Okay, I went too far even for me, and that’s saying something. So I’ve deleted the truly tasteless joke (which I still think is funny as shit), and I offer this tamer one in its stead:

Q: How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Hey, wanna go bike-riding???

>>Tasteless joke involving pedophelia deleted.<<<

A rare funny line was heard in tonight’s Sex and the City:

Berger comes into the bedroom to find Carrie waiting for him in bed holding a pair of maribou slippers and says,

“What’s that you’ve got there, some kind of pet?”

Killed me.

This is old news by now, but I did want to at least acknowledge Gregory Peck’s passing. He was a fine actor and I enjoyed everything I saw him in. He gave what I think is the definitive performance of President of the United States in one of my favorite movies, Amazing Grace and Chuck.

Movies will be a duller place without him.

There’s a stretch of road near my office that I go a little bit out of my way to ride through on my way in to the office and on my way home. It’s called Laguna Canyon Road, and it’s a stretch about 3.5 miles long of, well, nothing. Just rolling hills and thickets of trees and a pond and, well, nothing. It’s very pretty, very peaceful, and I go that way because it is pretty and peaceful and it’s a nice way to decompress from the traffic on my way to the office and a nice way to decompress from the office on my way home.

Empty space like this is kind of unusual down in Orange County; in fact where I work in Aliso Viejo they’re flat-topping the hills around the office in every direction in anticipation of building yet more cookie-cutter developments. Empty space down here seems to stir a pathological need to, as Joni Mitchell once put it, “pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” OC is not a wildlife-friendly place, is all I’m saying.

So I was really touched and pleased when I first starting taking Laguna Canyon a year and a half ago because there were several signs along the road saying: “We’re keeping it wild — thank you, Irvine Company!” An Orange County developer specifically setting a beautiful area aside and saying “We will not build here”? Who’d a thunk it? I actually felt a little bit of warmth at them over it. I tasted a drop of the milk of human kindness.

But that untouched area is untouched no more. For several months now it’s been under seige by grader and bulldozer and dump truck and steamshovel and teams of construction workers. They’ve graded all 3.5 miles on either side of the road to make a dirt road for the trucks. They’ve carved huge cutouts into the hills on either side. They’ve laid sewer pipes all down the west side. They’ve created huge dirt berms and piles of boulders they’ve dug out of the ground they graded and bulldozed. The pond is turning brown with runoff from the new dirt road. There’s nothing pretty or peaceful about it any more.

“We’re keeping it wild” is apparently a euphemism for “We’re gonna shred this place.”

Who’d a thunk it?

I did jury duty yesterday. I was tempted to go all Forrest Gump on you and end it right there: “I did jury duty today. And that’s all I got to say about that.” But apparently I got more to say because I’m still typing…

I guess I’m just not a People Person, because I seem to get into minor altercations everywhere I go. Today’s beef was with some pinhead who stole my seat.

Early in the day I staked out a prime spot where a chair was tucked into a little alcove in the back of the room away from everything else. It had a wall on the left and cubicle walls on the right and rear — it was basically a little cave where I could stretch out with my feet up on a chair in front of me and isolate myself. I camped out in there with my book and my headphones and was in full anti-social splendor all morning.

After the lunch break, though, I came back to find Nipplehead squatting in my spot. It was a deliberate violation of my morning territorial markings — I knew he knew it was my spot because I’d seen him cruise it a few times in the morning session. I knew then that he was scoping it out for possible squatting after lunch, and that’s exactly what he’d done. I came back early just to prevent this, but he’d beaten me to it. The fucker.

I gave him some stink-eye and sort of threw my bag down in disgust and generally made it pretty clear that I wasn’t happy with his squatting, and then I parked myself right next to the mouth of “his” cave and said to anyone who might be listening that “You’d better not move, then, because I’m taking it back if you do.” He pretended to ignore me and we proceeded to share an uneasy detente for the next hour or so, me reading a book and listening to Mark Cohn on my MP3 player, him listening to his Music For Seat-Stealing Nippleheads CD on his headphones.

And then he had to go to the bathroom.

He made a big fuss about staking out the spot before he left. He arranged the seat just so, positioned his backpack perfectly in the middle, balanced his newspaper on top of that… He made it clear to me and everyone else around that he was Coming Back and this was His Seat. Basically, he flagged it as Saved, and any of you who grew up with brothers and sisters know that a Saved seat is inviolable — you don’t sit there. You just don’t. You can’t. So I didn’t. Instead, I moved his stuff.

I put it all on a chair just outside the alcove, positioning it it there just the way he’d done it himself. His seat was now open. But technically it was still Saved, at least for me. because I’d been there for the Saving process. But not the woman who came by a few minutes later and noticed the empty seat.

“Is someone sitting there?” she asked me.

“I don’t think so,” I replied innocently. “I think he left.”

And so she sat down.

When Nipplehead got back, he clearly didn’t know what to do. He hemmed and hawed for a couple seconds, and made a big show of being pissed off about losing his seat, but the woman didn’t move — and probably never even considered it — because she didn’t know what his problem was. He eventually gave me some major stink-eye and then grabbed his stuff and moved to a different seat on the other side of the room. Ha!

Me, I was satisfied. I’d lost my seat, but now he couldn’t have it either. I could live with that kind of balance.

I never did get picked for a jury. Probably just as well — you wouldn’t want someone this juvenile on your jury, would you?

While “working from home” today, I went out on my “lunch hour” to see The Italian Job. It’s been very high on the “Must See” list around the house lately, but Beth pointed out the other day that the reviews have been savaging it, so I thought she didn’t want to see it after all. So I went solo. Because, reviewers or not, it’s got Charlize Theron in it. And I do like me some Charlize Theron. (With long hair. And a tan. And a skimpy white tank top. And that sultry just-woke-up look she has when we first see her in the movie. And… Um… Oh. Hang on, gotta change the shorts now.)

Charlize, the dear girl, is currently occupying the entire roster of my “Top Ten Smoking Hot Babes Who Are Completely Out Of Your League You’d Sleep With If The Rules That Govern The Universe Were Suddenly Suspended” list. (Call it the TTSHBWACOOYLYSWITRTGTUWSS list for short. Or just “The List” for really short.) She IS the list because:

1. I’d probably suffer from premature ejaculation the first time around, so
2. I’d need a second chance, and
3. The Rules That Govern The Universe have been Suddenly Suspended, so I’m going to use that in my favor and stipulate that I rock her world so hard on try #2 that
4. SHE wants
5. another
6. couple
7. of
8. goes
9. with
10. me.

Anyway…

So it was better than I expected. The reviewers were wrong and it’s actually a pretty good movie. I mean, come on — it’s a heist film. How can you go wrong with that? I knew 20 minutes in that Beth would like it, so I knew at that point I’d be seeing it again with her. My wife at my side and a 20-foot tall Charlize in front of me. Talk about your delicate situations…

Anyway…

The whole reason for bringing it up here is that there’s a series of shots in the movie that gave me serious Angeleno Vertigo. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what shots I mean, if not, then… Well, just think about Charlize. I do.

There’s a big chase scene where the bad guys are chasing the good guys in their Mini Coopers, and the vertigo starts as the Minis come flying out of the tunnel system and land in the Sepulveda Flood Control area. So far, so good — that’s about 4 miles from my house, I pass it on the freeway all the time, I know where it is. They spin around, blast over something that launches them into the air…

…and they land on 6th Street in downtown LA, about 15 miles southeast. Whoa, vertigo! They roar around a corner, skid through an intersection and…

…they’re whizzing past the Staples Center, about 5 miles west. Skid, crash, screech…

…and they’re in Silverlake, about 10 miles east.

And so on. I forget everywhere that car chase took them, but I guarantee you you’ll never in real life follow whatever route they took in this movie. I’m used to seeing LA’s layout misrepresented like that in TV and movies, but they really went wild with it this time.

But I can forgive them. Because, you know, Charlize. She was driving. With blonde hair. And a tan. And a skimpy black tank top. And…

Uh oh. Shorts again.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there, campers. Don’t let that last entry make you think I’m all bent out of shape – I’m not. I was just being a little petulant, that’s all. Don’t pay it any mind.

The Pumpkinhead Beast that is my ego would love to think the ‘stake‘s passing would result in much woe and gnashing of teeth — but let’s get real. If you’re anything like me, you read the final ‘stake entry and went, “Oh. Huh. Bummer.” And then you calmly deleted the bookmark and moved on with your surfing, never to give it another thought. So if that was you, don’t worry about it, that’s the most natural of reactions and that’s how it should be.

But if you’re anything like my close personal friend Paul in South Africa, who wrote to reassure me that the ‘stake would be missed and my writing is wonderful and my spelling skills exemplary and that he’ll now be a regular reader here… Well, there’s a special place in heaven for ego-feeding angels like you.

And I apologize for calling you a mook.

Ya know, I didn’t expect a world-wide spasm of loss and pain when I announced that I was ending the ‘stake after 5 years with a readership that numbered in the hundreds at one point, but I thought there might be some reaction. You know, maybe a couple of emails from people saying “we’ll miss you,” or a couple of RIP-style link-backs. Some kind of reaction.

Apparently not.

One person reached out. One. So, thanks Deb for saying “bye-bye.” As for the rest of you mooks… Well, thanks for letting me know where I stand, I guess. The ol’ ego’s been appropriately deflated.

Pie factoid: Sources say Bob Hope celebrated his 100th birthday with pie. He apparently doesn’t like cake.