True story. I kid you not. So I’m sitting here on a sunny Sunday afternoon, mildly perturbed because it’s about that time that I should blog again, and I have very little material of which to blog about. Not only that, but I have to leave for church in about 10 minutes. The background music, Handel’s Behold, and See If There Be Any Sorrow, from the Messiah is hardly stirring my brain to come up with a blogging topic. Wasn’t that the point of this?

Anyway, a myriad of thoughts enter my brain as possibilities: Maybe talk about the comedy of Paul F. Tompkins I saw last night with my roommate. Maybe talk about how the current book I’m reading Good To Great is absolutely infuriating me because as it details the steps taken by organizations that have gone literally from “good” to “great”, it plays exactly to the opposite of the direction which LAUSD is going! The book is wonderful. And it’s clearly laying out the reasons why LAUSD is so stuck in the mud!!! Or perhaps I could blog a little about my upcoming trip to tropical Florida to visit my sister followed by an immediately subsequent visit to tropical Iowa for a cousin’s wedding. Individually, these topics are certainly not much to speak an entire blog posting about, and at best would only serve well as individual chunks of a grander literary scheme (in the vein of The End medley off of Abbey Road).

Anyway, like I said, I was sitting here pondering what on earth to write about when the sound of a circling helicopter slowly pervaded the room. At first I didn’t even notice as this is one of the dominant city sounds that I’ve long since grown used to. However, I soon ascertained that the helicopter was circling directly overhead as the volume grew mightily from a dull buzz to an all out roar. Again, this is not an infrequent occurrence, usually followed by an LAPD cruiser barreling up my street toward the high school or toward the neighborhood directly south of us. So as the sound of the chopper grew more and more eminent, I looked out my front window for the police car I soon expected to see zooming by.

There was nothing, nothing at all, when all of a sudden….a mid-90s Honda sedan drives down the road, coming to an awkwardly angled stop right almost directly in front of my house (directly blocking my neighbor’s driveway). Other than the unusually terrible parking job, the most interesting fact about this car was that it was immediately followed by about 4 LAPD cruisers who pulled up directly behind it.

Hmmmm…..you certainly don’t see this every day, I thought to myself, a fact which was confirmed when about 6 officers promptly exited their own vehicles, drew their weapons, and aimed them right at the driver of the now parked sedan. After yelling a series of commands to the driver, LA’s finest were able to coax him out of the driver’s seat, hands-behind-head, and face-down on the middle of the Rimpau Blvd. asphalt. The driver was cuffed, put in one of the cop cars and driven away, while the rest of the officers on the scene proceeded to start on their paperwork, finishing rather promptly, and had completely cleared out no later than 20 minutes after the incident occurred. And best of all, I wasn’t even late to church.