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My wife and I saw Up yesterday at the Irvine Spectrum. The movie features a “talking” dog — a whole pack of talking dogs actually. When the main dog character meets the main human character, the dog jumps up, licks his face and says, “I have just met you and I love you.” If dogs could talk, that’s exactly what they’d say.

After the movie, we walked over to Spectrum Pets and looked at a puggle puppy. Same reaction — jumping, face licking. I have just met you and I love you.

Of course, there are some people who feel that they don’t deserve this kind of unconditional love. We call them “cat people.”

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.”

Tomorrow’s the last day of school here in Irvine. I walk by my son’s room . . . he’s studying for his last finals and listening to bebop piano music, which is not on his normal playlist.

“What you listening to, Mr. Noodling Jazz Musician?” I ask.

“Thelonious Monk,” he says.

“Is that part of an assignment?” I know he’s been studying the Harlem Renaissance in English.

“No, it just helps me study.”

He’s in 10th grade now . . . he continues to improve his study habits and time management so I pretty much let him do things the way he wants to.

“OK. Let me know if you need anything.”

By this time tomorrow, my little boy will be halfway done with high school . . .

It was like a ghost town yesterday. The Lakers were playing a close-out game. It’s Finals Week at the local high schools. Everyone young and old had something to do.

My own 10th-grade boy spent 12 hours Saturday studying at the Barnes and Noble cafe at the Marketplace, followed by an Extreme English Breakdown session yesterday at Starbucks on Culver . . .

Good luck, students!

I’m driving my son to hockey practice . . . at Barranca and Culver, an Asian kid is holding a sign with an arrow and something written in Chinese. Or Korean maybe.

“Wow,” I say, “that is racist. I’m being totally excluded from the activity, whatever it is. If he had a sign saying ‘No Whites Allowed,’ it couldn’t be any more racist.”

“Maybe that’s what it says,” my son suggests.

“Good point.”

My son’s roller hockey team is playing in the NARCh qualifier in Irvine this weekend: one round-robin game tonight @ 10:10, one round-robin game tomorrow night @ 11:40, then the teams get seeded for single-elimination play on Sunday . . .

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 . . .

Everyone’s got armbands and 3-D glasses . . .

— Elvis Costello

Irvine schools are on spring break this week. I took a day off for father-son activities with my boy, age 15.

As we were driving back from lunch at Wingstop, I said, “You want to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3-D IMAX?”

“Not particularly,” he said.

I’d already decided that I did want to see it so I got off at the Irvine Spectrum exit.

“I guess this means we’re going to see it,” he said.

“You know what they say: Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, but regret for the things we didn’t do is inconsolable.”

“Oh shut up, Sophocles. It’s a movie for two-year-olds.”

“No it isn’t. There’s a giant girl in it. It looks cool.”

“I’ll be the combined age of everyone else in the theater.”

We got there a little early so we bought the movie tickets and walked around the Spectrum for a while. I bought a Tommy Bahama shirt and the boy got some red sneakers at Vans.

I have to admit that the movie didn’t really live up to my expectations, but the 3-D IMAX was good and I liked this line from BOB, the monster with no brain, when the battle against the aliens looks hopeless:

“Gentlemen, I may not have a brain — but I have an idea!”

In the evening, the boy had a high school roller hockey game and his mom and I watched him. It was a good day . . .

• Everyone in Irvine drives the same car: http://tinyurl.com/cad86w #
• Most valuable and underused social media strategy: http://blog.foghound.com/474/ #
• 5 Ways ‘Common Sense’ Lies to You Everyday: http://tinyurl.com/cdmhxa #

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 . . .

The Northwood Wind Ensemble went deep into the repertoire at last week’s Irvine Band Festival for some avant-garde pieces, including one called “Rollo Takes a Walk.”

“It’s the quirkiest, gayest piece I’ve ever played,” my son said.

“Rollo” didn’t have any good percussion parts, just oddball instrumentation with rimshots, slide whistles, etc.

“And in measure 126,” he said, “everybody stops playing and says, ‘Rollo…takes…a walk.’”

“Hmmmm.”

“Except it’s not written into my part so I don’t say it . . . and I play one note on the chimes.”

“What note is it?”

“An F.”

“I’m thinking the Rollo composer could follow up with an entire Rollo suite,” I said. “‘Rollo Takes a Shower,’ ‘Rollo Takes a Test,’ ‘Rollo Takes a Vacation,’ you see where I’m going with this?”

“Stop being stupid,” he said.

“Why is it stupid? Because you didn’t think of it?”

The house two doors down from us is for sale. The house across the street is empty and for sale.

The woman behind us and the woman next door, who was recently laid off, have asked my wife if she knows anything about loan modification . . .

The Devil Dogs played in the WIHA tournament in Irvine last weekend, losing in the Bantam AA finals to the Reebok Blades.

Wild Wing, the Ducks mascot, was there.

Two of the Power Players were there too. You can’t see the girl on the right because I’m a bad photographer, but there are better pictures of her here.

My son is the taller boy with the crooked sneer he likes to be photographed with. I hope he outgrows that.

Someone said to me, “I bet you wish that was you in the photo.” I must be getting old because I hadn’t thought of that.

I did get to fist bump the Duck mascot though . . .

• It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. –Seneca #
• The definition for “value” that I recently started using is “what guides us when we have to make a hard decision.” http://tinyurl.com/chzkqp #
• @tweetmeme @smashingmag Reading ‘Designing Drop-Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices’ http://tinyurl.com/dnzeyh #
• Love the Weinerschnitzel vs Carls Jr 2 for $3 chili dog battle. The customer is the true winner! #
• RT @BonnieLowe: Reading “Thirsty plants cn twttr 4 water w/ new device.” nxt it’ll be yr cat tweeting 4 snacks. http://tinyurl.com/dfh8dk #
• RT @KathySierra: Choosing a dog based on breed name is ridiculous, but the coder in me is geekily drawn to: http://tinyurl.com/d3gmkc #
• At Uni High 4 Irvine Band Festival #

“Forty percent of the people at my school speak Korean,” my son says. “Or Chinese. I can’t tell the difference.”

IRVINE A man is dead — and his wife and son injured — after his daughter’s ex-boyfriend allegedly took the family hostage for five hours beginning late Friday, police said.

— OCRegister.com

That’s the second murder in town in the last two weeks!

PACK YOUR BAGS HONEY! WE’RE MOVING TO SANTA ANA!

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.

— OCRegister.com

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 . . .

I thought I saw one of the dads from my kid’s high school roller hockey team at L.A. Fitness this morning.

He was riding a stationary bike and there was no way I could get where I wanted to go without walking past him.

Great . . . now I’m going to have to take time out of my workout to acknowledge this guy and talk to him.

I hate talking to people when I’m working out. That’s why I come in here at 5 in the morning — because it’s not crowded and I don’t have to talk to anybody.

If this guy’s going to start coming in at 5 and I have to talk to him every morning — even if it’s just to say hello — I swear to Jesus I’m going to start coming in at 4.

Thank god it wasn’t him after all . . .

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 . . .