We went to a comedy show at the Irvine Improv on Friday night. Gilbert Gottfried was the headliner. I happened to recognize one of the comedians, David Angelo, sitting in the back of the room before the show — I’m a fan of his work on Twitter and YouTube — and he was gracious enough to pose for a photo taken by my wife:

Now you might say that’s not a very good photo, but it is recognizable as two human beings, which is more than you could say before I spent an hour working it over in Photoshop . . .

“Where are you folks from?” the border agent asks.

“Irvine, California.”

“How long were you in Canada?”

“About half a day.”

“Why such a short stay?”

“We’re staying in Seattle for a few days and just came up for a visit.”

“How do you like this cold weather?”

“No big deal. I grew up in cold weather.”

My son makes a sputtering noise in the back seat.

“Is he okay?” the agent asks.

“Well, unfortunately he’s got irreversible brain damage to his frontal lobes. We still love him though.”

“Is anyone in the car carrying $10,000 or more in cash?”

“American dollars or Canadian?”

“American.”

“I wish.”

“Is that a yes or a no, sir?”

“Sorry. No.”

After we pass through the border check, the boy says in a mocking tone, “‘I grew up in cold weather.’ In La Mirada.”

“La Mirada is subject to extreme temperature fluctations,” I reply. “Much more so than Irvine.”

A pug (not mine) is humping a beagle . . .

“You could have puggles,” I suggest to one of the owners, “except they’re both boys.”

Chili's

We got to Chili’s around 8 o’clock last night but it was still very crowded. People were waiting outside.

“How long is the wait?” I asked the hostess.

“About 25 minutes.”

I said to my posse, “I’d rather not wait 25 minutes but I could do it if I had to. What do you guys think?”

My wife said, “Put our name on the list and we’ll talk about it outside.”

“Paul — party of three.” The hostess gave me one of those devices that beep and light up when your table is ready.

At the same time, a gentleman came up to the desk to turn in his device. “We can’t wait anymore,” he said.

“Maybe you could give us his device,” I suggested after he left. “Where was he on the list?”

She went down the list of names. “Second,” she said. “Yeah, I could do that.”

“Thanks.”

My son said later, “You were just joking, right?”

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t think she would do it, but let that be a good lesson for you. If you ask for something, you might get it, but you’re not going to get it if you don’t ask.”

Now I know how Santa delivers all the presents in one night!

By the way, if you like to avoid the crowds, Thanksgiving night is a great time to go to the movies! Everyone’s either in a food coma or resting up for Black Friday shopping.

We went to the 9:30 show at the Irvine Marketplace. There was no ticket line, no one in the lobby, one girl working the box office and one at the snack bar.

The box office girl had to work double because there was no ticket taker on duty. Instead of just selling the tickets and handing them to us, she also tore them in half and said, “You’re in Theater 2.”

“We’re in Theater 2,” I repeated for the boy’s benefit.

“Are you sure she didn’t say we’re the only two people in the theater?” he asked.

Recommended!

Look at this picture. Donald Bren is almost 80 and yet his face looks like a snare drum with eyes.

Forbes has an interview with Bren — the billionaire chairman of the Irvine Company – on how to fix up K-12 education:

When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support . . . Additionally, we have developed annual teacher recognition and reward programs that provide financial awards for teachers who demonstrate outstanding results in educating our students.

By making capital available for unfunded programs and providing a balanced curriculum and financial incentives to teachers based on results, Irvine Unified School District continues to rank among the finest educational systems in the nation . . .

The interview goes on in this vein: I, I, I. Me, me, me.

Donald Bren is kidding himself, along with the staff and readers of Forbes. The Irvine Unified School District’s rank among the finest educational systems has nothing to do with money, and very little to do with teachers.

As far as I can tell, it results from two things and two things only: the effort of the students and the support of their families.

My kid was in the Irvine Unified School District from second grade through high school. I’m worn out by the number of people in Irvine who would like to take credit for what happens in the schools, when at best they have no effect at all, and in some cases are actually making the schools worse by impeding the progress of the students.

I have more to say on this subject. Stay tuned . . .

Students of Irvine -

I say to you what I used to say to my own kid:

Do your best.

Be a nice person.

Let me know if you need any help.

It’s Sunday night. We moved the boy in yesterday, had dinner with him tonight, and tomorrow morning, we’re going home without him.

I’ve had some emotional ups and downs this weekend as I cross the gulf between youth and old age. I almost cried five or six times.

I feel great about Berkeley. It’s a college town all the way. Men, women and children are decked out in Cal gear for miles around.

We live in Irvine, which also has a UC campus, but it’s not the same atmosphere at all. “That’s because no one wants to go to UC Irvine,” the boy said.

I feel good that he already knows some people. His best friend from high school is his dorm roommate. We met a couple of other high school classmates, one at a pizza place and one in the parking lot of the guest house. We met friends of friends, brothers and sisters of friends . . .

I feel good that the boy is not the same kind of mopey misfit that I was at his age. That’s really what I feel the best about. He’s polite and confident and his confidence rubs off on me that he’ll be able to handle things.

We dropped him off at the dorm tonight after dinner. I’ve been saying things to him for 18 years, and I couldn’t think of anything to say to him that I hadn’t already said.

I hugged him one last time and he went inside . . .

My son and I are driving through the neighborhood . . . an Asian kid about 12 years old rides by on a scooter. He lives across the street from us but I almost didn’t recognize him because he’s got his hair lightened and highlighted.

“Typical Japanese,” my son says.

“Japanese kids like to highlight their hair?”

“Yeah,” he says, like it’s an obvious question.

“That kid is Korean, isn’t he?”

“Same thing.”

To anyone who misses Ryan Dunn, may I suggest that you honor his memory by getting drunk and driving your car into a tree.

The tragedy here is that Bam Margera wasn’t in the car with him.

I object to having these guys introduced into my life via front-page headlines. Why is Ryan Dunn’s death more noteworthy than any other moron with a fast car and a drinking problem? Because he shoved a toy car up his ass?

Here in our neighborhood in Irvine, we had a drunk guy a few weeks ago run a red light at Irvine and Culver and smash his truck into a car containing a father, his 14-year-old daughter and three of her friends on their way home from a birthday party.

One of the girls, a freshman at Northwood High School, was killed.

The fact that Ryan Dunn killed himself and a 30-year-old man rather than a 14-year-old girl is just a matter of chance.

If your idea of a good time is to go out drinking, then get in your car and drive around real fast on PUBLIC ROADS, then you are lethally stupid and I don’t like you.

The Irvine high schools — Northwood and University — have prom tonight. Our boy goes to Northwood but he’s attending the Uni prom with a girl from that fine institution.

I met her. She seems nice. She’s going to Stanford in the fall. Our boy is going to Cal. Opposites attract.

Today is also the girl’s birthday, so the boy is paying for dinner.

“Did you see a birth certificate or a drivers license verifying that today is really her birthday?” I ask him. “Not to suggest that women are looking to take advantage of a man if he lets his guard down, but did you see the birth certificate or drivers license?”

Woodbridge and Irvine High — the weak links in the Irvine chain of education — may have prom tonight too, I don’t know. Nobody cares about those schools.

My kid and a few of his high school friends are on their way to see Ron Artest at Living Spaces in Irvine. He’s doing a meet and greet from 3:00 to 5:00.

What kind of advertising is that? Those kids don’t have money to buy furniture.

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.

— ocregister.com

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:

• AKS 93 – Eliminated in the round-robin competition.
• Reebok Jr. Ducks Eschelon – Seeded third after round-robin games. Lost in the quarterfinals.
• Tour Raw Steel 94 OG – Seeded seventh. Won the tournament in a 1-0 final vs. Tour Outcasts 94, an Arizona team.

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 . . .

• Did You Know? Benny Feilhaber attended Northwood High School in Irvine! #

– 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.