If you’ve been following the news from the San Fernando Valley (which is in Los Angeles county; that’s for our international readers), you’ve noticed that it’s 104 degrees today and that the hills and mountains that surround my city are on fire. It’s hot.

So this morning, of course, the downstairs air conditioning went out. My idea was to stay upstairs in bed all day drinking ice-cold Newcastle and watching obscure foreign silent films from my Netflix queue. My wife had other ideas (something that when I was a kid we called “chores”) so she presented me with a list of things to do. This list required my coming downstairs into the inferno. So, lest we risk melting into Margaret Hamilton-like puddles, she got right onto calling some HVAC repair company that had come out the last time we had truly needed air conditioning. While we were waiting for the repairman, my wife ran down the list of what it couldn’t be that was wrong, because she had gone outside and pried open some panel and looked inside and made some indeterminate determination while I was inside drinking coffee and eating an English muffin while attacking Shaka Zulu in Civilization 4 on my laptop. (These are our usual priorities.) She floated guesstimates of the damage. Here’s the one that caused me to look up and lose a Destroyer to enemy bombardment:

“If it’s the compressor, it could be two thousand dollars.”

Many streams of sweat later, the repairman arrived. He went out back outside to take a look and I played with figures in my head. Would I have to sell one of my copies of “Iron Man” #1 to help pay for this repair job, and if so, which one? And if I were going to sell one, wouldn’t it be better to wait until after the second movie opened? And wouldn’t it make sense to wait until after the recession, too, so that its value would climb? And by then, with the recession over, I probably wouldn’t need to sell it anyway, and besides, by then the multi-thousand-dollar air-conditioning repair would be far in the past, the money long spent. So, good:  No need to sell any copies of “Iron Man” #1. Phew. I went back to pillaging Shaka’s horse pasture.

Eventually, I felt cool air coming back into the house. Valorie came in and said, “Well, he fixed it.”

I said, “How much?”

“He didn’t say.”

Hm. Unauthorized work. If it came to it, that would be the first argument in my haggling. She hung around in the kitchen area for a while doing something for some time, then went outside, then came back in. So I said again, “So, how much?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“What? Where is he?” I was trying to understand why he was still here, why we hadn’t paid anything yet, and why we didn’t know yet how much it was going to be.

“He went out to his van. He’s still there.”

Now we both stood at the front door looking at a white panel van parked across the street with “Air Conditioning Repair”emblazoned along its driver’s side. Nothing seemed to be happening. I still wanted to know how much this repair was. Then I said:

“$260.”

“What?”

“It’s going to cost around $260.”

Valorie wanted to know how I could possibly know this.  She looked at me skeptically. I told her she’d see.

A few minutes later we were called into the back yard where the air-conditioning repairman showed us the burnt-out. It sat in a box that had contained the new one, now installed. I looked at its outer casing and had to agree that it looked, well, dirty. And then he presented us with a bill for … $277. Valorie looked at me with surprise and appreciation.

“How did you know?” she said.

“I figured the time he was here, plus the probable cost of an industrial electronic component like that, plus over. And came up with $260.”

She seemed impressed. But frankly, neither of us cared. We were glad it hadn’t cost thousands of dollars, and we were really really really glad to feel cool air flooding the chambers. I had had visions of being un-air-conditiong in the airless triple-digit smoke-filled heat of Burbank through the rest of the weekend and into next week. Now, like Dante, we had escaped the inferno.

“$260 was the cost,” I said, cracking open a Newcastle anyway. “But the value was a lot more.”

Don’t worry about zombies — take action. Here’s a great site that can help you get outfitted to handle the forthcoming trouble. Remember, those Canadian researchers concluded that zombies must be dealt with efficiently and quickly. So you’re going to want to order now.

My friend Bob Stern from the Center for Governmental Studies lays out the case for a California constitutional convention. This definitely has seemed to be in the air everywhere I’ve been in this state the past nine months, and understandably so. Depending upon whom you listen to, California is the world’s 6th or 7th or 8th largest economy. It boasts the richest agricultural sector in the world, is the birthplace of the internet, has the nation’s busiest port, is the entertainment capital of the world, and is home to Silicon Valley. Even with all those resources, our schools are falling apart, our roads and bridges are breaking down, traffic is at a standstill, and it’s been 23 years since the Legislature has submitted an on-time, balanced, budget. That doesn’t sound like a leadership problem; that sounds like systemic dysfunction.

Here’s the trailer for “Colin,” the latest in a slew of zombie movies. What makes this one notable is that it was shot on camcorder, with a budget of all of 45 British pounds (about 70 bucks). And it has a distribution deal. Given the economy and the battering some studios have taken at the box office, we may start to see movies that cost less than the Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Burger.

By the way, a recent study by two Canadian universities concludes that if zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilization unless dealt with quickly and aggressively. My own conclusion is that Canadian universities have the funding for such important studies because of the savings says they’ve found thanks to their national health-care system.

Thought I’d post an update about the young entrepreneurs I profiled yesterday. In the two hours they were open yesterday, they grossed $17.30. Given their extremely low overhead, that was also their net income. In true entrepreneurial fashion, they are now considering quitting their day jobs, which pay a measly $2 each per week in “allowance.” I’ll keep you posted as developments arise.

There are still bright spots in the economy. All the business journals advise that now is the time to start a business. So I’d like to applaud the latest startup, which opened today in my own neighborhood. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll stop on by. I was only the first of their many customers so far. And I have to say, the fresh-squeezed orange juice they offer was the best I’ve had in a long time!

Here’s one of those Car Plays I’m always talking about here. This is the animated version of my friend Terence Anthony’s play, “Choke,” featuring three terrific actors I’ve been lucky to work with a little bit myself (Sara Wagner, Rodney Hobbs, and Bostin Christopher). If you’ve seen Terence’s other cartoon, “Orlando’s Joint,” you know what you’re about to get: really funny, really dark. (Which is why I love his work.) Enjoy!

Choke

Oh,  surly teenaged girl working counter number four at Milt & Edie’s drycleaning

I am sorry that I’m middle-aged and of no interest to you.

And I’m sorry that I’m at your counter,

But this is where they sent me.

I can see that you’d rather watch Shakira on the jumbo video screen

Above the people who fix hems and sew on buttons.

But I just need my drycleaning.

Please.

I stopped going to Flair Cleaners on the day three teenaged girls fought

Over who would have to wait on me.

So I have nowhere else to go.

And I like it at Milt & Edie’s, I really do,

And I’ve got my checkbook right here,

And I think if Milt were here to see this

My check would be in his hand and you’d be lying dead on his floor here.

So may I have my drycleaning?

Please?

Before things get really dirty?

Some images are so wrong that you just have to develop a deep love for them. The bigger such an image is, the better.

Like Chicken Boy, “the statue of liberty of Los Angeles.”

Like the ballerina clown of Venice, Los Angeles.

And the Circus Liquor clown.

The Circus Liquor clown adorns a grubby liquor store in a tatty neighborhood of North Hollywood not far from my home (which is in a much nicer section, of Burbank, I assure you). Several times over the past 20 years, the clown has successfully lured me into the liquor store, where I’ve found dead flies, snacks coated in dust, and odd old liquors last seen in early adaptations of “Treasure Island.” I may be slow, but even I have finally realized that it’s the clown I love, and he’s best admired from outside the store.

Anyone who has ever visited a circus or, even better, a carnival, knows the relationship between besotted leering clowns such as this and kiddie entertainment. The performers or ride operators are often people surprised to find themselves having come to this, and so they hit the bottle every night — even while operating the Whirl-A-Gig with screaming kids inside. (I have seen this, and I’ll bet you have too.) Bobcat Goldthwait certainly understands this dynamic, as he demonstrated in his misunderstood cinematic classic, “Shakes the Clown.” (Which I recommend unreservedly.)

If you are sadly far removed by distance and circumstance from your own wide-eyed admiration of the Circus Liquor clown, I now present you with good news. 3 Fish Studios in San Francisco has decided to pay tribute to iconic LA images with a series of collectible but low-priced lino-cuts, and they have shown the eminent good taste to include the Circus Liquor clown. Here’s more information about the whole series and where to get it, and just to show you what you should be buying while it’s available, here’s the Circus Liquor clown, made even more sinister via art.

Finally, I leave you with this. The cohort of Circus Liquor clown admirers grows daily. When I shared with my good friend the playwright Ross Tedford Kendall my admiration for the liquor clown, he smartly emailed me this strip from Bill Griffiths. As with so many other fine things in life, Zippy the Pinhead is ahead of the curve.

I guess my refusal to fund the federal Democrats any more until they really do something already has them scrambling in DC. According to the New York Times, Democratic strategists have actually counted the number of Democrats in Congress and have realized that they don’t need any Republicans to pass health care. This is something that those of us with better arithmetic skills figured out months ago.

My “favorite” part of this story (and I use the word “favorite” here with full sarcasm):

[This realization] could alter the dynamic of talks surrounding health care legislation, and even change the substance of a final bill. With no need to negotiate with Republicans, Democrats might be better able to move more quickly, relying on their large majorities in both houses.

Are we paying these guys? Because it beggars the imagination to figure out how they rose to such high stations in life if they couldn’t figure this out until now. If only the Bush/Cheney regime had been so politically clueless.