browners Friday, Sept. 24 Downey!

And now …

Saturday, Sept. 25 An increasing number of polls show Jerry Brown either leading or virtually tied with Meg Whitman in the race to become the next governor of California to be threatened with a recall. This is rather surprising since Brown is seemingly unaware that he’s running. While Whitman, the former eBay CEO, has plowed $120-million-and-counting of her own money into a campaign that’s now in its second year, Brown has … well, you know, when I was a kid, my mom used to chide me for doing a “half-ass” job. I wouldn’t say Jerry Brown has run a half-ass campaign—that would be giving him credit for too much ass. An eighth-of-an-ass? Still too much ass. I’d say he’s somewhere in the .04-of-an-ass, well below the legal limit. Given that ass, given that Republicans are supposed to do swimmingly this year, how can Whitman be losing? Well, here’s the thing with Meg Whitman: she stands for absolutely nothing. She says she’s an outsider, but anyone who can pump $120 million into anything, ain’t. In America, money always gets you inside. Plus, she says she wants to run the state like a business. Um, yeah, that’s what the guy who is governor now said when he was running for office, and now the state is looking to raise some extra cash by selling super graphic space on Half Dome.

 Sunday, Sept. 26 I dunno.

 Monday, Sept. 27 God, it’s hot. So hot. I’ve just seen that it’s 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and 109 at the Long Beach Airport. To give you an idea what that means, if 32 degrees is the temperature at which water freezes, 109 degrees is the temperature at which I wish you’d just shut your big fat sweaty piehole. Haaaaawwwt! Experts say the best thing to do on days like this is nothing. Which is why I’m moving countless crates, boxes and sundry furnishings into a metal storage unit—you know, because the local active volcano was all full. Dear God it’s hot. Helping in the move is a couple of hired men, Russian immigrants whose grasp of the English language ranges from “Uh huh” to “Huh?” Actually, one of these guys was probably a nuclear physicist back in Russia before the Mob took over. I say this because we had way too much stuff for this tiny unit and yet this guy took a look and somehow Rubicked every box, box spring and novelty lamp into the space with room to spare for a satchel full of New Wave mix tapes (Science!)

 Tuesday, Sept. 28 Hey, you wanna know why the potholes on your street aren’t getting fixed and your kids’ teachers aren’t getting paid? Well, it probably has something to do with your local government, which runs like a finely tuned watch … that has been placed in a pothole and run over repeatedly by an out-of-work teacher driving a cab. Here’s what I know: the Long Beach City Council, in consultation with Mayor Bob Foster, came up with a budget, a budget full of cuts and austerity, with just a dash of awful. And everyone swallowed hard and voted for it and agreed it was the best thing to do. That is, until Foster, who had presented the budget to the council, promptly vetoed parts of the very budget he had proposed and pushed through—and started making more cuts of his own. Council members are now considering vetoing Foster’s veto, an act which I believe would cause the earth to start spinning backwards, which will be cool if it takes us back in time to when our streets resembled streets and not the lunar surface.

 Wednesday, Sept. 29 Saw on the Press-Telegram website that Cal Worthington was not only honored by the Rotary Club, but gave a speech. Dude looked good. Man, how old is that guy? I thought he was old when I used to stay up late at night and watch movies on KTTV—movies, by the way, that his commercials were far more entertaining than. Of course, that was back when I didn’t know it wasn’t nice to make animals perform for us, as I was completely clueless to the fact that a tiger’s natural habitat did not include the back seat of a Chrysler New Yorker Brougham .

 Thursday, Sept. 30 Here’s the thing about Meg Whitman: she’s as typical a politician as they come. The “outsider” just got popped for having employed an undocumented worker for the past nine years. This couldn’t be any more typical than if she were an ultra-conservative, virulently anti-gay lawmaker who got caught in the company of something well-muscled in a West Hollywood men’s—or women’s—restroom. Whitman claims that this revelation is politically motivated. Uh, well, duh. That’s why it’s called politics, chum. I would think a tough, business-type like you would know that. If you can’t handle something as garden variety as this, how you gonna handle the Tot Time antics of the California legislature? And here’s another thing: immigration has become the state’s number-one, hot-button issue, full of passion, shades and subtleties. You’re asking us to put you in charge of that when you couldn’t even figure out that the lady who was taking care of your kids and cooking your food was illegal? Of course, Whitman, who wants to bring responsibility back to government, is taking absolutely no responsibility for this. She’s blamed the Brown campaign, she’s blamed Gloria Allred (well, don’t we all?), she blames the worker who, Whitman says, fooled her by hiding a letter alerting the Meg that the woman was undocumented. Diabolical. Look, Whitman, you’re not denying this happened, so it seems your beef is that people told on you. Hmmm, that doesn’t sound very responsible. I certainly wouldn’t accept that from my teenagers. This boils down to two possibilities: either you’re a liar or you’re fecklessly incompetent. Wait, there’s a third: you’re both.