A Very Cool Birthday Present.

Stiletto City has many faults, three of which render it practically unliveable, if you ask The Great Plotnik -- traffic, traffic and traffic. Once, he would have put choking smog onto the list, but here it is late September, in past years a season for attacks of yellow sky and lungs on fire, but no more. Something has changed here. The weather is gorgeous and the sky is...no joke...clear and beautiful.

Traffic -- criminy. Saturday night Plot was heading downtown to get to The Great Punkydunky's to give him a birthday present in a box, that Ducknik had prepared. Plot didn't know what was in the box. There was a traffic jam at the entrance to the 101, so he kept going towards Hollywood. There was another traffic jam at the Cahuenga overpass, and another one just after he got on the freeway because -- oh, there's never a because. Just because.

But once he got down to Punky's and gave him the birthday box, and Punky tore open the packaging, what was inside was a baseball mitt. Plotnik's baseball mitt. When Plot looked up, confused, Punky said "Let's go! The mitt's for catching foul balls. We're going to the Plotzer game!" Is that cool, or what?

From Punky's house they could actually walk to the stadium -- twenty minutes from leaving the house to sitting down on the First Base Line, and that was with a seven-month pregnant lady who was walking faster than any of 'em.

Of course the Plotzers lost Saturday. Big deal. It was a treat to be at the game and, for the first time in thirteen years, Plotnik did not have to muffle his blue hat heart.