Rule Zero:  Don’t be an asshole.

This rule applies in all situations and is not suspendable.

Don’t you think famous people in history should have their own theme songs?

For example, I can never picture Eva Braun without imagining her piddling around the house humming her favorite Sheryl Crow song, “If It Makes You Happy, Then It Can’t Be That Bad.”

Can you think of any other good examples?

I’m always happy to help out Patt Morrison, who has an intelligent and lively show on public matters on KPCC, my home NPR radio station out of Pasadena.

Today’s topic was on happiness.  She had a university expert who’d just done a survey and a woman who’d just written a book on the subject.  In the interest of saving them time, I called in to the show.

Naturally, I was the first caller, and I generously offered my three distilled Rules For Happiness:

1.  Gratitude.  Buddha said that all unhappiness is based on comparison.  I just turn that around.  If you can’t be a glass-half-full person, there’s not much point to getting up in the morning.

2.  Having enough money.  I’m not saying you have to be Donald Trump, but nothing wrecks happiness faster than money trouble (except for maybe health trouble and family trouble).  For the record, the idea that “money doesn’t buy happiness” is a lie spread by rich people.

3.  Identifying activities you really enjoy, then structuring your life so that you can do them.  Here’s where most people mess up.  People commonly say, “I’ll be happy playing with my kids, ” so they get a house deep in the suburbs and commute to work five hours a day leaving no time to see their kids awake.  Plus, lots of people have lousy hobbies.   Find a good one.  For me, or course, it’s sniffing glue and developing talented new underwear models, but everyone has to find his or her own niche.

As long as you have reasonable health, are not in prison, and don’t have any specific psychological challenges, these rules should work for you.  Or your money back.

I’ve been working with a nutritionist for several months.  She’s been very helpful and encouraging and full of good information about how I can make better choices during my eating day.

Fine.  I do my best.  I’m working nuts and seeds into my diet.  I’m de-emphasizing the white carbs.  Try not to eat late at night.  And I’m making progress.  I don’t look like an Olsen twin yet, but I’m making progress.

Breakfast on work days, however, remains a problem.  Getting up thirty minutes earlier so I can have a healthy breakfast at home sounds like a lovely idea, but in practice?  Forget about it.  The fact that I lumber out of bed at the horrifying hour of 7:00 a.m. is already a huge concession to the realities of having to earn a living.  Making it 6:30 just so I can have oatmeal is simply asking too much. 

It’s not my fault that there’s a McDonalds two blocks from my house, conveniently situated for me to grab breakfast. 

And it’s REALLY not my fault that my standard breakfast of a Egg McMuffin, hash browns, and a medium Diet Coke is quite possibly the world’s most perfect on-the-go morning meal.

I won’t elaborate on the self-evident uber-goodness of the Egg McMuffin and the Diet Coke.  The hash browns, however, deserve a little elaboration.

This IS a to-go breakfast, after all, and so what you are served isn’t actually hash browns, it’s a pre-formed, defrosted,  ellipse-shaped hash brown patty.  And my friends, it is simpy perfection.  McDonalds may be the Great Satan of nutrition, but they have gotten the Hash Brown Patty down. 

It’s just big enough.  It’s just hot enough.  It’s just crispy enough.  It’s just salty enough. 

If one were to discover a McDonald’s hash brown patty occuring natually in nature, it would be the strongest argument ever for the truth of Intelligent Design. 

The only thing wrong with a McDonald’s hash brown patty is that it isn’t TEN McDonald’s hash brown patties.

I have tried to explain this to my nutritionist.  I proudly tell her that, among the breakfast sandwiches available at national chain fast-food establishments, the Egg McMuffin is actually the healthiest, coming in at a mere 300 calories.

Sometimes I think the only thing that propels me out of bed in the morning is the knowledge that in just a few minutes, I get to eat that delicious, warm, salty,  golden-brown hockey puck.  Perhaps it’s actually addictive.  Perhaps McDonalds laces the potatoes with opium or nicotine.  Again, not my fault.

So, while I will continue to try to improve my eating choices at lunch and dinner time, if I have to drive to work at the godforsaken hour of 8:00 a.m., I have earned my McDonald’s breakfast.  Don’t try to take it out of my hands and no one gets hurt.

Sudoko is just too damned hard.  I’m just sayin’.

You could argue that I get what I deserve, living as I do in Hollywood, world capital of self-obsession.

But it still turns my stomach to see drivers who stick their resumes onto their personalized license plates.

Like the woman who was blocking traffic yesterday in Century City.  Her license plate didn’t say, as would have been more appropriate, “I desperately need more training in driving and manners, ” (you figure out the clever 7-letter abbreviation for that, I’m too spiritually exhausted).

Instead it said, “Emmy 86.”

Well isn’t that special.  Pity that with an Emmy didn’t come free driving lessons.

Even worse is John Laroquette’s personalized plate, which says, I kid you not, “MNY EMMYS.”

[pause for collective projectile vomit]

Now, I realize that the rash and ungracious among you might insist on pointing out that I, too, indulge in a personalized license plate.  This is true.  But as everyone knows, mine is simply my name, which or course isn’t obnoxious or pretentious, it’s whimsical and adorable.

During a Q&A period after, say, a screening or a lecture, is for just that:  Questions and Answers.

Let’s review how this works, shall we?

The person in the audience asks a question, which, ideally, is followed with an answer from the speaker.

Notice nowhere did I say anything about the audience member making a stupid, self-aggrandizing speech.

I find myself at Q&A sessions frequently during my rich escapades around the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, and I don’t think I’ve ever managed to sit through one where there weren’t a couple jerks in the audience who raised their hands only to launch into fifteen minute stories about their completely unfascinating lives.  This needs to stop.

Please help me spread the word.  In this matter, as in so many others, tasers are quite helpful.

People who say “bass-ackwards, ” “anyhoo, ” and “coinky-dink.”

Who’s with me?

I recently returned from my 30th high school reunion in Bryan, Texas.  It’s the third reunion we’ve had, and I’ve been to them all.  For some reason, whenever one of these portentous events looms on the horizon,  there’s never any question in my mind that I’m going to attend.

I’ve enjoyed all three events, but had a particularly good time at this one. It’s puzzling because I have many, many friends in my current life who consider the fact that I go to my high school reunions at best quaint, and at worse ill-advised and borderline pathetic. 

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this issue.  Why DO I enjoy these reunions so much?

It’s not because I’m one of those people who live in the past.  I’m not.  I don’t have to look back on high school like a former star athlete who’s never done anything else worth doing in the years since graduation.   

On the other hand, I did really have a good time in high school.  My school was large enough that the chances were good you could find a group you felt comfortable with.  Getting good grades was hip in my day, so I was friends with all the kids in the “college prep” classes, as well as the speech and drama nerds and, of course (and most importantly) band members.

I did manage to have a wonderful junior and senior year, considering all of the activities I was involved in.  But this isn’t why I love going back to the reunions.

And it certainly isn’t because I miss the town.  On the contrary, I haven’t lived in the town, even for a summer, since the year I graduated.  I never liked the town, which I felt was small and boring.  I did a lot of driving around town in the couple of days before the reunion.  It’s now medium-sized and boring.  So it’s not geographical nostalgia that brings me back.

And it’s certainly not because I’m still friends with a whole pile of folks I graduated with.  Sure, I love seeing them and I wish them well.  But I’m probably current with less than ten of them.

So why then?  Why was it so much fun to go see how much we’ve aged, to see the formerly gorgeous folks look like any other 48 year olds?  Why was it fun to see all the couples who are still married, like homecoming queen and head cheerleader Jamie and football player Larry?  Like Most LIkely to Succeed Walter and his still-lovely Sara?  Like resolutely intellectual John and Lynne?

Why was it so much fun to see Rissie, looking like a million dollars and currently head of the parole board of the state’s largest prison?  Or Sherilynn Jenkins, dangerously attractive and doing PR for the local university?

Will I see many of these folks again before the 35th or 40th reuion?  In most cases, sadly, probably not.  But that doesn’t really matter.

The value I think these types of events have is that they are a ceremonial way for us to honor our past while celebrating our present.  We all get to show up and say, “Hey!  I’m still alive and kicking, and you knew me when!” 

Whether we’re real estate moguls, like Sam, or doctors like Caroline and Pat and Ed, or local business owners like Stanley or whatever the hell it is that I am, going to the reunion is a way of marking how far we’ve come.  It’s a celebration of our survival, our common history, and our hopes for the future.

Finally, the greatest thing about the 30th reunion is that thirty years has a way of washing away all, and I mean ALL, bullshit.  There were no cliques, or old feuds, or rivalries, or racial or economic or even political boundaries.  After all these years, what we had in common loomed much larger than what our differences were.  That was a nice feeling.

What breaks my heart is that in this era of political scapegoating and division and polarity, we can’t all realize as a country that the same exact thing is true of us as a people.