Easter Bunny

If you stay up very late--or get up very early--Easter morning, you'll have a chance to see one of the most sought-after rabbits around. No, not the cotton-tailed fellow with the basket full of eggs, but Rabbit in the Moon, a Florida-based electronic dance-music combine that may be the act most coveted by record labels hoping to get hopping in that much-discussed genre.

Chocolate is what everyone looks for in their Easter baskets, so perhaps a visit to a chocolate factory this weekend is in order. Ethel M Chocolates in Henderson, Nev., hosts three days of kid-centric activities that include a visit from the Easter bunny. The deal: The Spring Spectacular features free activities good for families with children. Photos with the Easter bunny, face-painting and balloon creations are planned at the company's factory near Las Vegas . The Saturday lineup adds a jazz band and a show of artwork created by people with disabilities who are affiliated with Opportunity Village ; sales benefit the charity.

I believe! Any GP in the same predicament would tell you the same thing. I took a few days this week to visit the grandkids in Arizona, finding the daughter upset when I arrived. She had just taken the 7-Eleven Kid and the twins to see the movie "We Bought a Zoo. " I remember as a parent how upset I was when I had to sit through dumb kid movies just because I was a father. But she was angry because Matt Damon , the father in the movie, was saying he had a 7-year-old daughter who still thinks the Easter Bunny exists.

That Bo is one lucky dog: He's going into the record books as the first White House pet to have his very own commemorative Easter egg. Look closely at the White House's 2012 set of collector's Easter eggs, above. You can make out the black-and-white Portuguese water dog's image -- the red one, center -- alongside the Easter bunny emblems that decorate the rest of the eggs in the souvenir set. The wooden Easter eggs are sold through the National Park Foundation , which raises money to preserve and maintain America's open spaces.

Chocolate is what everyone looks for in their Easter baskets, so perhaps a visit to a chocolate factory this weekend is in order. Ethel M Chocolates in Henderson, Nev., hosts three days of kid-centric activities that include a visit from the Easter bunny. The deal: The Spring Spectacular features free activities good for families with children. Photos with the Easter bunny, face-painting and balloon creations are planned at the company's factory near Las Vegas . The Saturday lineup adds a jazz band and a show of artwork created by people with disabilities who are affiliated with Opportunity Village ; sales benefit the charity.

It's a delicate matter, this Easter Bunny business. Oh, I know. You think it's a long way off and you don't have to think about it yet. That you still have plenty of time to come up with an answer to all your kids' questions. Like, how does the Easter Bunny know that you recently moved? Or how does the Easter Bunny get admitted to security-gated apartments, especially since he can't reach the intercom button? Or why do we celebrate Easter, anyway?

A dozen teenagers learned Friday that a bit of work and a little time can make a big difference. The teens, who belong to a youth ministry group at St. Hedwig's Catholic Church in Los Alamitos, spent the afternoon boiling and decorating eggs to fill Easter baskets that they will give to homeless children today at Southwest Community Center in Santa Ana. "I can't give millions of dollars or anything, but I can give some of my time," said 15-year-old Sarah Erb of Los Alamitos.

A man-sized Easter Bunny visited more than 200 children Thursday at child care centers from downtown Los Angeles to the Westside. Bearing candy and other goodies, he stopped at the downtown Para Los Ninos child care center, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and, finally, the Santa Monica YMCA. In Santa Monica, the kids decorated sugar cookies in the shape of bunnies and chicks. The Easter Bunny's mission was commissioned by the Park Hyatt Los Angeles at Century City.

The city's Cottontail Harbor Day celebration will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 12 at Ventura Harbor Village, 1583 Spinnaker Drive. The Easter bunny and other costumed friends will arrive by boat at 10 a.m. Children ages 2 to 7 may bring their own Easter baskets and join in a free egg hunt from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. while supplies last. Entertainment is scheduled throughout the day. More information is available on the city's Web site at www.ci.ventura.ca.us or by calling 654-7749.

The Easter bunny wreaked havoc with Sunday television ratings last week, as Americans stayed away from the tube and programming on all three networks laid a giant egg, according to Nielsen ratings released today. Hardest hit was CBS. "60 Minutes" and "Murder, She Wrote" were knocked out of their usual top 10 spots, leaving the network with no top 10 winners. At NBC, "Family Ties" sank to 64th place and the network's Andy Williams special from Rome was the lowest-rated show of the week.

Easter is still a great day for worship, candy in baskets, pagan equinox rituals and running around the yard finding eggs, but every year it gets quite a bit worse for bunnies. And no, not because the kids like to pull their ears. The culprit is climate change, and the folks at Climate Nexus found that rising temperatures are having adverse effects on at least five species of rabbit in the U.S. Take the Lower Keys Marsh rabbit, for instance. An endangered species that lives in the Lower Florida Keys, this breed of cottontail is a great swimmer - it lives on the islands!

A marathon of the first three "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, plus a Q&A with cast members and members of the production team, will be part of the ParkFilm Fest May 5 at Paramount Studios. Proceeds to help offset cuts to California state parks . . . . Looking for a reasonable Easter brunch in a festive setting? W Los Angeles-Westwood is offering a $20.12 meal that includes lots of choices, including lobster and brie sliders . Three egg hunts are also on the schedule for the 10 a.m.- to-3 p.m. brunch.

I believe! Any GP in the same predicament would tell you the same thing. I took a few days this week to visit the grandkids in Arizona, finding the daughter upset when I arrived. She had just taken the 7-Eleven Kid and the twins to see the movie "We Bought a Zoo. " I remember as a parent how upset I was when I had to sit through dumb kid movies just because I was a father. But she was angry because Matt Damon , the father in the movie, was saying he had a 7-year-old daughter who still thinks the Easter Bunny exists.

The Obamas opened the rain-soaked South Lawn of the White House Monday to tens of thousands of wee ones for the annual Easter Egg Roll, a 19 th century tradition they’ve modernized with pop singers, top chefs and star athletes. About 30,000 people, many giving their Easter Day attire another go, were expected on a sunny day when the temperature is expected to reach 80 degrees. This year’s event has been dubbed “Get Up and Go,” which means some sweat-inducing activities were on tap, along with the Easter Bunny, who delivered 19,000 hard-boiled eggs.

It's spring, and probably the most welcomed of the season's animals is the bunny — specifically, the chocolate bunny. No mass-produced creatures, these bunnies are made and sold by small, independent chocolatiers and chocolate shops. Grab your Easter bonnet and we'll hippity-hop around the West. Carpinteria Jean-Michel Carré shapes organic and sustainably grown chocolate from the nearby Santa Barbara Chocolate Co. into refined bunnies and hens as visitors to Chocolats du CaliBressan gaze through a large window into the kitchen.

Easter in Scandinavia, like many holiday celebrations in this part of the world, is a colorful patchwork of customs, including bits and pieces of a lot of things: Passover, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Easter bunny, cute witches, huge amounts of oranges and the occasional shot of aquavit, all of it combined into what can be described only as an exhilarating and slightly confusing Easter stew. But one thing is clear: Easter in Scandinavia is very much about food. There isn't a single homogeneous Easter food tradition that spans all of Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

About 200 children and their parents got a one-day jump on the Easter Bunny by searching Hillcrest Park in Fullerton for eggs Saturday morning in the 11th annual Easter Egg Hunt sponsored by the YWCA of North Orange County. Minnie Wilson of the Egg Basket in Fullerton sponsored the event with a donation of 125 dozen eggs. In addition to eggs, hard-boiled and colored by volunteers, the hunt featured candy and prizes such as stuffed bunnies.

Easter may be weeks away, but that won't stop the holiday's iconic bunny from bouncing right over the competition at the box office this weekend. "Hop," a hybrid computer-animated comedy about the Easter Bunny's teenage son that also features live actors, is on track to open to about $25 million, according to people who have seen prerelease audience surveys. That should far exceed the ticket sales of "Source Code," a sci-fi thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal, which is likely to collect $15 million to $18 million.

When it comes to notable secular Easter movies, there's Fred Astaire at the parade with Judy Garland and little else. But with the seasonal ubiquity of candy, eggs and bunnies, it's hardly a shock that an animation company would wring some type of festive, sentimental kids' flick out of so commercially tinged and cute animal-friendly a holiday. The animation/live-action "Hop" — from the producing-writing team behind last year's "Despicable Me," and director Tim Hill, of "Alvin and the Chipmunks" fame — is that very entry, and it's almost unashamedly middle of the road about its intentions.