1. What is your favorite beach to cool off on? When do you go to beat the crowds?
2. If not the beach, where is your favorite cooling-off spot outdoors? indoors?
3. Where is your favorite spot for ice cream/sorbet/gelato?
4. What is your favorite flavor?
5. Stuck at home? What are you making in your blender?
6. Got any original concoctions you want to share?
7. Favorite winter-themed video or book?
8. What was your favorite water-themed activity as a kid?
1.Zuma. Zuuuuuuma. Nothing says chilling like that broad, sacred stretch of shore-break sand bathed in soul-cleansing bodysurfing waves. If you get there before 11 you can squeeze in a good two and a half hours of the best lolling, people-watching and bodysurfing before the yayhoos drag themselves out of bed and bring their hung-over, neon-trunked, radio-blaring, no-shower-taking, monster-SUV-driving, mellow-harshing asses out there and start polluting the water and the vibe.
2. The beach trumps everything else. When we drag our hung-over asses out of bed too late for the beach, the back yard is cooler and greener than the rest of the house, and we can always set the pool and the hose out for the kids.
3. 31 Flavors, right around the corner on Westwood. It's too close, in fact.
4. Hot fudge sundae with a scoop each of pralines'n'cream and (when in season) watermelon ice. Whipped cream. Nuts. Maraschino. Lovely.
5. Fruit smoothie - watermelon, strawberries, bananners and OJ. After the sun's over the yardarm, frozen margaritas.
6. Wish I could. 5 is as close as I get to blender creativity.
7. Tossup between John Huston's brilliant late-career thriller "Winter Kills" starring Jeff Bridges, or John Carpenter's "The Thing," which left me feeling cold for a week in July the first time I saw it in an air-conditioned theater.
8. Just bouncin' up and down in the waves, feeling the sand erode around my toes.
