It has been well established by C.B. that my stately apartment home is not in Brentwood.  Not even in Baja-Brentwood.  True.  All too true.  Completely true.  But I never asserted otherwise.  All I’m saying is…Brentwood is nearby.  This is surely not a Faustian o’er-reaching.  Not by a long shot.  I can easily walk to the Coffee Bean in the heart of Brentwood—where I saw Mike Tyson getting a coffee early one morning about a year ago.  He’s not hard to spot.  Big guy.  Big tattoos.  And it’s Brentwood.  But let that pass.

Today at lunchtime I was not far from that self-same Coffee Bean when hunger struck.  Gott sei Dank, there is no shortage of eats in Brentwood.  Fearing an hypo-glycemic fit, I naturally ducked into the nearest chic-eatery—pronounced shƏ-KEY-ter-ee—seeking nourishment.  Which was provided me for a tidy sum.

Well, imagine my surprise to look up from a delightful salad of cress and tomatoes and espy at the table in front of me…probably two and a half feet away… someone who looked like she used to be Meg Ryan.  This person was dining with another woman, who had her back to me, but who looked nonetheless like she used to be Meg Ryan’s agent.  Back when Meg had one.  Definitely someone’s agent.

Now I’m not saying that America’s Sweetheart looked like some kind of monster.  Indeed not.  The krazy-kollagen was not in evidence, for example.  Nor was a hairbrush.  One thought to oneself instead, what a pity you’re not as pretty as Meg Ryan; you look so much like her.  So very much like her.  So much…oh.  Oh, Meg.