When I was picking up my dry cleaning yesterday, the young woman asked me what my Super Bowl plans were.

“Not watching it,” I said.

She laughed. “That’s the best answer I’ve gotten yet!”

I hadn’t even been aware that it was going to held this weekend. On Friday, I happened to be listening to the radio in my car — and who does that, when he’s got a full streaming set of Pere Ubu? But I guess occasionally it happens — when some “news” piece came on about the big game. So that’s when I found out it was happening.

A couple of months ago, my family and I went to see the fantastic King Tut exhibit downtown at the Science Center. As we were parking the car, we saw all sorts of signage everywhere announcing the “Los Angeles Rams.”

“The ‘LOS ANGELES’ Rams?” I asked. It sounded strange coming off my tongue.

“Are they here now?” my wife asked. “When did they move here?”

Our two sons  didn’t know either. Finally, we asked a passerby who explained the team’s recent move. But still, we couldn’t figure where they had come from. We kept trying out other, former, names. “The Minneapolis Rams?” “The Oakland Rams?” “The St. Louis Rams?” None of them sounded right.

Later, we forgot about it. We just didn’t care enough.

Still, my wife had the best case of cultural unawareness. As we left the Science Center hours later, we came onto the plaza in the back, which abuts the back of the Coliseum, better known as the LA Coliseum. It seems more than 75,000 people.

“When did they build that?” she demanded. She was staring at all the Rams signage that was now all over it.

“About a hundred years ago.”

“No way!” she said. “I would have seen it before!”

Given that today is that Super Bowl, which promises to preoccupy many people now in the hometown of the Rams (wherever they just came from), my plan is to do grocery shopping right when the game starts. I’m betting I can cut the checkout time in half! So… see you later!

The world is full of them. In fact, it’s most people. Don’t let Twitter — or anyone — convince you otherwise.

In today’s installment, we look at a woman in Chicago who personally paid to rent hotel rooms for homeless people who otherwise might have frozen to death. She charged 20 hotel rooms to her American Express card, and then other people joined her in this impromptu campaign. She never sought any publicity or any recognition, but I’m glad to share her name:  Candice Payne.

Here’s more about what she did.

Last night, I saw Elton John on his stop here in Los Angeles in his multi-date sold-our performances at the Staples Center as part of his “Farewell, Yellow Brick Road” tour, billed as Elton’s final tour. He wants to spend more time with his children, he told us from the stage, adding that this would be his last time playing the Staples Center.

True.

Of course, he’s playing the also-in-Los-Angeles Forum tomorrow night. And the night after. And again. And then, yes, he’ll be touring the world for another two years, including a couple more stops back here in LA with multiple play dates each time. By the time he’s done with this tour, those kids won’t want to spend any time with him anyway. (I speak from experience.) But, no, he won’t be returning to the Staples Center. I came away from the concert liking Elton, but also thinking that he’s so good at splitting hairs that maybe he should be an economist.

I’m not really an Elton John fan. My wife’s a fan and so we went, and we had a fantastic time at the show, but I’ve never much cared for his music. I don’t like the songs that are too saccharine, and I actively hate the ones that to me sound like they’re perfect for playing at roller rinks. (“Crocodile Rock” typifies that sort.) In concert, he largely avoided the type I hate, and the saccharine ones were fortified with strong musicianship from his band. When the band took the stage, I wondered why Elton John needed three drummers. I found out. To my immense surprise, Elton in concert proved to be a rock and roll show, and a highly enjoyable one at that. He’s singing in a lower key these days, which in addition to keeping the songs singable by him, produces the further benefit of making the vocals sound bluesier. Attaching a powerful band to that — and Elton has a very powerful band — adds punch.

I looked it up, and Elton will be 72 in March. He looks good, although overstuffed, and is a generous performer. He played for three hours, apologized for not being able to play every hit (he’s had 50 songs in the U.S. top 40), and not only routinely left his piano to make bows and gestures from each and every corner of the stage in appreciation to all members of the audience in those far-flung corners, but also rode the piano around to various locations of the stage as one would a hovercraft. He’s a true showman.

By the time this tour wraps up, Elton John will be just shy of 74. My wife and I have concert tickets for two other shows this year:  Bryan Ferry in the late summer, and the Who in October. Just after we see him, Ferry will hit 74, Pete Townshend will also be 74, and Roger Daltrey will be 75. In this crowd, Elton John is a whippersnapper.

Valorie says we’d better find some younger bands to like, because these guys are going to be dead soon. I do have younger bands I like — hello, Broken Bells, where’s your new album and tour? Gnarls Barkley, are you still out there? TV on the Radio, what’s up? — but now seems a good time to express immense gratitude that the members of Pere Ubu are only in their 50s and 60s.

On the way to a party Saturday night, my wife told me a story in the car about some system she has to use at work. It was a long and complicated tale, and I tried to follow it, but once she said “DOS” I couldn’t follow any of it any more.

That’s because she said DAWSS and that’s how it’s correctly pronounced to me, too, and that got me thinking. Where we’re from, everyone pronounces everything correctly. It just seems to come naturally to people there to say things correctly. Unfortunately, our children, who are all California-born, have their own ideas of how things are pronounced. To them, this is probably pronounced DAHSS, even though that’s wrong, and, worse, even though I’ve told them it’s wrong.

These same children, two all grown up and one nearly so, believe that “compass” is rightly pronounced COME-pus when I know full well that it’s pronounced CAHMPus. Two of  them were snickering at me a few weeks ago when I said that something CAR-uh-lates with my experience and they said it CORE-e-lates. CORE-e-lates:  hah!

My wife and I are smart, well-educated people, and we’re certainly talkers, so I don’t know how our children wound up this way, mispronouncing everything.

The horror. (Which they pronounce HORE-ur!)