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Take one down and pass it around -- just dont' get behind the wheel

By Frank Girardot on June 8, 2009 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Peter Fullam, one of our copy editors, did something behind the wheel that got him a ticket. As a result he attended comedy traffic school so you don't have to. His conclusion, "lame."

For your reading pleasure:

Great Comedians Traffic School -- despite of its name -- really is more like the never-ending song "Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall" -- it's not funny, and it feels like it will never end.

My own immersion into Great Comedians Traffic School -- more later on my theory on how they come up with these traffic school names -- began just about 15 minutes before 9 a.m. a couple of Sundays ago at a hole-in-the-wall strip center storefront tucked behind a Taco Bell on Foothill Boulevard.

I counted 23 in the class -- at $35 a pop -- and calculated that Great Comedians Inc. pocketed $805 for the eight-hour class -- minus $3 for one "student" had a reduced "tuition" -- minus rent and the instructor's take.

He was "Bob" -- a short, paunchy, bald, retired-type guy who knew before the show started that this could be a surly California crowd.

"I know you're all as glad as I am to be here this morning," he intoned as the class settled in.

Haha. First joke of the day. Not funny, but he's trying, he's a nice guy with a tough job.

Turns out, though, the crowd wasn't so tough. As always, there was one guy who couldn't stop shouting out his genius observations. But everybody was in the same wagon. We've had to do this and get a certificate -- or we'll be drawn and quartered by our insurance companies and the California Department of Motor Vehicles -- which is not in the realm of Great Comedians -- unless we're talking about customer-friendly bureaucracy jokes.

Halfway through the morning session, the DMV's secret agent burst upon the scene -- waving the laminated DMV ID that was hanging around his neck -- unsmiling, guns bulging from his muscle shirt, testosterone-amped -- to check on Bob.

A thousand welcomes, says Bob. Please, sit anywhere.

DMV dude picks an empty seat next to the cutest girl in the class. He leaves 10 minutes later during a break, apparently satisfied with Bob's performance.

Which brings us to the point of all this. California Vehicle Code Section 1808.7 allows the DMV to "mask" from public view one violation per 18 months on a person's driving record. The catch is you have to attend traffic school. And whether it's Great Comedians, Pizza For You, Comedy for Less, Let Us Entertain You, Easy Going, Buckle Up and Chuckle, Low Cost, I'll Never Speed Again Comedy, or Painless schools, traffic school in any guise is a painfully interminable bore.

In dreadful anticipation, you will lose sleep for days ahead of your scheduled class, waking up in cold sweats from nightmares of being in traffic school.

"AAAAAAhhhhhh!!!! I still haven't done it."

The minutes seem like hours, your brain numbs and is reduced the consistency of a wartlike mass of senseless tissue.

That's why (insert theory here) I think they come up with all the silly names that seem completely unrelated to traffic school. Shouldn't they have names like Good Driving, Learn the Rules of the Road, Triple AAA, and such.

Well, those sound pretty boring. And when people get their court OK to go to traffic school, it's up to them to pick the school, make the arrangements, get there, pay the fee and get a certificate to bring back to the DMV -- the operative words being "pick the school." And boring doesn't sell.

So we get the pitches, like Pizza 4U-Great Comedians, trying to cover two bases, pizza and funny. How can they miss?

But there's a secret: Beneath the thin veneer of their fraudulent little names -- comedy, pizza, whatever -- something's happening here. Great Comedians knows Big DMV is watching, and like any good corporation, the company has formulated a product it can deliver to a target audience as well as survive the scrutiny of the DMV. So between the lame jokes, excerpts from "Candid Camera," DUI and road rage and sleepy driving videos, etc., etc., etc., a curriculum has been inserted.

It's like a script that Bob has in a loose-leaf folder resting on the upside down plastic milk carton case he used for a lectern.

(Did I mention the classroom appointments? The "ambience," as all writers nowadays say to describe everything.)

Bob has 400 minutes (See Vehicle Code) to get though it -- and he will, though it becomes ever more tedious, with fewer lame jokes, as we sprint toward the final minute and our DMV certificates.

It would be remiss of me to neglect to mention that I, of course, alone was an innocent man, swept up by a money grubbing municipal quota frenzy and wrongly convicted of, er, wrong way on a one-way street? Puleeze!! THERE WERE NO CARS COMING!

Yet, as I ferry between work and home and generally wander this majestic land of deserts, mountains, forests and ocean drives, I am ever struck by the burgeoning number of other drivers who DO need to attend traffic school.

For within that eternal kernel of time, some good lessons about being on the road were absorbed, by everyone in the class.

Like ...:

Don't get drunk and drive ... no, no, that's one of them, but ...Don't attack other drivers with baseball bats and pepper spray ... no ... again, that's one of them, but ...What are the 10 funniest things drunken drivers have said to cops? No ...The only things you can legally throw out of your vehicle are water and ... bird feathers!

Oh, yeah!

Be a safe, alert, defensive, considerate and courteous driver.

"Dude, that is like so totally lame."

Surprise: California auditor finds waste in state government

By Frank Girardot on April 28, 2009 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Here's some ways your tax dollars are being wasted by Sacramento bureaucrats, this from the Bureau of state Audits:

State employees and agencies engaged in improper activities, including the following:

Wasted $580,000 by leasing office space left vacant for more than four years.
Incurred $71,747 in improper commute, lodging, and meal expenses.
Failed to report 427 hours of missed work, for which the employee was paid $8,314.
Circumvented state civil service rules by arranging for the selection of a subordinate employee to a vacant position and paying the employee $6,444 for duties that she did not perform.
Paid at least $1,253 more than necessary on a $4,987 purchase without obtaining competitive price quotes.
Wasted $3,000 by paying for private consultant services that another state agency could have provided at no cost.
Paid an employee $1,145 for unearned compensation and travel expenses not incurred.
Sent inappropriate e-mail messages to other state employees. Management then failed to take corrective action despite noting similar behavior in the past.
Circumvented state law by protecting a vacant position and preventing it from being abolished.