I just saw a hilarious ad on cable for a local Infiniti car dealship. The ad features former basketball player and commentator Bill Walton. Yeah, off to a good start. So, Bill comes waltzing from behind one of the cars parked inside the dealership and forcefully proclaims, “Everything you’ll ever need in life is right here”.

Everything? I mean, come on, who writes this garbage. I can get food, water, shelter, friendship, and companionship at the dealership? I think not.

It’s funny to me to see an advertisement which bluntly proclaims the message that lies in all advertising: “All you need is brand X, and you won’t be happy without it”. It’s just funny to see it presented with practically no veil.

So today, I got to experience the joy that is jury duty. Well, more like 1/3 the joy. If you were to break the process down into three steps, you might have a list like this:

1. Report to the courthouse
2. Maybe get your name or group number called, to report to a courtroom
3. Possibly get selected to be on a jury

Thank goodness I didn’t make it past step one. By lunch time, the articulate woman at the mic was letting us know that “the following of groups have completed their service and can leave”. My group, 2009, was called first. I threw my fist up in the air and grunted in a celebratory fashion, only to make eye contact with some older guy who was still sitting down. “Oops,” I thought, “not polite to gloat”. Fortunately, he was released right after, so I didn’t need to flog myself with guilt.

Some observations about my time this morning. Some apply to any room randomly full of 300 people, too.

• Do not arbitrarily forget your leathermen tool in your bag. They will call you on it when it goes through the x-ray. This after I successfully reminded myself via a note to remove my pocketknife from my keychain.
• The OC Central Superior Court seems much more organized than, oh say, the DMV.
• In a 10 foot radius of bored people, 5 will have iPods (this includes me).
• The more diverse the group, the less people like to be heard talking aloud. It was surprisingly quiet.
• Cellphone use is not a good idea in the afore mentioned quiet room.
• People that don’t look like they’ve read a book in 5 years will bring one to jury duty. I know, looks can be deceiving.
• It is not appropriate for people over 45 to have top 10 rap themed ringtones.
• Your ringer should be on vibrate. Seriously.

I just wanted to take a minute to brag about the fantastic dinner that was prepared for me last night. Crista had me over to hang out at her apartment, and she even provided dinner. All I had to do was bring the wine. As I’m no sort of connoisseur, I resorted to a bottle of two buck chuck chardonnay. It proved more suitable to our unexperienced tastes than the merlot that we had last time. We also ate some fabulous soy ginger marinated salmon, rice, salad, and asparagus. For those of you that don’t like asparagus, well, I think you’re missing out.

Then, we capped off with dessert. I think if all we’d eaten was dessert, I would have still been a happy man. We started with some semisweet chocolate dipped bananas. Those were pretty good. But then, oh man, it was on to dipped strawberries. I don’t know if there is a more simple pleasure than this. It was the most delicious thing I’ve eaten all week. No hyperbole at all.

So, should you ever be bored and have a hard time eating enough fruit, just keep this in mind. It balances out, right?

Crista and I visited the Getty Center last Saturday. Put some photos up. I really want to get better at taking pictures of places and not only us.

My cynical prediction is that when Everwood returns, Ephram will be dressed like he’s singing for The Killers or some equivalent. Then we can come up with cute names like Emowood.

I like The Killers, but boy, has the fashion these days gotten ridiculous. Orange County is swimming in the mod look, and the colors pink and black. At the Getty Center on Saturday, I think I saw somebodies gramma wearing pink and black. Can you say, “Gone too far?”

Just in case you didn’t know, the WB Monday night lineup of 7th Heaven and Summerland is probably the worst block of television right now. Maybe ever. It’s so bad it’s almost not entertainingly bad. It takes skill to aggregate that much poor acting.