It's Not Tundra

I have to tell you that it's not paradise here. We have morons here, too. It's just that there aren't as many of them but those that we have are trying harder to be more annoying. There's also, I suppose, a certain freedom in knowing that you are blazing a new trail of douchebaggery, going where no asshat has gone before. I'm riding my bike home from the gym and I turn down a quiet street so that I can ride though the park. The school on the street, a church school, is letting out for the end of the year. If you look back at the stuff I've written, I should have learned by now that people can be especially dopey around schools. It should be no surprise. But every time I've gone by there and it was any kind of school event, it's a madhouse. 1/4 the madhouse as in Tarzana, but there are fewer folks around. So I'm tooling down the road on my bike. And here comes a woman holding hands with her son. Awwwww. Walking down the middle of the street. And by ...

Some thoughts after flying across the country to move. You try to teach your kids good manners,but sadly, the rest of the world doesn't want to help... The behavior on commercial flights has changed since my father insisted on a coat and tie to fly coach. It is not well known that Lindbergh flew his legendary trans Atlantic flight togged up in white tie and tails. Memoirs of barnstorming pilots would include passages about flying biplanes in top hat with his platinum tipped walking stick doubling as an especially dashing aileron control. Sad to say, these standards no longer apply even to first class cabins, let alone steerage. Please allow me to offer a few humble suggestions to make air travel a more pleasant experience. Do not berate TSA employees for their lack of speed. Most of them are honest, caring, hardworking people dedicated to ensuring our safety. The rest are mildly retarded and may cry if confronted. Such behavior will result in a cavity search and proper standards of...

It was around eleven in the morning. The kids were at school. Patricia was at work and… …Dare I say it…? I had fallen. And I couldn’t get up. And without one of those alarm things, too. It’s not very funny when you’re inside of it. When you’re hot and uncomfortable, there’s a grabbing feeling inside your stomach and it won’t let go. Add to that the room spinning and not enough strength in your arms to push yourself to even a sitting position and there’s not only no one there to help you, but there won’t be anyone for hours. I managed to turn myself around and crawl out of the bathroom enough to reach my cell phone [1] , like someone suffering from poison gas in an old Republic serial. I called Patricia at her office and told her she needed to come home. And then I noticed the blood [2] . I’m not going to tell you WHERE the blood was coming from. And there wasn’t a lot of it. But, as a general rule, when blood is coming from any part of my body that blood shouldn’t be co...

“Well, she’s worried about this beam…”, Tripper said, continuing on about the apparent danger in the garage. “Stuff’s been up there since before the Martin Luther King Day Earthquake, Tripper,” I said. “The only time I went up there was to pull a door down to see if I could fit it on to take the kids’ door with us.” “What?” “We’ve been measuring their height on the door since they could stand. Seemed like a good thing to take with us.” He looked through the papers on the house sale agreement. “I don’t think we have an exclusion on that.” “It wouldn’t work,” I said. “The door didn’t fit and it started to seem like too big a thing. But the point is, I pulled the door down and nothing fell.” “Well, we’ll have to get it looked at.” “The agent’s trying to screw us, isn’t she?” “Well, she’s…” “It’s okay. Just say it. We’re in a corner and she’s trying to take advantage of us.” “They’ve got someone coming out to look at the garage. Okay?” I knew he was serious, be...

Understand: When I first moved to California, I was told that there was only one thing holy and that was the crosswalk under California law. You have to stop when there are people in the crosswalk. Even if there’s no light, if there are two parallel white lines on the pavement and they aren’t cocaine, you gotta stop. I’ve seen old ladies dragging shopping carts across Ventura Boulevard at 8:45 in the morning and cars, even cars carrying very important movie executives, stop to let her hobble across. Admittedly, this rule had become a little less firm in the popular consciousness than it was when I was first there. Pedestrians once beset me when I tried to make a legal-in-New York right on red and the people in the cross walk attacked like villagers in a Frankenstein movie. Now cars creep into the cross walk, they wait until the pedestrian is out of their lane and gun it. But a SCHOOL? Crosswalks in a school SHOULD be sacrosanct. They’re not, but if you’re going to run your over...

FIFTEEN MONTHS EARLIER: The Honda Odyssey that was the FINAL indignity. Let me explain what a typical L.A. afternoon was for me and how it led to my personal physical contact with an American-Made Japanese vehicle. My son and daughter were in the highly gifted magnet program in the L.A. school system. This got them a smaller class size and a more demanding curriculum and, at least in elementary school, a school that we liked better. [1] But it also meant that after second grade they were no longer in the school that was two blocks down the street. They were bused to the magnet school. When you apply to the magnet program, you’re assigned to the first school that has an opening no matter where it is. My son’s elementary school was about eight miles away. My daughter’s middle school was about nine miles away. Every morning my son would have to be taken two blocks to the school down the street to get his elementary school bus. My daughter would have to be taken about four miles...