Break Time

Art by Bob AulI disappear for a week into the Sierras and return to find there's been a coup d'etat and that you people are doing nothing about it. Leaving the Sierras, I get bagged by a CHP patrolman. My offense: tint on my driver's side window, which apparently is illegal. My punishment: half the next day paying to have the dangerous substance removed from the windows and the other half proving to local CHP officers that the work was done. That same day, returning home from a late night in the office, I hit a traffic jam on Alicia Parkway in Mission Viejo. Bright lights flash up ahead. Traffic cones on the road funnel three lanes of traffic into a single lane. At the front of the late-night crush, cops mill about under a powerful, portable overhead light. When one of the nice officers comes to my car, he says, "Good evening, sir. This is a DUI checkpoint. Have you had anything to drink this evening?" To which I reply truthfully, "No. Not a drop." He lets me pass. In the Register, I discover that some toothless hicks want a school board in Tustin to expel kids for drinking beer—off campus. So, look: I'm sure all of this is justified as essential to my safe and hassle-free existence. But I'm fine now, thanks, and you can all take the rest of the year off.

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