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 . . .

Every night at bedtime, my wife asks me to check and make sure the front door is locked, even though we live in the Safest Big City in America.

It’s annoying — and not just because it’s always locked, but because sometimes she waits until I’m already in bed. Then: “Did you check if the front door is locked?” And I have to get out of bed to check it.

She’s out of town this week. I got up this morning and noticed that I’d left the door unlocked all night . . .

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.

A co-worker informs me that a Santa Ana elementary school teacher has been charged with child endangerment for keeping a gun in her classroom.

“Well, that’s Santa Ana,” I say. “What do you expect from people? Not a day goes by that you can’t pick up the Orange County Register and read about a gang-related slaying in Santa Ana. If I were a teacher in Santa Ana, you best believe I’d be packing heat too. Thank god this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Irvine where I live.”

“There are Asian gangs in Irvine.”

“Asian gangs in Irvine?! What a racist you are. I’ve lived in Irvine for seven years and I’ve never seen or heard of any Asian gang activity. Unless studying for AP exams counts as a gang activity. Blowing their brains out with mathematical formulas . . .”

My son’s on spring break this week. Today he spent the day with a friend volunteering at the local Boys and Girls Club.

“I was watching kids for seven-and-a-half hours!” he says.

I say, “I’ve been watching a kid for 15 years.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a lot easier.”

My son made the honor roll his first semester in high school. I’m very proud of him. He’s in a competitive (translation: high percentage of Asian kids) high school and he’s taking honors classes, where every kid thinks they should get an A but there aren’t enough A’s to go around.

An email went out to parents listing the Honor Roll kids. There are a lot of kids on the Honor Roll at this school.

They should send out a list of the kids who didn’t make the Honor Roll. It wouldn’t be much longer and it would teach the kids a good lesson: Work hard or be humiliated.

Another idea: Only kids taking honors classes would be eligible for the Honor Roll. All other kids would be eligible for the “Honor” (insert finger-quotes here) Roll.

I walked into Starbucks at 5:30 this morning, ordered a drink . . . the Starbucks guy asked my name and wrote it on the cup, despite the fact that I was the only customer in the store.

Whether that would be considered a training success or failure depends on whether Starbucks trains its people to always ask for the customer’s name, or to use situational judgment.

I was hoping the barista would call my name when the drink was ready so I could do a comical “who, me?” take, but she just set it on the counter . . .

This is screamingly funny in an unfunny way . . .

An Irvine man has started up a greeting card company specializing in father-to-son cards:

Founder, Steve Cunningham, a father of four could not find masculine cards written with the right message for his boys. During his travels, or when away for long periods, he often wanted to send a card conveying “I’m thinking of you” or perhaps express an uplifting word of encouragement, motivation, or proud of you. After endless searches on-line and in countless retail outlets, Steve begged the question… why is so little attention paid to men, particularly fathers who play an invaluable roll in the development of their children?

OK, first of all, Steve is an idiot. He’s got a less-than-rudimentary command of the English language, but like many incompetent people, is unaware of his own incompetence, and thus doesn’t hire a copy editor to clean up his prose.

Second point: You can’t play an invaluable “roll” in your children’s lives if you’re not even there, no matter how many long-distance socks in the arm you send via greeting card.

If you look through the cards, the first thing you notice — no, I take that back. The first thing you notice is that all of the people on the cards seem to be living in a permanent fog bank. But the second thing you notice is that sentiments appropriate for face-to-face conversations or phone calls can be wildly inappropriate for greeting cards.

Here’s a sample:

How did the dad know that his son wanted advice? Is there a line of son-to-father greeting cards? Dad, I’d like your advice . . .

I can’t imagine a more impersonal form of communication. Even an email would be preferable. A telegram would be preferable. At least you’d have to put it your own words.

Sometimes reality is almost indistinguishable from brilliant satire. The idea that a line of greeting cards is actually a fine substitute for human interaction . . . if you read it in The Onion, you wouldn’t be able to stop laughing.

I mean, what kind of arrogant, cold-blooded bastard communicates with his children via greeting cards?!

“Bill Belichick,” my son suggests.

I’ve got here an email from the Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF), soliciting online donations at the IPSF website.

Also on the website is a page listing the names of the IPSF board members, along with their corporate affiliation. Seven of the board members have no corporate affiliation and instead are given the tagline of “Community Leader.”

Question: What in the world is a Community Leader?!

How does one acquire such a designation, other than not having a real job?

Couldn’t we just identify them as Volunteers or Parents or Parent Volunteers, instead of making them out to be some sort of tribal chieftains?

Based on the one Community Leader that I actually know personally, I’d say a more appropriate label would be Community Nuisance or Gadfly.

Theres a new restaurant opening up in our local shopping center: Pastagina. What is that — pasta for women?

Even the logo is highly suggestive . . .

My son put on a cap, a pair of sunglasses, hung a clock around his neck, and went trick-or-treating with his friends as Flavor Flav.

I can’t imagine anyone in Irvine is going to be able to figure that one out.

Postscript

“One woman asked me, ‘Are you supposed to be Flavor Flav?’” he says.

“What was her ethnicity?” I ask him.

“White.”

OK, I stand corrected.

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.

“Honey! Call Farmers and get a quote on
homeowners insurance - stat!”

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.

As of this afternoon, the fires had shifted and were no longer considered a significant threat to Irvine homes.

Here’s a map of the areas affected so far. The fire started — or I should say “was started,” since it’s now believed to be an arson fire — in the area bounded by the top of the map, the 261 to the west, the 241 to the east, and Portola Parkway to the south.

Firefighters were able to stop the fire from crossing Portola, but it continued to burn east and is now bearing down on Foothill Ranch, the residential area in the lower right corner of the map . . .

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:

Another gem from the freshman football mailing list . . .

Of the four high schools here in Irvine, only one — Irvine High — has a stadium on campus. There’s a movement afoot, led by local attorney and parent Emmett Raitt, to build a second stadium.

Here’s an excerpt from Emmett’s email suggesting that parents write to the school board about this matter:

The reasons a second stadium are needed include the elimination of Thursday night games, which lowers student attendance at games; it will ease the overcrowding of the Irvine Stadium facility (and particularly the snack bar, a personal favorite of mine); and it will allow all schools to use District facilities for their graduations, which they do not now do.

Hmmm . . . I can’t see how increasing student attendance is going to ease overcrowding, nor do I think the fact that some local fatso thinks there are too many people ahead of him in the snack bar line justifies spending $10 million on a new stadium.

Now here’s the follow-up email that came out from Rick Curtis, the varsity football coach at my son’s school, Northwood High:

I just read where the Huntington Beach district is putting in 2 new stadiums at Huntington Beach HS (8.5 million) and at Westminster (7.5 million). All Capo Valley Unified high schools have stadiums and each have field turf and all weather tracks at their schools.

All Saddleback Valley high schools have stadiums, except El Toro High School. Each high school also has field turf and all weather tracks at their schools (including El Toro High School).

We need to get to the school board meetings and we need to get organized. . . . These are the people that we are competing against and we are way behind in providing state of the art facilities for our student athletes.

All the districts that he mentions in the email are good academically, but they’re not in the same class as the Irvine district, which is the crème de la crème.

So here’s a no-cost solution:

• If you want your kid to get a top-notch education, live in Irvine.
• If you want a quick hot dog while your kid runs around on field turf, move to Saddleback Valley.
• If you want a quick hot dog in a brand new stadium, move to Huntington Beach.
• If you want a quick hot dog and corrupt administrators (allegedly), move to Capo Valley.

Problem solved!

My son’s playing freshman football, pursuant to which I received the following email (names changed):

Fellow Freshman parents,

Zelda and I are disappointed with the poor quality of the duffle bags the boys purchased at the start of the season. Rocko’s bag is already ripping and the zippers are becoming non-functional. As a result, we intend to buy him a much higher quality, replacement bag made out of extra heavy duty material from a Montana vendor. My firm has purchased customized travel bags from this vendor before, and our clients/employees love them. We also intend to have the bag (which will be slightly larger to accommodate a football helmet) embroidered with the T-Wolf logo and his name. This is what the bag looks like, sans logo:

If ten or more families decide to buy such replacement bags, the cost will be $285 each plus tax and the cost of name embroidery (I don’t think the latter will amount to much, but I’m looking into it). If the order is for less than ten units, then there will be a modest charge for logo. Two families in addition to our has already asked to be included them in this order. You can visit the vendor’s website at http://www.redoxx.com/.

Please let me know as soon as conveniently possible (i.e., by the game this Saturday) if you would like to be included in the order. If so, kindly also respond back with the spelling of your son’s name to be embroidered on his bag.

Thanks.

Go Wolves, Beat University!

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

In short, if you are experiencing similar problems, this would be a high quality replacement that should last for some time.

Yeah sure, I’m definitely up for spending $300 for a bag my son can stuff his football uniform into, particularly if your “firm” has a track record with the company.

I sent the following response:

I’ve never seen a decent bag for only $285. I’ve been looking at this one from On the Fly:

It’s a little pricey (around $12,000) but it’s made of black alligator leather and if you’re concerned about durability, it will withstand a charging rhino.

Don’t ask me how I know that.

Best regards,

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding

I didn’t hear back from the original emailer, but I did get a response from a philanthropic but somewhat dim individual:

I hope that was a joke. If not I think you are getting carried away about a bag that the boys are going to drag around through the mud. If you have that much money to throw away maybe you should donate it to children who can’t afford equipment to even play sports.

Just a thought…

Oh dear, I guess I was a little too subtle . . .

Man died doing what he loved most

— Orange County Register

He loved being hit by trucks?