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!!!
Today was the last day of school here in Irvine . . .
“Can I get a ride to Orchard Park?” my son asks. He has friends that he meets there to play basketball.
“Did you check with Mom?” I ask.
“I don’t have to check with Mom,” he says. “I’m out of school now.”
“So you don’t have to check with Mom?”
“No. Not any more.”
After he checks with his mom, I drive him over to the park. Actually, he drives to the park and I ride along.
As we’re approaching a red light at Jeffrey and Trabuco, he says, “I’ll stop the car so you can’t even feel it.”
This is something I showed him how to do. I’m pretty good at it, but he goes through so many slow-motion false stops and starts that by the time he’s done, the car is almost entirely in the crosswalk.
“We’re in the middle of the intersection,” I point out to him.
“I did it though,” he says.
As we drive past the Arco station, I notice that gas prices are up over $3.00 again for a gallon of regular.
“Obama needs to stop playing basketball and deal with these gas prices,” the boy says.
“You’re right.”
I gotta get some gas. I pull off the freeway — Shell or Chevron? They’re right next to each other. I check the price for regular — $2.93 either way.
It’s a tossup.
Then my son notices on a sign that the Shell gasoline is “nitrogen enriched.”
“Nitrogen enriched!?” I say. “Are you kidding me?! Fuck Chevron . . . what is nitrogen, anyway?”
“It’s an element.”
“Yeah I know, but who can tell me why it’s a good idea to put it in gasoline? What are we, chemistry professors?”
“It seeks out and destroys engine gunk.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“I read it on the sign.”
“Oh . . . OK, we’re going Shell.”
My son’s learning to drive . . . pulling out of a parking lot, he turns right and clips the curb a little bit.
I ask him, “Did you look left to make sure no one was coming?”
“I saw no one was coming.”
“How did you see that if you didn’t look?”
“I saw it in my peripheral vision.”
“Did you see that curb in your peripheral vision?”
One of the post offices here in Irvine is a best-kept secret . . . it’s off Culver Drive, down a side street and around a corner, basically in a residential area. It’s never busy because, unlike the post office on Sand Canyon, it’s not visible from a major street and most people don’t know it’s there.
My wife emailed me at work yesterday morning to say that she went to that post office and tons of cars were lined up to get in, which reminded her that it was April 15.
Not to worry though. We mailed our taxes on the 14th — to beat that last-minute rush.
Twenty years or so ago, I was living in Hollywood and — on the evening of April 15 — filling up at a gas station just south of the freeway from Union Station. Beyond Union Station on Alameda St. is the Terminal Annex post office.
As I said, it was April 15 . . . cars were lined up on Alameda from the post office, past Union Station and past the gas station for as far as I was able to see. News helicopters were circling overhead filming the Tax Day madness.
A man drove into the gas station, stopped next to me, rolled down his window and said — I am not kidding — “Can you tell me how to get to the post office?”
“Sure. You see that line of cars?”
Taxes make people nuts . . .
Nick Adenhart pitched six scoreless innings for the Angels last night but took a no-decision as the bullpen came in and blew the lead.
A few hours later, Adenhart was killed in a car smash in Fullerton by some drunken idiot who ran a red light.
He was 22 years old . . .
P.S. My son says Adenhart’s dad had flown out from Baltimore and saw his son pitch a great game, that Adenhart was “buzzing” in the locker room after the game, despite the loss, so maybe it wasn’t a bad day. Except for the dying part.
P.P.S. The Angels postponed their game the following night, April 9. The local Angels TV station instead replayed the April 8 game — the Adenhart game. It was sad watching him walk off the field, not knowing it was the last time . . .
It’s a white Lexus SUV. This leads to hilarious mixups like my son approaching a line of cars after school and getting into the wrong one by mistake, and my wife and I standing in the Trader Joe’s parking lot trying to figure out why we can’t unlock “our” vehicle . . .
IRVINE – A group of solemn people sat around tables at a fast-food Chinese restaurant off Jeffrey Road on Wednesday night after a man was shot and killed while sitting in a white Lexus parked behind the eatery.
At least he died in a nice car. It’s Irvine, Jake!
This happened a stone’s throw from my house. Well, more than a stone’s throw but let’s say a hard 5-iron with a good bounce off Trabuco Road.
I’ve been to that Chinese restaurant many times. (It’s a dine-in restaurant, not a fast-food place, despite what the Register says.)
Don’t worry about me though. Irvine is still the safest city in the country.
That guy must have gotten himself mixed up in some kind of trouble . . .
This is an Italian Alfa Romeo commercial.
To look at it, you wouldn’t know it’s a car commercial because there’s no car in it, but in Italy there’s a series of these Alfa Romeo sloth commercials. The running gag is that the sloth is a lethargic, slow-moving creature — until he gets in his Alfa Romeo — but this one’s a little different, in a mesmerizing WTF kind of way . . .
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Danica Patrick paid a $196 fine to settle a speeding ticket after the star racecar driver was caught going 54 mph in a 35-mph zone last month.
Was she in a hurry to obtain oral sex? Because that would be hot . . .
We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure.
I don’t mind if you want to cut across the middle of the road. I do that myself.
But when I do it, I take a straight line perpendicular to the street and I walk briskly, maybe even jog a little bit. I don’t take a diagonal path into oncoming traffic and refuse to speed up when I see a car coming.
Why do I not do it that way, you ask?
Two reasons:
Think about that the next time you try to walk in front of my car.
What a humanitarian! And what did he do next? Set them free?
Free, free, set them free . . .
Look, toolbox — you can either back into the spot when you arrive or back out of the spot when you leave. Backing in is harder because you’ve got less room to work with and you don’t want to bang into a neighboring vehicle. If you back out, you’re backing into open space.
But the worst thing is that by backing in, you put your driver’s side door right next to my driver’s side door, so we have to wait for each other to get in and out of the cars . . .
My son suggests that we buy some red wheels for the SUV to match the color of the vehicle.
“How much would that cost?” my wife asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “A lot of money.”
“But it’d be the pimpingest pimp sauce thing you could ever do,” the boy replies.
That’s what Ed McMahon’s financial adviser used to say when Ed said, “Are you kidding?! The only way I could afford that is to work till I’m 90!”
I can remember the first time I paid $20 for a tank of gas.
I can remember the first time I paid $30.
And $40.
But I’ve recently blown through the $50, $60 and $70 barriers so fast that they don’t even seem like milestones anymore . . .
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?
