Gary Carter (Photo credit: AxsDeny)
Gary Carter obituary: Baseball Hall of Fame catcher dies at 57
Gary Carter and I went to the same high school — Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, CA.
My freshman yearbook has a picture of a Carter as a senior. Or another way to look at it is that Gary Carter’s senior yearbook has a picture of me as a freshman.
That’s all I have on this.
RIP Gary Carter.
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.”
NEWPORT BEACH A man accused of becoming angered at his 7-year-old son and tossing him off a boat during a harbor cruise pleaded not guilty Monday to felony child endangerment.
Sloane Steven Briles, 35, of Irvine, is accused of being under the influence of alcohol and poking his son in the chest and repeatedly slapping him in the face before tossing him about 10 feet off the boat and into the path of oncoming boat traffic.
Prosecutors say he made no attempt to save his son and jumped off the boat only to avoid angry passengers on the Queen.
A boat had to maneuver to avoid striking the boy, who treaded water before a captain on another boat tossed him a life ring, according to prosecutors.
In interviews with television reporters following his arrest, Briles said he and his son were just playing around and that they both decided to jump into the harbor for fun.
The boys arrived back from their graduation trip, but missed their connecting flight in Philly, which seems to be the rule rather than the exception for U.S. Airways.
They were able to get on a later flight — to Los Angeles though, not Orange County — so the parents drove out to pick them up at LAX at 11:45 p.m.
“We should sue the airline,” one of the moms said.
“That’s a good idea,” I replied, not because I thought it was a good idea, but because I wanted to hear the plan.
“Five sets of parents have to drive all the way to Los Angeles,” she said. “Gas is expensive! Then there’s punitive damages. Frustration. Loss of income.”
“How is there a loss of income?”
“Some parents might have to work at night. You don’t know.”
“How much do you think we should get — a million dollars?”
“No,” she scoffed, like I was being ridiculous. “Two hundred thousand.”
Is today National Make a Left Turn Into Oncoming Traffic Day? Because I saw a lot of that on the way in this morning . . .
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.
Picking up my family at John Wayne Airport . . .
There’s a guy walking around the baggage claim area with a toy poodle on a leash.
I point this out to my son and say, “I didn’t know you could walk your dog around here. I would have brought Lightning.”
“Maybe it’s a bomb-sniffing dog,” he says.
“A bomb-sniffing poodle?”
“Yeah.”
One of my son’s friends, his parents split up some time back because his dad, as it turned out, was not really attracted to women.
I met the gentleman for the first time last night at a school concert. How he was able to convince anyone, including himself, that he’s not gay is a mystery.
“Did you notice they’re opening a new restaurant at South Coast Plaza?” he said in a voice as gay as Christmas. “They’ll be serving only locally grown food. I was on my way to the Apple Store . . .”
Now I’m not saying that every man who cares about where his food is grown or owns an Apple product is gay but . . .
“I own an Apple product,” my son says.
“Yeah, an iPod,” I reply. “That’s okay. That’s mainstream.”
Thanks to the annual Super Bowl Sunday Buy One Get One Free sale at Books Etc. in Laguna Hills, the works of Bellow, Borges, Bukowski, Brautigan, Cheever, Eco, Grace Paley, Dennis Potter, Pynchon, Robbe-Grillet, Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe have found their way onto my bookshelf for a capital outlay of only 32 dollars American.
“Fly ball, center field! Erstad says he’s got it! Erstad makes the catch! The Anaheim Angels are the champions of baseball!”
As my son and I were driving past South Coast Plaza, we saw a woman holding a cardboard sign that read “UNEMPLOYED AND DESTITUTE. Any Help is Appreciated.”
“She’s got a good vocabulary,” I said to the boy. “Someone should hire her.”
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 . . .
#High school roller hockey starts tonight. To prevent the use of ringers, each kid has to turn in an enlarged color copy of their school ID card.
I reminded my son about that requirement last night as he was doing homework in his room.
“Why don’t you go ahead and make the copy now while you’re thinking about it?” I said.
“I’m not thinking about it,” he said.
“You are thinking about it.”
“What am I thinking about?”
“Okay, do it your way,” I said, and left.
“What did you come in here for?” he called after me.
Hilarity is really going to ensue when he shows up for the game tonight and can’t play because he doesn’t have a copy of his ID card . . .
Man accused of almost beheading best friend, setting him on fire
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 
