The later, shitty Metallica is the ideal music for driving around suburbia in heavy traffic surrounded by gigantic SUVs. This morning I went to an early doctor appointment with “Unforgiven” blasting on my radio, gazing up on shiny Range Rovers and Expeditions as we roared through light industry in Irvine and Newport. It was like being in a canyon half the time. Everyone in this ridiculous town has a Range Rover. I counted fifteen of them on a drive that was maybe 3 miles each way.

My doctor has a pleasant obsession with Hawaii and was putting on a mix CD one of his other patients gave him, of Hawaiian stuff, as I arrived. He doesn’t have an office staff in the early part of the day, so he was answering the phone and scheduling my next appointment himself when I noticed that the current song was a Hawaiian version of a John Denver song. I left before I found out whether they changed the lyrics from “West Virginia, mountain mama” to something more island-y.

The local women are wearing Ugg boots again this fall. Have we learned nothing from history?

I was at Kean yesterday and a mother and daughter came in. The mom was a primped and frosted zillionaire lady with designer everything, and the daughter was the standard model unhappy 17-year-old dressed for some sport or other. Mom gave me a deadly glare as they arrived, as if I was somehow going to be a Myspace sexual predator and make off with her daughter. Look, lady, I remember high school. Girls that age are soulless, sadistic mini-Maenads who will suck the marrow right out of your spine while laughing. Sell her to someone else!

The line of $100,000 cars stretching out from the Burger King says a few things.