Brief encounter

An extraordinary evening at Conrads last night, beginnning and ending earlier than ever - 5.30 to 8 pm, much to the understandable disgust of the last arrival, Andy, who barely had time to sit down before he found himself in sole charge of a table littered with the detritus of long-gone meals (he didn't stay, preferring other company than his own).
It all started, as so often, with Ian, who had to leave at 6.15 to play at the Steve Allen theater, so had to arrive at 5.30 and asked Will, Bill, Lynne and Edgar to keep him company. We were gradually joined by Jim, Bobb, Barbara, all-too-rare appearances from Mary Katherine, Joan and Steve G, and a debut from Jim's New Orleans-born highly successful writer friend, Jervy - now living in South Central. The result was a disjointed occasion, which can be no bad thing because it shakes the pot and encourages new conversations - as it did this time.
Ian was still recovering from a hernia operation the previous Wednesday, so he was making a noble effort to perform for a second night running after entertaining the diners at Cantalini's Italian restaurant in Playa del Rey. Mind you, Edgar later revealed that he had had two hernia operations on the same side, as the first hadn't worked properly.
But Ian was, despite his temporary disability, in fighting form. He reported his abrupt dismissal of a lunch invitation from the record producer Nigel Grainge, responsible for such notables as the Steve Miller Band and the Boomtown Rats, and a declared fan of Ian in his rock 'n' roll days.
Such flattery cut no ice with Ian, though, who has renounced his early chart success in favor of the gentler melodies of the 20s and 30s, and apparently told the hapless Grainge so in unmistakable terms. Some of us thought this a little rash in a town where networking is as vital as driving if you want to get around. As Bill mildly pointed out, Grainge might at least know someone more in tune with the latter-day Whitcomb.
Whether this had any effect or not, the following day Ian had what he described as an attack of conscience and emailed Grainge apologising for his outburst. I predict a rosy future for their relationship.
After Ian's departure for the bright lights and greasepaint, chat turned to the Presidential chances of John McCain and Barack Obama, now that the last of Hillary Clinton's gnarled fingers have been prised off the cliff's edge and the two men can turn their full attention to defeating one another.
That produced the surprise claim from Mary Katherine that only last Friday she had "met the president of the US". This was greeted with a wary silence as her audience tried to work out what this was leading up to, for it was generally agreed that she had not shake hands with George W. Bush. Our skepticism was justified, for she had bumped into the actor Martin Sheen. But, just as surprisingly, they are godparents of the same child and knew of one another without having met.
It was Mary Kathrine who began the early exodus, for the simple reason that she has to wake before five each morning to embark on her two-hour journey to Santa Monica. That sparked, first, an examination of Mary Kathrine's route options to see if we could reduce her commuting time (we couldn't, she had thought of all the variations we could come up with), and then a lamentation of the state of LA traffic as depicted that day in a feature in the Times.
Like, it seems, every major Times story this analysis was pegged to a case study: Aundraya Reliford, who travels two hours and 40 minutes each way every day, from Rialto in San Bernadino County to the Water Garden office complex in Santa Monica, via two car rides separated by a Gold Line Metro trip to Union Station.
Most telling were the statistics that the region's population grew by 22% between 1990 and 2006, and the number of miles driven is up 42% in that time, but highway capacity had increased by only 7.5%.
Over the years there have always been better things to do with taxpayers' money than to build new roads or rail lines, and the resulting squeeze is beginning to hurt. But at least the near-$5 a gallon gas price means that we will all economize on our car journeys from now on - won't we?