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Movie Review: "Pirates of the Caribbean"
br>Liked it.

Note: the scenes in the castle-like fortress were shot in my neighborhood. Not that it swayed my opinion. You can hardly see me running by.

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Short message to the guy who walked into Theater 8 at the Regal Theaters Avenue 13 in Rolling Hills Estates, CA at about 12:45 pm PT Saturday , answered his cell phone, and spent the next five minutes very loudly having a conversation with a friend that included the words "yeah, there's a big sign on the door that says 'turn off your cell phone'!" and continued to talk, and reacted with indignation and sarcasm when I told him to shut up: you're a moron.

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I have a theory. I believe human brains are affected negatively by excessive heat. Mind you, I'm no scientist. My brilliant medical career was cut short by an inability to pass Organic Chemistry in second semester of freshman year of college, which culminated in the school allowing me to take a "withdrew" rather than "failed" if I promised never to take another science course at the college again and never apply to medical school without the unanimous agreement of the science faculty. ("Where do I sign?" "No, you don't understand, you'll NEVER be allowed to..." "Yeah, yeah, I get it. WHERE DO I SIGN?") But I believe that the brain slows down, withers under the application of heat.

My supporting data comes from the present time. The Southwest is under weather conditions that can best be described as "kiln." At 6 am, it's OK- there's a little marine layer fog, it's a little cool and breezy- but by 9, it's sunny and hot, even here at the ocean's edge. I go running and return so soaked in sweat I don't even want to go into the house, lest I drip on the floor and the carpet and the cat. We have no air conditioning- don't need it about 350 days of the year- but ceiling fans, desk fans, handy bottles of Gatorade... nothing helps.

So it's hot. That's not enough to prove anything, except for the fact that I'm staring at news stories and just, you know, blanking out. I'm reading things over and over and I can't scare up a thought about them. This is a problem in that having opinions on news stories is a significant part of the way I earn a living. I'm not having problems reading, or even compehending. It's just that my reaction to all of it is "uh... mmm... wha'?" This is a rare occurrence. I usually have a half-assed opinion on everything. Right now, you could tell me that Hillary Clinton was attacking Ann Coulter with a DeWalt power drill live on "Hannity and Colmes" and I'd look at you and maybe drool a little and that's it.

There you have it. High temperatures equals warmed brain equals inability to think. That's gotta be worth at least a few million federal research grant dollars right there. Could someone please have Matthew Lesko call me? If I'm gonna be slow, I might as well be rich and slow.

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My brain-heat theory (see Monday, 7/14) continues to hold true today. It's still hot, and I can't focus on anything. Call the New England Journal of Medicine. Or Penthouse Forum.

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Every summer, the gym where I go to work out gets crowded. Kids are off from school, people take vacations at home, everyone goes to spend the day at the Y. And every year, I get annoyed. You'd think I'd have figured this out by now- summer, crowds, get used to it, shut up- but I still feel my blood pressure rise when I show up and the parking lot's loaded and you can immediately see the indoor pools are packed with screaming tots left for impromptu day care by their harried mothers and elderly ladies wearing yellow water wings doing exercises in the first lane. Through the window behind the registration desk, I see little kids filling the basketball court, playing that brand of hoops that involves a) missing every shot and b) muffing every pass while c) running in circles like a maniac and screaming. The weight room has teens using the machines as places to sit and flirt with other teens, the cardio room has a sweating newbie on every cross-trainer, the locker room is hot and smelly and filled with kids in Lakers jerseys taking up too much space in the aisles.

It is always this way from early June through the beginning of September. I should be more accepting of the situation, because it's far from unexpected. Still, the adrenaline flows, the tension builds, and I get the feeling that exercising under those conditions might be worse than taking the day off.

So, why do I keep going? Because I still feel guilty if I don't. That's weird, considering I get plenty of cardio running outside at other times of the day. I really don't absolutely NEED to go to the gym, but if I don't, I feel like I've failed myself. I wish I could be like the people who never work out, eat what they want, maintain their slim physiques and feel fine. If I live that lifestyle, I'm Orson Welles in a month, even if I eat nothing but half a rice cake every day. So I'm cursed to continually go back to the gym, cursed to complain about the crowds, cursed to curse the lack of free time in my life. Some people have all the luck, and some people gotta go do crunches and stuff. Can't be helped. Someone tell me to shut up and do another set of situps.

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More evidence: it cooled off today, got overcast and more comfortable, and I flew through writing my column today, picking up a scoop along the way and generally feeling sharp. They say the heat will return, so if I drop back into incoherence, we'll have ample proof of my heat vs. brain theory.

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A plug for a friend and very funny guy: Greg Behrendt is headlining tonight and next Wednesday (and supporting David Cross next week) at the Irvine Improv. If you're in the Orange County area, go- I'll see you there tonight. (That's also an explanation of the short items today...)

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Just got back from the Homeowners' Association meeting. It's interesting to go to these things, because, often, it's the only time you'll ever see the people living in your neighborhood. I think I recognized one other person at this thing (besides my wife, of course) and that's it. The meeting took place in someone's house, which appears to be in a constant state of construction- it's still sparsely decorated, and I had to spend the whole 90 minutes on a hard metal folding chair, which didn't help my attention span.

The meeting dealt with many issues, including insurance and repairs and landscaping, and everything came down to the following things:

1. We'll have to pay more money.

There are very good reasons for this, too, but I couldn't tell you what they are, other than that they HAVE to be done IMMEDIATELY or we're in BIG trouble because several TRIAL LAWYERS will not make BUNDLES OF CASH unless we PAY and PAY NOW. Naturally, this is entirely legal. In fact, the official Homeowners' Association people appear to believe it's their sworn civic duty to remove money from my pocket. So I had a wonderful evening listening as other people debated how much of my money they're going to spend. Can't beat this kind of entertainment.

Now I'm going to go and cry.

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I do not know if the incident between Kobe Bryant and the woman in Colorado was a rape or consensual. It doesn't matter, and that's what some of the Laker-fan callers and sports hosts I've heard today don't understand. Let's get some stuff straight here:

1. Kobe Bryant is a great basketball player.

2. Up to now, Kobe Bryant has been considered one of the good guys, intelligent and with his head on straight.

3. He now admits to having committed adultery.

4. He cheated on his wife and baby.

5. He knew, or should have known, that even consensual sex with that woman was wrong, cheating, a slap to his wife, not an act a "good guy" would do.

5. Ergo, whether he gets convicted or acquitted, and if his life is a living hell for the next period of time, he deserves everything he's going to get.

Let his punishment start today. Let him think, agonize over what he did to his wife, his child, his reputation. Let him not be excused because, as I heard die-hard Laker fans and local homer sports hosts say at various intervals today, the victim was "loose," or "should have known what she was getting into," or "wants the publicity to make money" (how do rape victims make money off of it? What rape victims HAVE made money off of it?). Let him twist in the wind, and if he's convicted, let him rot in prison. But let this be, for once, a case that restores the sanity lost by so many in the Clinton case- you don't cheat on your family. You don't. Forget the specifics of who this is and how this came to be public. Forget any claim that, well, people are human and make mistakes, or they have needs, or any excuses- if we can't agree on whether anything else is moral or not, let's just agree that betraying the trust of your spouse and children is wrong, amoral, deserving of scorn. If nothing else comes of this, maybe people will see the light on this one simple point. Screw your boss, cheat the system, run that stop sign, jaywalk, but you don't hurt your family.

Why is that so hard to understand?

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Ah, now I understand.

Check this article out- it's all about a handful of left-leaning folks who are considering moving up to Canada from big bad oppressive "neo-conservative" America. Besides the use of "neo-conservative" by someone who clearly doesn't know what that term means, I noticed something else, this little note:

"In school I was always told this is the best country on earth, and everyone else wants to be American, and that never really rang true to me," she said. "As I got older, it occurred to me there were other choices." Her husband, George, 44, has spent little time in Canada, but said it seems to offer a more relaxed, less competitive way of life. He has no qualms about leaving his law practice and selling the family's upscale home in Minneapolis.

"More relaxed, less competitive." There you go. Stress that last part: "less competitive." With those two words, this guy's betraying more about the America-Sucks mindset than he knows.

Here's why: I've known several Canadians who told me the same thing about their country. They all love it, but they all feel that in order to really make it in their work, they have to move south of the border. I asked one guy why he felt that way, and he said "Canada has a weird mindset. They don't want you to succeed too much. You're not supposed to get too big, too successful. And there are plenty of people up there who are content to stay there, be medium sized fish in a medium-sized pond. If you have a creative or enterpreneurial bone in your body, you get out as soon as you can. You don't want to, you have to."

And that's the opposite of the mindset of Americans who want to bolt to another, less "competitive" country. If you truly don't think you can cut it in a competitive situation, what you're saying is that, deep down, you think you're not good enough. It's easy, then, to want to go someplace that cuts all the tall grass down to a more manageable size, rewards success and failure at roughly the same rate, treats everyone as the same (in other words, socialism). In America, you're rewarded by the success you achieve, the ability you demonstrate, the value the market places on what you do. If you're afraid that you're not good enough, if you're afraid of your own individuality, that's when you want the government to take care of you, to subsume you into the whole. You make a run towards a system that celebrates mediocrity.

I happen to like Canada a lot. I know many excellent people and great intellects in that nation (some, in fact, are linked from this site- go read them). But the people cited in this article are going to Canada for reasons that will only perpetuate that great country's muddled thinking, that Chretien malaise. To all Canadians who aspire to make their country greater, I can only say, on behalf of America, hey, look, we're sorry you have to take these losers in, but, well, better you than us. Besides, we got Avril Lavigne and Bryan Adams, so we have to get even somehow.

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