LOS ANGELES — Donald Bren’s two out-of-wedlock children testified Monday in the fraud case they brought against their billionaire father that they didn’t lack any material things growing up in Beverly Hills, but that his absence in their lives made them feel angry, hurt and abandoned.
Hey kids, that feeling — is called “life.”
We’re heading out tomorrow morning for NARCh in San Jose — the grand finale, end-of-the-season roller hockey tournament.
The tournament’s actually been going on for a week and a half but Casey’s division — Bantam Platinum — doesn’t start till Tuesday. Bantam is the 16-and-under division, with a DOB cutoff date of December 31, so this season’s Bantam players are kids born in 1993 or 1994.
The Platinum division is the AAA division. Most tournaments call the skill divisions A, AA and AAA, but NARCh calls them Silver, Gold and Platinum. So Bantam Platinum is 16-and-under AAA.
In order to play at the NARCh final, your team has to play in a regional qualifying tournament. Based on your results in the qualifier, the tournament committee either assigns you to the Silver, Gold or Platinum division, or — if it’s a close call — they assign you to two divisions and let you pick which one you want to play in.
That’s what happened with Casey’s team, Revision Devil Dogs. They seeded Platinum/Gold in the qualifier and elected to play Platinum. Three other Bantam teams at the Irvine regional also seeded Platinum/Gold and they all elected to play Gold.
Since the Bantam Gold division played last week, we already know how those three teams fared:
Should the Devil Dogs have elected to play Gold instead of Platinum?
I have to say I’ve never heard of a team seeding Platinum/Gold and deciding to play Platinum. The obvious line of thinking is “Let’s play Gold because we’ll have a better chance of winning.”
But that logic is being employed at regional qualifiers all over the U.S. and Canada. Most teams don’t want to play Platinum if they can play Gold instead.
So the Gold division is easier to win than Platinum but you’re still going to have to beat out a lot of good teams that could have played Platinum but didn’t. If you think you’re just going to show up and collect your medal, you’re wrong.
I think the Devil Dog kids are making the right decision.
They’ve come to a fork in the road. They can stay where they’re at and be AA players forever or they can challenge themselves to compete at the highest level of their sport, even if they don’t light the Platinum division on fire the first time they show up to play it.
It’s an honor to play Platinum.
“It’s not an honor if we get killed every game,” Casey says.
He already knows that Raw Steel won the Bantam Gold division and that Raw Steel and Devil Dogs are pretty equal teams. (The Devil Dogs lost the finals of the Irvine qualifier to Raw Steel in overtime, 2-1.)
“We could have won Bantam Gold,” he says.
“You could have won it,” I reply, “but that doesn’t mean you would have won it. Raw Steel seeded seventh so there were at least six other teams in there that had just as good a chance to win it.”
“We would have won it,” he says. Now he’s trying to be funny.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for these kids. I think (hope) they’re capable of being competitive and maybe stealing a game or two . . .
– I see you’ve got a real international student body here.
– Um, not really. It’s 49.6 percent Asian, 49.6 percent white and 0.8 percent everything else. Try finding a black kid.
– I’ve seen a couple of black kids. They play football.
– Try finding one in a classroom. Try finding a Mexican kid. If a Mexican kid walks on campus, the whole school goes into soft lockdown.
I’m out walking the dog and one of the neighborhood moms asks me, “What grade is your son in now?”
“He’s a junior in high school this year,” I reply.
“I saw him out walking the dog the other day.”
“You did? Oh you’re lucky to see that,” I said. “It’s a rare event, like an eclipse. Everyone gets very excited when it happens.”
“Can you take me to the Barnes and Noble by your work?” my son asks. “I need to get AP study guides.”
I work in Aliso Viejo but since it’s Saturday and I’m not going to work, I ask why we can’t go to the Barnes and Noble right here in Irvine.
“Asian kids are running rampant on the selection,” he says. “I’m guessing there’s not as much hustle and bustle in Aliso, especially since our schools don’t go on strike.”
There’s an Italian Greyhound meet-up at the Irvine dog park on Saturday mornings . . .
Italian Greyhound owners are a tight-assed bunch. They put sweaters on their dogs at the first sign of cool weather. They’re more likely than the average owner to refer to themselves as the “mommy” or “daddy” of their dog. They like to hold forth with non-IG owners on the finer points of the breed, as if anyone cared.
Yesterday the group was addressing the serious matter of whether the largest dog in attendance was a full Italian Greyhound or part whippet. The owner insisted that she has papers on the dog, but as everyone knows, whippets tend to weigh 25 pounds and up whereas IGs top out around 15 pounds, and since this dog was somewhere in-between, what was one to make of it?
“The puppy mills are making the IGs bigger,” a bearded gentleman said. “They keep the biggest males for breeding.”
“Do you think my dog is full IG?” I asked, pointing at Lightning.
“That’s a pug,” someone said.
“Gosh,” I exclaimed, “I really got taken for a ride.”
Nobody laughed. Italian Greyhound owners are a tight-assed bunch.
Last weekend’s WIHA roller hockey tournament in Irvine brings us a lesson in hubris . . .
My kid plays for Revision Devil Dogs, a 16U AA team. Unfortunately, the 16U teams showing up for WIHA tournaments this season haven’t been providing a lot of competition for the boys so they’ve played up the last couple of tournaments in the 18U AA division.
In this one, they found themselves in a situation where if they won their fourth and final round-robin game against AKS by at least two goals, they’d finish in a three-way tie for second and would, based on a complex tie-break formula including goals against, get to play in the final.
A Devil Dog loss, tie or even a one-goal victory would put AKS in the final.
AKS is a good team. They beat the Devil Dogs easily in a tournament in February and seemed to be clowning around the whole time. I’m sure they gave zero thought to the possibility of losing this game.
The AKS coach obviously hadn’t bothered to work through the tie-break scenario because after coming back from 5-2 down to 5-4, he pulled his goalie with about a minute left in the game, allowing a Devil Dog player to score an empty-net goal with 11 seconds left and knock AKS out of the final with a 6-4 win.
The Dogs lost the final 2-1 to top-seeded Reebok HB — still a good result for playing up in a higher age bracket.
Next up: NARCh regional qualifier in two weeks.
Every Wednesday, the Irvine high schools have a late start — 9 a.m. instead of 8. Also: a few times a year, like today, they have something called a Super Late Start day, where classes don’t start till 9:50.
My wife brings up a good point: Why don’t they ever have Super Early Start, where we drop the kids off at 6 a.m.?
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true,
And if you don’t underestimate me,
I won’t underestimate you.
My owner and I took a walk tonight and we saw a woman we’ve seen many times before. She is about 40 years old in human years and a little bit chubby.
Tonight she was playing with a volleyball in front of her house with her kids and another girl. She was very good! She was bumping and setting with aplomb!
“I underestimated her,” my owner said. “She looks like a chubby housewife but she’s also a good volleyball player.”
That happens to me a lot too. As you can see in the photo, I’m not very big compared to some other dogs but I have the heart of a much larger animal.
— Lightning 
He is a bad dog . . . a pit bull mix. Last night he attacked Kumba the Shih Tzu, who is my neighbor across the street, and Kumba’s owner.
My owner heard screaming and ran outside. The pit bull owner was holding his dog back and Kumba’s owner was down on the sidewalk bleeding and screaming. She was very scared. She held her hand up to my owner like a drowning person.
Kumba was hiding in some bushes behind a tree so my owner went in and carried him out. Then the police came and the firemen came.
Kumba had a bite on his back and one of his back legs was hurt but he’s going to be okay and his owner is going to be okay.
I told Kumba he was very brave, even though he wasn’t. But it made him feel better and there was no harm in it.
Shih Tzus aren’t fighting dogs like pit bulls and pugs . . .
— Lightning
A young lady named Hope Xu — from University High right here in Irvine — scored a perfect 2400 on this year’s SAT exam.
I’ve advised my 16-year-old son that henceforth, when he’s faced with a tough decision in life, he should ask himself the question “What would Hope Xu do?”
I know one thing she wouldn’t do and that is to run into her dad’s bedroom at 11 p.m. and start doing flying front kicks when he’s trying to sleep.
“Why are you doing that?” I ask him.
“I just drank a Red Bull,” he says, then dances back out the door singing a song I don’t recognize . . .
I love Saturday mornings! My owner takes me to the dog park, then we drive through Starbucks and I get a Pup Cup, which is a paper cup filled with whipped cream.
— Lightning
My son and I went to Barnes and Noble in Irvine this weekend to buy the books on his 11th grade Euro Lit reading list: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, Candide by Voltaire, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and The Stranger by Albert Camus.
“Have you read any of these books?” I asked the checkout girl.
“I’ve read Candide and Pride and Prejudice,” she said.
“Candide is fun. Virginia Woolf is kind of a downer though, isn’t she? Didn’t she kill herself?
“She did,” the girl admitted.
“Doesn’t that set a bad example for the kids?”
The Irvine store didn’t have the edition of Ivan Denisovich that the boy needed but the guy at customer service was able to call around and find a copy at the Aliso Viejo store.
The boy was beside himself: “We’re going to drive all the way to Aliso Viejo?!” (Aliso Viejo is a 9-mile drive from Irvine.)
“This will help you when you read the book,” I said. “You’ll have an appreciation for what suffering is all about.”
Yesterday’s team bonding activities included miniature golf, pizza and a midnight screening of Brüno, all within walking distance of the hotel.
After the movie, the kids walked to McDonalds. It was closed. The drive-thru was still open, but they didn’t have a car.
Just then — in an amazing cross-continental coincidence — Eddie, the manager of our local rink in Irvine, pulled into the drive-thru, and the kids got him to buy them all ice cream cones . . .
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.”
