It’s a warm early summer day here in Southern California. As I come back to the office from lunch, a colleague is setting up one of those windshield screens to keep the sun from shining into her car all afternoon.
Toughen up, sweetie. I like my steering wheel to be blazing hot when I return to my vehicle. The pain reminds me I’m alive.
AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
TIJUANA, Mexico — The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Wednesday was national signing day for college football. Looks like UCLA got a good group of kids.
One of my Facebook friends, a UCLA grad, updated his status to say that he thinks UCLA will now rule the city in basketball AND football.
I posted a comment on his status: What about SAT scores?
And within minutes he had dropped me from his friend list, after sending me an angry email saying that USC is getting smart kids internationally and out of state while UCLA has to take California kids and besides that they’re manipulating the stats and blah blah blah . . .
To fully appreciate that, you need to know that traditionally the perception has been that the rich SoCal kids go to USC while the smart kids go to UCLA. In recent years though, USC has moved ahead in SAT scores, GPA, National Merit Scholars, etc., and continues to widen the gap.
So now the USC kids are richer AND smarter and the Bruins aren’t taking it well. Not at all.
FIGHT ON!
The first storm of the season is rolling through Southern California, which means it’s time to bring back the time-honored tradition of sending female TV reporters out to do live weather remotes.
I saw a woman on TV this morning standing in a blizzard to tell me that it’s snowing in the Cajon Pass.
Really?! It always snows in the Cajon Pass. She could have told me the same thing from inside a heated studio.
Some day, one of these women is going to get pneumonia or frostbite and sue this whole sadistic practice out of existence . . .
On Nov. 4, my fellow Californians and I will vote on Proposition 8, an initiative to ban same-sex marriages, which were made legal by a state Supreme Court ruling in May.
I know a guy — let’s call him Trog . . . Trog seems to have emerged from the mists of time untouched by human evolution.
Not surprisingly, Trog supports Proposition 8 and he feels strongly enough about it that if you stop by his office, you’ll see a fair amount of Yes on 8 campaign material.
Now I have to say that the idea of two people of the same sex getting married and making out with each other — provided they’re female and hot — does far less to tarnish my view on the sanctity of marriage than does the thought of some woman allowing this mouth-breathing ape to clamber on top of her and deposit his seed.
The fact that same-sex couples even want to get married is a stunning triumph of hope over experience. I honestly can’t think of a single heterosexual couple I’d describe as happily married — not one!
In fact, I’ve come to think of marriage as having very little to do with love, which I no longer believe in, and a lot to do with having someone other than yourself to blame for everything that’s wrong with your life.
To couples — gay or otherwise — I say don’t confuse “I love you” with “I want to marry you.”
My son and I are watching Monday Night Football when an ad comes on in which every somber, sallow-faced environmentalist in the state is telling me to vote No on Proposition 7.
I say to the boy, “You know, I don’t even know what Proposition 7 is, but if all of these sanctimonious pricks are against it, then I’m for it. GO HUMP A TREE, YOU PUSSIES!”
The dog, who, unlike other members of the family, loves to hear the sound of my voice, jumps up on the sofa and starts licking my face.
“That’s right, pup. Lightning says he doesn’t care about trees either, except that he likes to pee on them.”
My son sighs and says, “We need trees” — very slowly, like he’s talking to an idiot.
“Oh . . . well in that case, put me down as Undecided.”
A co-worker tells me that when she was growing up in Seattle, people did their own yardwork . . . not like here in Southern California where that work is done by Mexicans for hire.
I told her we used to mow our own lawns in SoCal too. In fact, if you like A Christmas Story, you would have loved our neighbor next door. He was like Darren McGavin, but instead of the furnace, he’d curse at his beaten-down jalopy of a lawn mower. And not in the basement — right out on his front lawn.
I mowed my own lawn at the first house I ever owned. Pride of ownership! And this was not in Irvine, where I live now and the lawns are the size of postage stamps, it was on a large lot in La Verne.
Of course, I soon tired of it and paid a Mexican to do it while I sipped a refreshing iced tea . . .
A new set of California Academic Performance Index (API) scores are out . . .
In Irvine, where I live, education is king, and the school district posted a very nice score: 888 out of 1000.
Breaking it down demographically, the Asian kids led the way with a 933. African-American and Hispanic kids were both more than 100 points below the average, but there are so few of them in the district that they don’t affect the overall score very much.
Even the special ed kids scored a respectable 705, higher than the 668 scored by the neighboring Santa Ana district, where education takes a back seat to gang-related slayings.
Irvine: Our special ed kids are smarter than your honor students.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation that prohibits the use of handheld mobile phones while driving in the state.
Effective July 1, 2008, the legislation prohibits drivers from using a wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle unless the driver uses a hands-free device. Drivers who violate the law will face a base fine of $20 for a first offense and $50 for each subsequent offense.
I can’t talk on my cell phone while I’m driving?
What a dopey law!
Can I still eat a chili dog while I’m driving? Can I drink a beverage? Can I try to find my favorite song on the CD player? Can I perform any number of activities that require the use of at least one hand and are at least as distracting as a phone call?
Has anyone else noticed that we have too many laws? And that every new one takes away one more precious freedom or one more hard-earned dollar, usually for no good reason?
I’m thankful that I have a job! A lot of people don’t!
I lost my last job a few months ago, along with 9,499 other people in the Orange County real estate/finance industry over the past year. We all got to compete against each other to find another one.
The Orange County Register ran a story yesterday on how some of these folks are doing . . .
Delia DeYulia, a grandmother, was recently forced to take her first retail job.
For the holiday shopping season, DeYulia, 53, is working part-time at Kohl’s, placing clothes on racks and cleaning dressing rooms. She resorted to taking the temporary work after not finding other employment. After 15 years with Fremont Investment and Loan, she lost her mortgage job in Anaheim Hills in March.
“I’m used to sitting in an office,” said DeYulia, who audited loans at Fremont, a firm from which she expected to retire. “Now, I’m on my feet all day. I’m carrying a lot of stuff and my body has to get used to it. It’s hard work for a minimum-wage job.”
The extra money will help pay the mortgage and car payment. Her husband can’t work because he’s disabled.
“I had always felt comfortable financially,” said the grandmother of two. “Now, I’m worried about the future.”
[Robert] Harrington, 31, of Tustin, was let go in September from Bankers Mortgage in Santa Ana. As its loan originator, he made about $75,000 last year. More than half of that was from commissions.
That’s why he thinks his best bet is to find a commission-based job at a luxury retailer or a store that sells big-ticket items.
So he has zeroed in on several shops at South Coast Plaza. He recently applied to Movado, Bloomingdale’s, Sony Style, Porsche Design and Allen Edmonds.
“I hope one of them calls me back this week,” he said.
He needs to help supplement the income from his wife, who is a waitress. They have a three-year-old son.
Corinna Vickers, 35, was let go a year ago from Secured Funding in Costa Mesa. Then two months ago, her husband Shad Vickers, 35, lost his job at Lending Tree in Irvine.
Combined, they had been making $200,000 a year.
Now they’re both unemployed and have been hunting for work to pay their bills and help them save for retirement and college tuitions for their four daughters. They have not had any luck and now the Vickers are both willing to take on holiday retail work.
Rhonda Struman of Laguna Niguel is not waiting around to get hired full time. Last month, she began working as a part-time salesperson at Nordstrom at The Shops at Mission Viejo. It pays $8 an hour. Before she was laid off in August from her underwriting position at Paul Financial in Irvine, she was making more than four times that hourly rate, or about $70,000 a year.
Her husband also got laid off from the mortgage industry. He was pulling in about $130,000 a year. Now, he’s working for $11 an hour at a Costco in San Juan Capistrano.
Because of their huge pay cuts, they’re having a hard time paying their $3,400 monthly mortgage. They sold off their boat to get rid of the monthly payments. They will soon sell their furniture.
“I cry all the time and I’m stressed all the time,” Rhonda Struman said.
By February, she and her husband will leave Orange County for Colorado to look for mortgage jobs or work that pays better than their current employers. They’ll rent out their Laguna Niguel house to help pay the mortgage and then rent in Colorado.
“We have no choice,” said Struman, who’s in her 40s. “There’s too much competition in Orange County. “There are too many people out of jobs” who are looking for new work.
Whew, tell me about it! I was this close to taking a job parking cars for $12 an hour . . .
Nor does the immediate future look bright for the local real estate market. Here are some of this week’s headlines from the OC Register real estate blog:
As you can see on this perimeter map of the Santiago Fire, the active fire line is now far enough east that my wife and I can clean the ashes and soot off our patio this morning without worrying about having a new load of ashes and soot dumped on it the next day. (We live in the small notch northeast of the now-decommissioned El Toro MCAS.)
I say to her, “They should find the guys who set the fire and make them clean up this mess.”
“Kill them!” she suggests.
“Couldn’t we make them clean up the mess and then kill them?”
Air quality and visibility were much worse today than yesterday. I don’t know if the winds shifted or if it just takes a day or so for all the ashes and soot to fall back to earth.
Proving that there’s a positive side to everything, the Santa Ana winds that have fanned these fires around Southern California also knocked down half the trees in our community, which will now have to be removed and replaced, so if you’re in the landscaping service business, this is a good time for you.
My wife is in the insurance business. She’s received several calls over the past few days from people wanting to buy a homeowners policy. Ordinarily, she’d be happy to sell them one . . . the problem is that the houses are in zip codes that are currently on fire, and her company has suspended sales of homeowners insurance in those areas.
Here’s a tip, folks: The time to buy insurance is before your house is on fire.
As a result of the fires, particularly the one that burned across the northern border of Irvine, everything in the neighborhood is coated with either a thick layer of soot or a thin film of soot, depending on whether the object in question is outdoors or indoors.
Wildfires are burning all over Southern California, including one here in Irvine:
What they’re saying on the TV news is that firefighters are planning to make a stand at Portola Parkway and stop the fire there, which is good news because we live south of Portola. About 100 feet south, but it’s better than nothing.
Here are some blurry photos from our patio:
I was laid off recently by a mortgage bank here in Southern California. Times are tough in the mortgage business, as you may have heard.
First, some tips on how not to do a layoff:
Unemployed people like to see the kind of flamboyant incompetence that still draws a paycheck.
Here’s what I’m good at:
One thing I learned on my recent vacation is that Florida, unlike California, doesn’t have a helmet law for motorcycles.
If you’re wondering what percentage of riders will wear a helmet for safety reasons if they’re not required to by law, the answer appears to be zero, although more than half the riders I observed did take the precautionary measure of wearing a shirt.
We drove out to LACMA last weekend to see The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950, and Re-SITE-ing the West: Contemporary Photographs from the Permanent Collection.
I love exhibits like this . . . I’ve lived in California my whole life and I feel like these Western landscapes are part of my DNA.
While we were there, we also took in the Dan Flavin retrospective. Flavin’s work consists of standard fluorescent tubes arranged in patterns not beyond the imagination of the average six-year-old.
I tried viewing them up close, far away, from the side . . . I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.
LACMA helpfully provided a detailed theory of Flavin’s work in the form of a fold-out brochure with a lot of small print, but I didn’t read it. Isn’t art supposed to provide some sort of pleasure and/or illumination — pardon the pun — on its own merits?
I was reminded of Tom Wolfe’s epiphany in The Painted Word, that the distinction between, say, a Jackson Pollock painting and the splatterings of a kindergartener is that the kindergartener’s work lacks a persuasive critical theory:
All these years, in short, I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well–how very shortsighted! Now, at last, on April 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not “seeing is believing,” you ninny, but “believing is seeing,” for Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works only exist to illustrate the text.
We have a company directory, including photos, on the intranet, so when I do a project with people in a different office, I like to go to the directory and look at the photos to see who I’m dealing with.
Today I started working with some folks in the Roseville office.
“Where’s Roseville?” I asked anyone within earshot of my desk.
“You know where Sacramento is?” someone responds.
Do I know where Sacramento is? What a question! It’s the capital of the state I’ve lived in my entire life.
“Duh, no. Hang on, let me get a map.” Geez, if I want to be insulted, I can get that at home.
The reason I asked: After clicking on a few of the photos, the kindest thing I could think of to say was “Maybe people in Roseville don’t photograph particularly well.”
We stayed on Route 66 as much as we could on a recent family drive to Arizona. The Mother Road has long since been bypassed by the interstate highway system, but long stretches of it are still driveable, including hundreds of miles in California and Arizona.
