Here's a sample of how Eddie and Craig occupy their leisure time, along with collections of their favorite things (alphabetically).

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Travel      If you've visited our Trip page, you know we like to travel. There, we describe in prose and pictures how to plan a European tour and what we did on trips to Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, New England, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, and San Diego. We also go several times a year to Palm Springs.
How do we wing it financially? We save, pure and simple. We plan our vacations a year in advance and stash away a certain amount of money each month to make them happen. There's no magic formula, and we certainly aren't going to wait around to win the lottery. Many people consider traveling a luxury. We give it the same priority as, say, dining out, going to the theater, or buying new clothes, so putting aside travel money every month comes naturally.
Coming home with good photographs is one of the great rewards of traveling. Craig has a 35mm Pentax auto-everything with remote, which he's been using for five years. All the photographs on our Trip pages were taken with this camera. For the 2001 Europe tour, Craig purchased a Panasonic DV camera and made the transition from snapshots to movies. Most recently, he used this camera to make movies of the 2003 Europe trip.

Making DVDs      In mid 2003, the time was right for Craig and Eddie to launch themselves into homemade DVD production. Although the format war — dash versus plus — was far from won, Sony and TDK had recently come out with multiformat burners priced competively.
Craig opted for the Sony DRU-500AX and equipped himself further with Dazzle DVD Complete and the Tsunami MPEG Encoder (aka TMPGEnc). He already had Pinnacle Studio 7 for editing movies. The DVD-R disks he burns play fine in his Toshiba and Sony players.
They started by creating full-featured DVDs out of their own travel movies, complete with bonus sections such as Scrapbook and Postcards. After purchasing the Canopus ADVC100 for converting analog video into DV, Craig and Eddie started combing their VHS library for footage worth transferring to disk. Now there's basically nothing they can't digitize and burn to DVD.

Reading      Thank goodness for summertime, when the TV ceases to be tempting and we can spend all evening reading on the couch. Eddie's favorite books are references and guides, and Craig's likes to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. We both enjoy David Feldman's Imponderables books and Cecil Adams' Straight Dope anthologies, which are filled with explanations of everyday mysteries. They make for perfect light reading. Craig keeps up with the novels of Stephen McCauley, Mary Higgins Clark, Jane Smiley, Patricia Cornwell, and Martin Amis, to name a few.
Even though Craig makes his living in the magazine biz, he can't get his fill of them at home. Craig and Eddie subscribe to more than a dozen magazines and count among their favorites Vanity Fair , Movieline, Martha Stewart Living , Los Angeles , and Metropolitan Home. As far as online publications go, the funniest Web publication ever is The Onion , Craig's favorite general-interest zine is Salon , and we both like the Los Angeles Times .			Some of Craig's Favorite Authors Jane Austen, John Barth, Charles Dickens, Margaret Millar, Tom Robbins, Philip Roth, David Sedaris, Gore Vidal

Motion Pictures     Whether you're spotting actors in restaurants or navigating your car around streets closed off for filming or a premiere, Los Angeles doesn't let you forget she's a showbiz town. Going to the movies is as much an exercise in civic pride as it is an entertainment. Craig and Eddie go to the movies once a week on average; they watch three times that many pictures on television. Their tastes run the gamut from slapstick comedy to high-concept sci-fi to heart-wrenching drama.
Our favorite venue, naturally, is the Chinese Theater. From the footprints of Hollywood royalty in the forecourt to the dazzlingly ornate, immense auditorium, there's just no better place to see a movie in L.A., if not the world.			"There is no earthly reason why Joan Crawford's life should be so tarnished by her daughter's writings that we should view her story only through the latter's eyes. Joan Crawford was simply the most successful American screen actress in the history of film." --F.L. Guiles, Joan Crawford: The Last Word, 1995
We have too many favorite actors and actresses to name, but certainly one of our favorites is Miss Joan Crawford. Among a few other books about Crawford (including, yes, the 20th Anniversary Special Edition of Mommie Dearest), we have a pristine copy of her rare 1971 autobiography My Way of Life, which we bought at auction. It's filled with such grand chapters as "A Script for a Complete Woman." Driven, compassionate, glamorous, forceful, alluring, tempestuous, and kind, Joan Crawford embodies Old Hollywood more than any other star. We couldn't have put it better than Turner Classic Movies did when the channel introduced Joan Crawford Week: "She is The Movies and she is endlessly fascinating."

Television      If Craig and Eddie could have just two television programs on a desert isle, there's no question what they'd be: I Love Lucy and The Golden Girls . We watch the uncut episodes of Lucy on Nick at Nite , and over the years we've managed to collect every episode of The Golden Girls. Currently the Girls are on Lifetime Television several times every weekday.
At the online auction site eBay Craig once bid on and won a set of autographs from the cast of The Golden Girls. They're still tucked safely away in a drawer, but we plan to have them framed along with a cast photo. For now, we display them on our Devotion page for the girls , along with a comprehensive episode guide.
We don't always like the same programs, but we like a great deal in common. Over the years, some TV shows that Eddie, Craig, or both have considered favorites are (in no particular order) Three's Company, Newhart, Cheers, Cagney & Lacey, Dynasty, Seinfeld, Picket Fences, The X-Files, L.A. Law, Absolutely Fabulous, Frasier, The Honeymooners, The Nanny, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Mary Tyler Moore.

Radio      His name is Phil Hendrie , and he's a genius. For nine years from his studio in Los Angeles, one of the most talented and funny men in all media unleashed his unique brand of talk radio satire every weeknight from 7 to 10 on more than 100 stations across the country. You never heard anything like it. Phil Hendrie retired the program on June 23, 2006. Craig commemorated the event by compiling the last week's show into an audiobook (.m4b).	Some Favorite Guests Mavis, an elderly, harmonica-playing black woman who thinks we should "scrub the baby down with an old wire brush" to rid him of diabetes. Bobbie Dooley, nosey housewife and neighborhood activist who once, fearing that they'd ruin the school's Xmas pageant, tried to lure the fat kids off the stage by waving Snickers bars. Margaret Gray, jet-setting celebrity journalist who defiantly parks in the handicap spot whenever her toenail polish is wet. Jay Santos, over- zealous head of the Citizens Auxiliary Police, who was planning to enforce a voluntary gas boycot by throwing people to the ground by their hair and feeding them "concrete pie." Bob Green, owner of Frasier Foods, who does not wear a wig, dammit! It's a hair system.
First-time listeners suspected that he had comic partners who called in and pretend to be various guests. One hour it might be R.C. Collins, the obnoxious, terminally ill 16-year-old who died in 1999 only to be resurrected a couple months later as a military academy cadet. Or Margaret Gray, nationally syndicated columnist with a monstrous sense of entitlement and the delusion that she gave up worthwhile singing and acting careers to devote her time to her child actor son, Jason J. Delmonico. Or Chris Norton, bachelor about town who feels he's discriminated against because of his intense "sessual energy." Or Steve Bozell, endlessly humiliated family man who once mistook a Bic pen for a rectal thermometer. Or Jeff Dowder, oft-stoned musician whose group Dark Horse really hoped it would break through with the song, "Love Theme From Chode."
There are no accomplices. It was all Hendrie, masterfully working two microphones. He brought perfectly to life any of about 30 distinct characters, giving them hidden agendas revealed gradually over the course of the hour, arguing with them, acting as an intermediary between them and real-life callers, and just generally sending his audience into spasms of laughter.
Craig listened faithfully to every show he could. Suspecting that such a unique, amazing program wouldn't last, he began collecting highlights in 1999.  The show ended up lasting nine more years!  Craig and Eddie attended the listener party in Las Vegas in 2001, went to the CD signings around Southern California every year, and were in the audience when the Museum of TV & Radio honored Hendrie in Beverly Hills.  Craig's collection is one of his most prized possessions. You can find details on the Devotion page.

Music      Eddie and Craig have eclectic taste in music. Although Eddie listens to jazz, rock, and pop radio routinely, it's Craig who goes out and buys new music, mainly rock and dance. In a typical month he'll lay out $50-$75 at iTunes and elsewhere.
One of Craig's favorite forms is the maxisingle, on which diverse producers recompose and remix a hit song, transforming it in surprising, beautiful ways. Especially talented producer-composers are Junior Vasquez, Tony Moran, Soul Solution, Johnny Vicious, Jonathan Peters, Thunderpuss, Hex Hector, David Morales, and the Trouser Enthusiasts. An excellent source for maxisingles and collections is Perfect Beat.			Craig's Top Picks for Oct. Madonna, "Nothing Fails," Tracy Young Club Mix Garry Alan, "The One" Lili Haydn, "Stranger Things" BT, "Superfabulous" Ofra Haza, "Show Me," Trouser Enthusiasts Kaleidoscope Perversion Mix Meat Loaf, "You're Right, I Was Wrong"
Being surprised by a great remix at the clubs can be the highlight of a Saturday night. Craig vividly remembers one night not too long ago when he and Eddie were at a dance club and the DJ worked in Tony Moran's soaring, red-hot remix of Gloria Estefan's "I'm Not Giving You Up." For Craig, who had only known the song as a ballad, it was practically a religious experience.

Some of Craig's Favorite Musical Artists The Beautiful South, Cher , The Cure , Taylor Dayne, Dead or Alive , Electronic, Everything But the Girl , The Housemartins, Gene , Gloria Estefan , Janet Jackson, Madonna , Morrissey, M People, Shara Nelson, New Order, Pet Shop Boys , REM, Linda Ronstadt, The Smiths, Lisa Stansfield, Donna Summer , 10,000 Maniacs, U2, Trisha Yearwood

Some of Eddie's Favorite Musical Artists Erasure, Fleetwood Mac, Billie Ray Martin , Stevie Nicks, The Rolling Stones, Martha Wash, Christine McVie

Check out Craig  and Eddie's

Writing      A great deal of this Web site is composed of travelogues Craig wrote in order to share the trips with family and friends. Even our advice for planning a trip to Europe first came about as a letter to a friend who asked for suggestions and guidance. Of course we have thick, annotated photo albums, but nothing preserves the memories of our travels better than our written narratives. Even if we didn't want to share the trips with others, Craig would still write the travelogues for himself and Eddie.
Craig writes short stories once in a while as an exercise and a pastime. In college he participated in Creative Writing seminars and wrote stories and articles for a campus magazine. Though his career is publishing, Craig doesn't write for publication. Many people wouldn't understand why someone would labor over a piece of writing if it's not his job. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said you're crazy to write for anything but money? Well, Craig figures you don't have to be a chef to enjoy cooking. He likes to write because it's the practice of a craft.

Fitness      The Park Labrea has a fitness center, to which Eddie and Craig belong. It comprises a gym and a lap pool. They swim two or three times a week. Craig was on his high school and community swim teams, which kept him working out and competing year-round for four years. He excelled at the butterfly stroke and once competed at the Junior Olympics in the 100-meter fly and as the fly man in the 400-meter medley relay.
Today he swims about 1,000 yards a workout, varying the sets and strokes, while Eddie swims freestyle, making up the sets as he goes along.			Craig's Workout 1x250 warmup 1x150 pull 1x150 kick 1x150 pull 1x100 indiv. medley 2x100 freestyle 2x50  cooldown
In addition to swimming, Craig and Eddie do a lot of walking. They live close to supermarkets, banks, the Beverly Center, The Grove, the Farmers Market, and all kinds of restaurants, so they do many errands on foot.

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