A rather odd thing happened to me on my way to the theater Friday night. I was chased by a helicopter. Yes. I know that sounds odd. Imagine – just for a second – how odd it would feel to drive several miles with a helicopter about two car lengths behind you and only about thirty or forty feet above you. See? Very odd.

So it turns out (obviously) that the helicopter wasn’t exactly following *me*. We were just going to the same place at the same time. And he decided to follow the 101 for some reason. And he decided to fly at what seemed to me to be at a telephone-pole tempting height. It was kind of cool to look over my shoulder in a paranoid panic and act like I had the secret weapon in my briefcase and the commies were after me. But only for a second. Then it was just kind of strange.

He was flying (helicoptering?) to the great big Boeing building that is near the theater. They have what looks like one of the exhaust ports from a Space Shuttle in front of the building. It’s cool. It looks suspiciously like it’s something that the Space Shuttle would probably *miss* if it wasn’t attached to it. If it was, for example, in a parking lot on the other side of the country. But, hey. If you manufacture a multi-million dollar, fifty-foot tall piece of aerospace technology and you have an “irregular”, it’s not like you can just take it to Marshall’s, right?

Also, the place where I usually park was blocked tonight because they were filming an episode of 24 there.

Los Angeles, California, ladies and gentlemen.