I hope you find this helpful.

I’m at San Francisco airport waiting for my flight, and observing some people near me has made me wonder if anyone yet has started a blog called “Your kids aren’t as charming as you think. Really.” Because someone should. Really.

Google just launched a feature called Handwrite that enables mobile search from handwriting recognition. (Here’s more info.) Change a setting on your smartphone or tablet and Google search can work from your finger-scribbled handwriting.

Theoretically.

I say that because as bad as your handwriting is — and I’m pretty sure it’s not good, given how infrequently you’re deploying it — mine is worse. But even writing as carefully as I could, in block letters, here are the results Google Handwrite gave me:

• For my name, “Lee Wochner,” I got “lee w0dhto.” (Note that that’s a zero, not a letter “o” in the result. And also: You would’ve tried your name first too.)
• For “association,” I got “tion.”
• “LAX,” the airport I’m sitting in writing this, gave me “yxl.”
• And, astoundingly, Handwrite couldn’t even recognize the word “Google,” turning up a link to an organization with the acronym “CAATE.”
• Let’s just say I don’t think Siri is worried.

Even if this worked (which, so far, it doesn’t), what’s the need? In what way is trying to write by hand on your iPhone more efficient than pecking the letters in from the popup QWERTY keyboard?

Innovation does not always equal improvement.

In which a mother bear and her charges are aided by a nice woman in a pickup truck.

This reminds me of the time I tried to help a snapper turtle across a narrow roadway bisecting a tributary in southern New Jersey. I used a long branch and kept trying to flip it over to where it needed to go, while it tried desperately to get close enough to snap off my wrist. This is just like that, except much warmer in tone. (But do note that the person shooting the video is far far far away from the bear.)

Tonight’s guest on Jimmy Fallon is Fred Willard, who was booked before his recent controversy.

I hope he doesn’t say anything that exposes himself further.

Shovelman.

He sings delta blues.

He plays a slide guitar — made out of a shovel.

And I dig it.

Two Saturdays ago, my wife threw a big birthday party for me because it was one of those milestone birthdays. Among the 75 or so guests was my friend Ken. I met Ken in 2006 when we and two other guys formed a local Democratic club, and since then I’ve grown to greatly enjoy his company.

Ken is 84, recently widowed (a year ago), and ex-CIA. He was a CIA agent during the Korean War, and afterward, but when the Nixon administration wanted the data on Vietnam scrubbed, he resigned. He had lots to say about this at my party (evidently, he can now speak without fear of reprisal), as well as other things. Many other things. Clearly, the Democratic party is not the only kind of party that lights him up. He arrived on the dot at the announced starting time of 7 p.m., stood the entire time while drinking wine and vodka gimlets, then closed out the party at 2 a.m. This, while a buddy about my age told me after the first hour that he had to go find a chair. Ken also solicited advice from numerous attractive female party guests about how to go about dating again. Remember: 84 years old. Seven hours on his feet, while drinking and holding forth in my expansive back yard.

Early the next morning, my phone rang. It was Ken. “LEE!” he said in his booming baritone, “KEN A. HERE!” As though I didn’t know who it was. “GREAT PARTY! YOU KNOW MANY INTERESTING PEOPLE!”

“Well, you’re one of them,” I volunteered. Indeed, everyone at the party, across ideological and cultural and racial lines, seemed interested in him. You know that scene at the end of “Logan’s Run” where the pretty young people encounter their first old person (Peter Ustinov) and gather around to study him? It was this way with Ken.

“SO LISTEN!” he said. “HERE’S WHY I CALLED. LIKE I SAID, GREAT PARTY! SO WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, WHEN’S THE NEXT ONE? NEXT TIME, DON’T WAIT SO LONG!”

Meanwhile, I, 34 years younger than Ken, spent the rest of the day nursing my recovery.

Yes, you’ll want to see this. And now, I’m off to Comic-Con!

In which a talented group give us the theme song from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” — done on ukeleles. (Thanks to Mark Chaet for letting me know about this.)

Next week is San Diego Comic Con (or, as newbies call it, “Comic-Con International”), and I’m already making plans. This will be my 25th straight year of attending the Con with friends and having a terrific time.

In those 25 years, I’ve gotten to know San Diego pretty well, both from visiting the Con and from falling in love with San Diego and finding lots of other reasons to visit two or three times a year. That is, I thought I knew it well — until I got a look at this.

“This” is a new website, Sherpa Reviews, that profiles luxury travel in San Diego. The people behind the site are great people and I wish them a lot of success, because they’re offering something I wish I’d had years ago: a topographic map of the greater San Diego area, with points of interest clearly marked and with clickable icons for restaurants, hotels and activities. I’m admittedly geographically challenged, so this has given me an entirely new perspective on San Diego — like, what’s next to what else — that I’d never been able to keep straight in my head before. But even if I weren’t somebody who can get lost going from one room to another, I think I’d find something here that I didn’t know about before. (For example: the restaurant Searsucker. Never heard of it before. Now I want to try it.)

I’m sure I’ll be consulting this while I’m in San Diego next week, and thereafter.