it. Just don’t go hiking where this picture was taken (hint: there are lots of cows there) or it will get too crowded.

Oh, did I tell you that the cows are really aggressive? You probably don’t want to have anything to do with them.