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.

They left one out: Superman most definitely suffers from Superman Complex.

Today I went to the supermarket for last-minute supplies for our family visit tonight to the Starlight Bowl for music and fireworks. While surfing the bread aisle, I came across one of those little demo tables where people allow you to taste-test their wares. But this one was unlike any I’d ever seen: a roped off area with a “must be 21 or older sign” and a table displaying booze for free tasting. The nice woman behind the table beckoned me over, and she didn’t have to ask twice.

It turned out that she was offering taste testings of Baccardi Rum, in four different flavors. I’m not a rum drinker, but last week I read a special report in the Wall Street Journal claiming that rum was the best liquor for summer, and who am I to disagree with the Wall Street Journal about summer libations? She asked me if I had an ID, and I said I did, so she asked me if I wanted my rum neat, on ice, or with fruit juice. I opted for ice and no juice. She had coconut rum, grape rum, spiced rum, and strawberry rum. I don’t care for coconut, so I passed on that, and I’ve had spiced rum, so I asked for the strawberry. She poured me out a shot of the strawberry-infused Baccardi Rum and to my delight and surprise, I said, “Wow. This is really good.” Then I tried the grape, but it didn’t compare with the strawberry. Then I sniffed the spiced rum but didn’t taste it. She offered the coconut rum again and again I said, “No, thanks. I don’t like coconut.” Then I finished my strawberry rum.

Then I said, “You know, I think my wife would really like this. She likes wine coolers, and she likes rum. How much is this?”

“It’s only $8.99 a bottle,” she said with wonderment, and I had to agree — that seemed like far too little for such a jumbo bottle of tasty rum.

“I’m buying this,” I said. Finally, I had found something that both my wife and I would enjoy drinking. “Where is it?” She pointed out the area in the booze corner of the supermarket where I could find it and I went to get it.

Twenty minutes later I was home with the strawberry Baccardi Rum. “I bought you a gift,” I said to my wife.

“What’d you get?” she asked.

I poured some of the strawberry rum into a glass with crushed ice, with visions of my wife and I blissfully sipping strawberry rum on the rocks while enjoying fireworks or, maybe, Bryan Ferry music later in the comfort of our own home while children were thankfully finally asleep. “Just taste it,” I said.

She lifted her lips to the glass, took a tentative sip, then wrinkled her nose. “WHAT IS THIS?!?!?!!?!” she said.

“Strawberry rum. Do you like it???”

“GAHHH!!! IT’S TERRIBLE!”

“Oh,” I said, “I thought you’d like it. I know you like rum.”

“IT’S SICKLY SWEET OR SOMETHING! IT’S TOO STRONG! ARGH! THE TASTE!!!!!”

“You like those wine coolers.” (Which I think are ghastly, I didn’t add.) “Well, sorry.” I retrieved the offending drink and sampled it again, deciding I could easily lose myself into drinking the entire bottle. So she didn’t like it. What did she know? “They had four different flavors. They were having a taste test at Albertson’s. They had spiced rum, coconut, grape, and this, and I was so taken with this that I bought it.”

“Blehh,” she said. And then added, “But I probably would have liked the coconut.”