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It began to snow sometime late Saturday evening, a light, almost imperceptible flurry that increased to more visible flakes Sunday morning. But the smell arrived first- a strong odor of charred timber, like when the neighbors have a fire going in their fireplace, except this wasn't localized, it was everywhere. And the snow wasn't snow, either.

We live about 60 air miles from the mountains north of Claremont and Rancho Cucamonga, maybe the same from the hills in eastern Ventura County around Simi Valley and Moorpark and Thousand Oaks. Nevertheless, it wasn't very long into the fires that we got hit with the scent, the smoke, the ashes. They were blown towards the ocean by the Santa Ana winds, blown right at us, in one of the last few houses before the land drops off into the ocean and the ash forms a thick layer of gray haze hanging over the surf. It's there now, and so are the smoke and the thin layer of ash on the car in our driveway and on the asphalt and the mailbox and everything.

Southern California is a tinderbox, of course. We know it, those of us who choose to live here, and we know that the earth occasionally erupts and cracks beneath us, too. We know the dangers. We stay anyway, and every once in a while, something happens to remind us that this may not be the ideal location for human habitation. Sometimes, nature does the reminding- lightning sets the trees ablaze, or the plates shift and crumble the freeways and buildings under the less fortunate among us. Sometimes, and it appears at this early stage to be the case today, it's man-made. They say arson may be the cause of one of the fires inland, and they know that the huge fire down in San Diego County was started when a lost hunter shot off a flare to alert rescuers of his location. But it can be as simple as a cigarette butt tossed out the window, which is why it struck me as the height of idiocy for a driver alongside my car on Hawthorne Boulevard to flick his cigarette ashes out the window. Doesn't he know where he is? Doesn't he smell Barbecued San Bernardino? Doesn't he know how these things happen?

Guess not. Or he just doesn't care. That's more likely.

This is, in many ways, paradise, but I guess some would argue that we sometimes have to be reminded of the danger inherent in living here, where the land is bone dry and man probably wasn't supposed to thrive. I could do without as graphic a reminder. And then there was this: a sign on the door of the local La Salsa this evening that apologized for the mess on the floor left by people tracking in ash from the parking lot. "Apologize for dirty floor: can't clean ash from lot," it read in letters stenciled onto a plain white sheet of copy paper taped to the door. I think that under the circumstances, we can agree to give them a pass for this one. The stuff's everywhere, our very own version of a snowstorm. Next time I gloat about the weather when New York's under three feet of snow and we're 70 and sunny, remind me of this.

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What does it say about me, this site, and/or my readers when one of the leading search engine queries that leads people to find their way here is "Heather Graham in Red Sox Underwear"?

Try it. Go ahead. Put that phrase in Google. See what you get.

It's my own fault. I did, indeed, mention Heather Graham in Red Sox underwear, in the course of reviewing "Anger Management." (It's on DVD now, in case you want to review that particular scene) But that doesn't explain why so many people are searching for Heather Graham in Red Sox underwear.

And if you're one of those people, really, shame on you.

Now, if we're talking Heather Graham in Eagles underwear....

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The local TV news coverage of the fires has been pretty much useless. Oh, they're covering the fires, all right. They're all over the fires with choppers and reporters and live shots. But this is the general tone of the coverage:

Look! Fire! Lookit lookit lookit!

Now, there's a strong case for wall-to-wall radio coverage, because the people who are being directly affected by the fires- the ones living in the way- are going to have battery-powered radios to hear what to do. Drivers need that coverage, too, to find out which freeways are blocked and where to go. But TV's a different story- there's absolutely no point to continually showing the fires, because there's nothing we can do with that information. The people affected can't watch, and we're not affected. It's just a case of showing titillating real-life-danger pictures for the amusement of the viewing audience.

Oh, but there are ways everyone's affected. The air quality everywhere in Southern California remains horrible- there's floating ash and the air is redolent of charred brush, even far away from the blazes. That's the single most important thing about this catastrophe for most people. Second is the danger to power transmission, third is the closing of freeways. The loss of homes and property and, especially, life is tragic, no question about it, but do we need to see people's homes burn to the ground? Not really. We need to know whether the crap in the air is going to cause respiratory distress and what to do about it. We need to know whether there'll be any power loss if the transmission lines over the mountains should burn up. We need to know what roads are closed.

We don't need long hours of scenes of houses burning and people weeping. A short clip will tell the story. Watching for a few hours, that's pointless.

I'm way off base here, of course. The TV news I want would be nothing but practical, what-this-means-to-you journalism, and the fire coverage would be a stream of information like air quality and alternate routes. My news would die in the ratings. I know that. The people want the pictures of flames out of control and taking people's homes and trailers and pets.

They can have it. I've got fire fatigue. I'm gonna go watch the end of the football game or something. Anything but fire. I can smell it, but I don't want to see it right now.

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The NBA season starts tonight. I shouldn't care. After all, the league has degenerated into a fundamentals-be-damned free-for-all in which thug style and selfish play are valued over guys who can execute plays and shoot with accuracy and handle the ball. It's the ultimate triumph not even of freewheeling chuck-and-duck ABA play but of the Rucker tournament, the Jersey Shore league, the Sonny Hill League, guys out more to impress their friends and girls than to actually play basketball well, a spectacular miss better than a boring hit.

It's been this way for years. You watch an old game, a game like, say, the Knicks and Bullets when the matchups were everything- Reed and Unseld, DeBusschere and Johnson, Bradley and Marin, Frazier and Monroe (pre-trade), Barnett or Stallworth and Loughery- and what strikes you, besides the impossibly short shorts (what were we thinking?), is that the game seems more deliberate, slower, but exciting anyway. Scores were high, but, in the NBA at least, you didn't get the run-and-gun of the ABA. ABA games- you don't see much of that on cable, because the tapes weren't kept- were geared more towards the three-pointer and the slam, but there was balance- you needed a long range gunner and good free throw shooting to win even if you had the big man or flashy forward. Kentucky needed Louie Dampier as well as Artis and Issel. Indiana lived and died on Billy Keller and Bill Netolicky's shooting as much as it relied on McGinnis and Brown. In either league, there was balance. You needed all the pieces to win.

Now, it's different. The Lakers won three championships with superstars who both wanted the ball, with a bench of I-can't-believe-he's-still-in-the-league rejects. The Nets are now the perennial Eastern finals rep without a single reliable outside shooter, and they were weak in the middle until Mourning showed up, too. You don't go to see the Magic, you go to see T-Mac. The Wolves are Garnett. You go to see the stars, and you're disappointed when the stars don't play like stars. It's the Jordan effect- one or two guys overshadowing the whole league, making you forget that you're paying to see Bill Cartwright or Bill Wennington or Luc Longley play center.

But Jordan's gone, the next wave of stars are no Jordans, and with few exceptions (mostly in the West), it's a chaotic, shoot-miss-slam game. The players are far from admirable citizens, favoring the gangsta look, coated in tats and attitude. Coaching is mostly playing therapist or staying out of the way unless you run the triangle, in which case you let your assistants run drills while you pick out books for the players to read. And for all this, you pay top dollar.

So why did I pick up the phone and order the NBA League Pass satellite package again? Why did I drop $159. to get all the NBA games on TV?

Because it's a habit I can't break. Because I enjoy yelling at the TV when Iverson takes a horrible, off-balance, selfish shot. Because I enjoy cheering when that horrible shot finds its way through the hoop. Because it's fun to complain about Derrick Coleman.

Because it's basketball. I admit it, I'm an addict. Now, what channel's the Sixers game on?

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After watching the season premiere of "24," I've developed a new, improved version. We can wrap the whole storyline up in one episode, one hour, even one minute. Here's my pitch: CTU Agent Jack Bauer, realizing his idiot daughter Kim has either been responsible for or a nuisance in every single major catastrophe he's faced, loses his composure and kills her. That would happen in the first minute. The rest of the series- call it "1"- would just have Jack disposing of the body while whistling "Happy Days are Here Again."

It's a guaranteed smash. Get Fox on the line immediately.

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There are people up in Arrowhead and Big Bear who aren't leaving their homes. They've been told to evacuate, they smell the smoke, they may even see the flames in the distance, and they know that at some point, they may be faced with the problem of the world on fire and no way off the mountain.

It's like the people who hold Hurricane Parties. There's a sense of bravado, a big gob of spit in the devil's face. These things, they think, never live up to the hype. Then a Hurricane Andrew blows through.

But fire's a different thing. You can't ride out flames hiding in the basement or some interior closet like with a hurricane. You do that, you're cooked. Literally. The people staying behind to face the flames can't even give a coherent reason for doing it- I heard a couple from Big Bear on John and Ken's KFI show being asked why they chose to stay in their house, and the answer was a non-answer, just a "we'll know when it's time" response. But by then, it'll probably be too late, especially now that the wind's picked up. They can't save their homes, not up there where the trees are set to explode when the flames lick against their bark. You leave now, at least you know you're going to be alive. You stay, all bets are off.

So you don't stay. You go. You run like the wind. You gotta know when to pick your fights, and who to fight. Fire, you leave to the professionals, the guys on the big red trucks. This one's not a fight you can win.

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See those white puffy things above the ocean?

Clouds.

We hadn't seen clouds in almost a week, since the ash and smoke moved in to block them.

At last, the air's no longer chunky.

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I think I might be in a cult.

No, really, it seems that way. I own a Handspring Treo 600, which is a cell phone. But it's more than that. It's a PDA and a cell phone... er, a "Smart Phone." It gets your e-mail. It lets you surf the web. In color. It lets you edit Word documents. You can even play games on it, play MP3s on it, take pictures with it. It's very cool, cooler even than my older Treo 300. I just love the thing. It's always with me. I'm always using it.

And that's where it gets cultish. Other people who own this thing- it's only been out for about a month- are similarly smitten. There are even several Internet bulletin boards about it, including an entire website. Naturally, I read it daily.

But when I find myself telling people about it- "yeah, and I can write my columns on it, and, look, see, my e-mail just came in"- I realize that I'm being exceptionally boring, mindless, cringeworthy. I'm trying to entice them into my little Treo-centric world.

Yeah, it IS a cult.

Most people don't need one of these things. 99% of the world doesn't. I do, and the more I use it, the more insufferable I get, going on and on about it, wondering if people are seeing me use it when I pull it out in public, bringing it up in conversations out of the blue. I know it's stupid. I can't help myself. I'm in the clutches of the Treo cult. I think I might need to be deprogrammed.

Think they make a cult deprogramming program for the Treo 600? I'll check on Google. See, I can do it right here on my phone...

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I was running and punching buttons on the Walkman today and I landed on a college station from Santa Barbara. It sounded bad- adenoidal kid stiffly reading PSAs, a couple of guys awkwardly bantering, lots of pauses and confusion.

You can guess by now that I loved it, because I've told you before how much I miss small-town local-yokel radio. But more than that, it reminded me of... well, of me, the me that wandered into a water-damaged, grimy studio in the basement of the college dining center one day in the fall of my freshman year and read liner cards between Clash and Specials songs. There was nothing more exciting to me than opening the mic and talking, knowing that someone- probably only one or two people, but someone- was out there listening.

And it's still that way for me, though the medium's changed and I write instead of talk for a living now. Here's the thing- radio, as show business goes, is an embarrassment. It's looked down upon by everyone, trashed by a public whipped into a frenzy about consolidation and voice tracking by people with agendas of their own, and, frankly, those of us in the business do ourselves no good by acting like circus geeks, getting frozen alive or living on billboards or emceeing wacky promotions or naming yourself "Boner" or touting whatever weight loss fraud the sales department sold this month. Working in movies or TV means more money, more respect, more free food. Working in radio is mostly being buried in a dark, cramped studio at weird hours, getting little recognition and low pay, having food thrown at you when you're introducing Gary Puckett at some county fair event.

Yet we love it. And trying to explain why is sort of a fruitless pursuit, except for this: it's sometime late in the 1960's or in the early 70's, and you're listening to the AM radio at night and hearing these voices, these high-energy, reverb-drenched voices from hundreds of miles away- Buffalo! Chicago! Charlotte! Hamilton! Fort Wayne! A veritable geography lesson- and thinking, wow, that sounds like fun. And then you're riding down some nondescript road in the back seat and you see it- the towers, the blinking lights, the sign on the little cinder-block building. You know that's where the magic is, and you want to be there.

So I went there. I went to places like Asbury Park, Trenton, Schenectady, Garden City, and finally the Promised Land of Los Angeles. I got to do everything in radio, from programming some of the biggest stations in the world to passing out bumper stickers to unwilling recipients in a mall parking lot. I saw how the magic was made, first-hand. And I saw the man behind the curtain, and he wasn't a magician and he wasn't anything special.

He was me.

So at some point, I forgot that feeling. The heroes had feet of clay, the Xanadu was actually a plain, depressing hole of a cubicle farm in the poor part of town, and being part of it all meant dealing with too many morons and idiots and angry, bitter people and substance abusers. I sort of slid into an associated field, trade magazine editing, and that's where I am today. Radio isn't really magic for me these days- I know too much, I know many of the people I hear on the radio, I know how the trick's done.

And then I hear those stammering, awkward, scratchy and squeaky voices on the college station, and I remember the studio with all the band and surf and radio stickers on the walls, the wobbly turntables and the records with cue burn, the balky vintage-1953 cart machines and the reel-to-reel hand-me-downs in the production room with splice tape and razor blades everywhere. I remember the innocence, the days when we actually believed in the music, the thrill when someone would call in and say "I love your show." And that's where the magic lives, somewhere down below 92.1, in amateur land where the kids still do radio just because they love it.

Not that it's any good, or that I want to hear that stuff very often. But it's good to check in every once in a while and be reminded why I did what I did and, really, why, no matter what else I do, I'm always going to be a Radio Guy. And I still look for those towers and those studios and, despite all that I've learned and seen, there's still a part of me that thinks it's magic.

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Today was the first time we were back at our local supermarket. The pickets are gone, although the strike's still on- they've decided that Safeway's a riper target, and maybe they noticed that among the three chains affected by the strike, more people were crossing the picket lines to shop at Ralphs than the others. Whatever the reason, they're open and unblocked, and the place was understandably busy.

There were some signs that the place wasn't in regular mode. The bakery section was dark. So was the seafood counter. And there was the matter of certain food being absent- maybe there was a run on tuna or some brands of bread, but it looked more like some stuff just hasn't made it into the store yet.

And then there were the apples. They were lined up perfectly.

Not just stacked neatly. Lined up. One on top of the other, in perfect parallel. Not the way the regular produce guys do it. More like the way an alien would do it. And that was the way the whole store seemed to be, because the surroundings were the same, but the people weren't. The cashiers, the stockboys, everyone... well, of course, because the regulars are over at Albertson's and Pavilions walking the picket line there. These people weren't even wearing the Ralphs uniform shirts, they looked like people who happened into the store off the street and were handed badges and paychecks.

It's... strange. It could be a "Twilight Zone" episode- guy comes back to his hometown to find everything's exactly as he remembered it but the people are all different, to a man. The sign said "Ralphs," the food was the same, everything was in the same place, but it didn't feel the same. It was the Bizarro Ralphs.

And, yet, it was good to be back. The people are different, but we won't have to go back to those alien markets and buy weird brands of "food" materials and stand on lines stretching from Torrance to Barstow. And they'd damn sure better not make us go elsewhere ever again. I don't know if I can take any more of that.

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