That didn’t take long. After hearing from everybody who reads this blog (as well as others), California State Speaker Karen Bass has cancelled the pay raises for Assembly staffers. Seems these raises had become a “distraction” while she was campaigning for passage of all the propositions the state now needs to balance its budget. I wonder just how many votes she lost today. Message to the Speaker:  Welcome to the 24-minute news cycle.

Push-up men’s underwear, the “Wonderbra for Men.”

(Just as I suspected.)

The rest of the awful secrets are here.

Here’s an interactive map that helps you figure your carbon footprint.

My daily commute, annualized, is 352. Take that, Al Gore.

You may have heard that nationwide there have been millions of layoffs.

And that California is, once again, projecting a budget deficit. Estimates vary, and the final number will be partly determined by whether or not a slate of propositions pass next month, but the range is estimated as being between $8 billion and $42 billion.

All across the land, public officials and public servants alike — teachers, city managers, librarians, police — are taking salary cuts in an effort to reduce layoffs.

Everyone seems to have heard about this — except the California state Assembly, which is handing out raises.

Someone should really let Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D) and Minority Leader Michael Villines (R) know about this economic downturn. Except I suspect that millions of people are about to. If you’d like to join them in doing that, here’s Karen Bass’ website and here’s Michael Villines’.

My kids have good teachers. One of the best is my son’s high-school English teacher from last year, Sam Kuglen. Mr. Kuglen, as he’s known in these parts, is very smart and passionate, and a man with a discerning eye for talent (even though he had me in to guest lecture on playwriting a couple of times last year). He’s also a credible singer on “Rock Band.”

Sam’s background is in theatre, which as regular readers of this blog know, I feel prepares you for anything. In addition to doing things like writing, directing, acting, singing, and dancing, theatre people hire and fire, do bookkeeping, set up complicated online systems, build sets, paint, sew, fight (mock or real), cater, and on and on. What person do you really want if you’re stuck on a desert island? A theatre technician. They can fashion a raft out of conch shells and seaweed. Trust me on this. Day in, day out, they put up multimedia extravaganzas with chewing gum and clamp lamps.

In typical fashion, Sam has talents even I didn’t know. I knew he was smart. What I didn’t know was that in the 90’s he was actually a big dummy.

Most mornings of the week, I drive my daughter and younger son to school. During that drive, I’m privy to the inner workings of childhood dynamics. For me, it’s like fieldwork in cultural anthropology. Here’s a verbatim transcript of an exchange between 6-year-old Dietrich and 10-year-old Emma. And no, I don’t know why this was such an important and compelling topic of discussion.

Dietrich:  You know what’s really gross?  Boys that sit down to pee. Girls sit down to pee.

Emma: I know.

Dietrich:  Boys pee standing up. Girls sit down. Girls pee out of their butt.

Emma: No, they don’t.

Dietrich:  Yes they do.

Emma: No, they don’t.

Dietrich: How do you know?

Emma: Because I’m a girl, dumbhead!

Silence ensued.

More on this later as the situation develops.

Four baby pythons escaped the plastic foam box they were being transported in on a Qantas flight. Two subsequent flights were canceled and the plane searched repeatedly, but the snakes still haven’t been found. Maybe one slipped into an old lady’s handbag, and one into the pocket of someone’s trenchcoat, and so forth, and were carried off the plane. After their disappearance created havoc for Qantas.

So much for my friend Richard, who didn’t like the movie version of this story when we saw it together. He said it was “unrealistic.”  I said it was the best movie ever made.

Given the verdict, I’m guessing I won’t be running into Phil Spector again soon.

Here’s another reason it’s never good for any one concern to aggregate too much power. Amazon, bookseller to the world and inventor of print-slayer The Kindle, is censoring the “adult” books by removing their sales rankings. Without defining what “adult” means. And without copping to doing it. And while still selling sex toys online.

Please tell me this is accidental.