This Plus That

Some random stuff, in no particular order:

Rental madness

In last Friday's Variety, there was a "Weekend" article declaring "renting is the new luxury." A local mortgage banker was interviewed about the approximately $450 per month she spends renting purses from a company called Bag Borrow or Steal, in which she said "What I'm renting my Gucci purse for now, I could buy it for in about five months. But it's not like I can't afford to buy what I want. I just don't want to make a commitment right now."

To a purse? I am not one of those who like to make fun of "Hollywood types," in fact I go out of my way to assert the basic normalcy and decency of the vast majority of people who live here. But come on, you can't commit to an effin' purse? Geez, people, you sure do make this hard.

No entiendo cordura

A quick note on the latest in the immigration wars: as CNN reports, the Senate is all wet. Not that I was completely happy with their compromise bill, so maybe when (if) they get back to it, it'll be a better bill that finally passes--but come on, this is the Senate we're talking about. But still, it was the Congress that raised this whole foofaraw in the first place; if they now allow it to languish, it will become abundantly clear that conservatives only brought up the matter to score political points about how tough-minded they are, not because they actually wanted to, you know, accomplish something. In an election year.

(Actually, they did accomplish something, which as usual is exactly the opposite of what they had intended: they awoke the sleeping giant. No one will soon forget the peaceful mass demonstrations of the past few weeks, and I suspect that more than a few Congressmen will be hearing from their Latino constituents come election day.)

Hey Bob, what've you been up to?

Gosh, I sure am glad you asked. Trouble is, I can't really talk about anything right now. Beaudry is in good shape and will soon get better, Veils is moving along nicely, and the rest of it is still secret--including something new that is super-duper-secret.

But hey, the weather is terrific on this Spring day in L.A., I'm reading an interesting book someone handed me by Bruce Feiler about Abraham and his place in three of the world's major religions, and the recent film of Pride and Prejudice was really surprisingly good. Life, it ain't so bad.