What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises.

Upon graduating from my acting program at The Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa Maria, CA, I went to my first tap audition. It was for the 1st national equity tour of '42nd Street.'

Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

I was born in Orange County - in Santa Ana. My dad is from California. I was raised on the East Coast. My first two years were in California, but I claim East Coast. I'm sorry, I don't rep California.

When we opened our office in Santa Ana, California, in 2016, I could not have envisioned this level of growth, although I always knew our products would be well received by customers in North America.

I studied at UC Santa Cruz before going on to do a grad program at UCLA. Santa Cruz was like an awesome hippie summer camp. I got to take a vacation from reality and hang out on beaches and in forests.

If you look at Christmas movies, there are certain things in them that lend themselves to a 'Harold & Kumar' movie. In particular, the more out-of-this-world things like Santa Claus and flying reindeer.

I wrote my senior essay on the Santa Fe Writer's Colony and my dissertation on sacred landscapes - the Grand Canyon, the Dakota Badlands. As a setting, I love the West. I just love that western landscape.

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.

She grounded me. I have become very disciplined now. I would never have written the books without her. Definitely the cleverest thing I ever did was to marry Santa. Maybe it's the only clever thing I did.

My dad was a slightly stricter version of Richard Dawkins. The worldview was that there are idiots out there who believe in Santa Claus and fairies and magic and elves, and we're not joining that nonsense.

I'm from Santa Cruz in Northern California, and the 49ers were my dad and I's bonding time. We would go to games in the '80s. It was a good time to fall in love with football when your team was unstoppable.

I knew I had to be on stage. I always felt like there was something bigger and better for me. If not that, I would be a hair stylist for sure. I almost enrolled at Vidal Sassoon hair academy in Santa Monica.

I was about thirteen when I started thinking about the stock market. My dad helped me a little bit. I'd see it in the 'Santa Barbara News-Press.' These prices would change every day - what was that all about?

I think you're kind of seeing the real me as far as seeing what I post on social media, because I am very much into cooking, and my dogs, and obviously my son, and my lifestyle in Santa Cruz is very laid-back.

When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of 'Reason' when I grew up. It was an impractical ambition, especially since the magazine was located in Santa Barbara, way off any journalist's normal career path.

I wrote for my university newspaper and went on to freelance for a Los Angeles publication in my first months after graduating from UC Santa Barbara. I also interned at a couple of TV stations in the L.A. area.

I got a New York designer to build my dream store here, which is a little bit of Florence in New York. It's like the Duomo on Madison. I got inspired by Santa Maria Novella and all the Renaissance architecture.

You read the stories about horses being starved at Santa Anita, but a horse can't starve at Santa Anita! I mean, there's just bags of carrots all over the place; food is everywhere. They don't starve any horses!

Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.

I enjoyed biology in high school, and that brought me to a research lab at U.C. Santa Barbara. I loved doing experiments, and I had fun with them. I realized this kind of problem-solving fit my intellectual style.

I was sending off my plays almost like an 8-year-old would send letters to Santa Claus. So it was a bit of a miracle when the Blank Theatre Company actually called and selected a terrible little play that I wrote.

I'm writing a book called 'The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus' about the maths of Christmas: how to set up a secret Santa so it's totally fair; how to decorate your tree mathematically; how to win at Monopoly.

Ray Bradbury has a vacation house in Palm Springs, California, in the desert at the base of the Santa Rosa mountains. It's a Rat Pack-era affair, with a chrome-and-turquoise kitchen and a small swimming pool in back.

I'm a Santa Ana boy from 1940 to all my life. And Santa Ana was different only in the fact that Orange County was just small. Hell, I used to ride my motorcycle through the orange groves, and now it's tracts of homes.

I lived near Santa Cruz for ten years, and the whole time, it bothered me what an exclusionary definition of 'inclusion' was in force. Social censure was applied to those who expressed unpopular or uncomfortable ideas.

Nothing will ever outshine, for me, the countless children whose eyes and imaginations I've seen light up when meeting Black Santa and understanding that there's a character of pure good out there that represents them.

Department store Santas are apparently being trained to lower children's expectations about toys because of the recession. Yeah, it's weird when you ask Santa for a train set and he's like, 'Yeah, how 'bout a bus token?

As children, we have vivid imaginations. We stay up late waiting for Santa Claus, dream of becoming president, and have ideas that defy physics. Then something happens. As we grow older, we start editing our imagination.

In March 2005, I was appointed to the board of the Santa Barbara metro transit district. I was incredibly optimistic about how public transportation can be the solution to help people live in the city and not need a car.

I remember arguing with kids on the street who were talking about Santa Claus. I said don't be so daft - Santa Claus doesn't come down our chimney. He's an economic Santa Claus; he goes down chimneys where they've got money.

As a songwriter, I do kind of look at 'Santa Monica' as a thing outside of itself, because it isn't just my song. This is a song a lot of people tell me is a part of their high school or college years. That means a lot to me.

I didn't play any extreme sports growing up. I never surfed, and I grew up in Santa Cruz. I was very good at doing what I was told, taking direction, and staying middle of the road. I mean, they called me 'grandma' in college.

I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test.

Going to Santa Fe is like going to Greece. It's not that special compared to other areas. The pinon pines are no different than pinon pines elsewhere. But there has been culture there longer than in most places, and you feel it.

Basher shook his head. "No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs." "Then you might be the cavalry," said Tom, "but I'm Santa Claus. Let's go downstairs and open some presents.

I was born and raised in Pretoria. Nobody ever really talked about Santa because the whole concept just didn't make sense to us. Think about what South Africa looks like: I mean, we don't even have any chimneys for him to come down!

Well I teach in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. So that's my primary work. I lecture on various campuses and in various communities across the country and other parts of the world.

I have memories of the time when I was younger and when I believed in Santa Claus, which was the best part of Christmas. Back then, I wrote to Santa every year, hoping that my mom would post the letter with a stamp to the North Pole!

Santa Monica, where I have always lived, is not a town where you will find storefront Church of God in Christ churches. So, the whole idea of gospel quartet singing is something I never knew existed until I began to hear it on record.

Obama's gonna play Santa Claus with the minimum wage. He's got no successes to brag about. He cannot talk about a robust job market. In fact, the very fact he's talking about the minimum wage is evidence there is no robust job market.

I worked for a breakfast catering company on commercial shoots, which meant getting up at 3 or 4 A.M. and loading up your car with a bunch of food and driving out to some set in Santa Clarita and making breakfast for a bunch of people.

Postal officials say that before Christmas they receive tons of letters written to Santa Claus, but after Christmas how few letters of thanks are sent to him! From childhood onward, human beings seem to be characterized by thanklessness.

The great thing about Santa Monica civic auditorium was it was a place you could ride your bike to. In this case, my dad dropped me and my friends off, and we'd go see Ronnie James Dio or Jean-Luc Ponty or Weather Report or the Pretenders.

For the past two years, President Obama has promised our children the moon, stars, rainbows, unicorns and universal health care for all. But the White House Santa's cradle-to-grave entitlement mandates are a spectacularly predictable bust.

My worst Christmas ever was in 1987 when Santa brought me and my sister a dose of chicken-pox. And my worst present ever was a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner! I don't like to sound ungrateful, but I do find vacuuming difficult to get excited about.

'Santa Sangre' is the picture I love the best, myself, because 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain' I made with my head, and 'Santa Sangre' I made with my feelings, with my heart. It's an emotional picture. And it's more real for me, that picture.

In the States a lot of Hispanic and black audiences are gravitating towards 'Peaky Blinders.' A mate of went into a bar in Santa Monica and sent me a photo of four blokes dressed as Peakies - they meet every week for a 'Peaky Blinders' evening.

I work with a place in Santa Monica called Phase IV. My doctor recommended them to me when I started losing weight. They help people train for things like triathlons or biking and running races. They offer physical therapists, testing, lectures.

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