Well, we're still in L.A. We had planned to leave by today, at the latest, but it hasn't worked out. Guess why. No really, go ahead and guess. We'll wait.

Give up?

It's the car. Oh, come on, you knew that.

We thought we had it fixed, but no, it died again, and now it's in the shop. We've finally turned to professional help, for better or worse. If they discover a simple problem, great. If it turns out to be expensive, we might be taking the bus to Portland.

In more interesting news, our extended stay has finally enabled us to do what you're supposed to do in Los Angeles, hang around with celebrities. At least you're supposed to want to, or try to, or talk about which ones you've seen, or care, or something. Thus far, the best we'd done was the Clue Crew lady from Jeopardy™, who claims to have met Alex Trebek™. Not so good.

As mentioned earlier, a friend of Liz's brother's ran for Governor. On Tuesday night we went to his "Watch The Results Come In" party at a fancy hotel. We sipped champagne and ate free cheese while watching Gray Davis' concession speech and then the, uh, rise of the machines. Our friend got 510 votes. Not too bad, really.

On the way out of the hotel, we ran into, you guessed it, Ruben Studdard, THE AMERICAN IDOL! That's really him, it's not a cardboard cut-out! Look at Liz's face, she can't believe how big that guy is!

Ruben was nice enough, he let us get the picture, and held that smile for exactly 1 second while we took it. Looks real, doesn't it? Seriously, we understand. He's probably had random people coming up to him and saying meaningless things and shoving cameras in his face about 500 times a day for a frickin' long time. He also has a recording contract. Life is funny.

So we had our celebrity, but he was decidedly a low-grade one. With all due respect, he's a flash in the pan. Maybe one day he'll be the next Barry White, or Barry Manilow, but for now he's just Ruben from 205 with a little bit of green.

We wanted more. We wanted some real serious stars. Some high-powered, bodyguard-havin', "I could have you killed" kinda stars. Or at least we wanted to drive by their houses.

So off we went to Beverly Hills to get a Star Map. We cruised around the labyrinths of Beverly Hills and Bel Air and here's what we found: One dog, who may or may not belong to a celebrity, possibly Gene Hackman, possibly Gene Simmons, who was very friendly (the dog). We also saw many gates and very high hedges. Here are some of our favorites, and the only ones we took pictures of. Enjoy.

Aaron Spelling's gate. Tori wasn't home.	Nicholas Cage's gate. Is he still married to Lisa Marie? We couldn't tell.
Richard Gere's place. We have nothing to say about him.	Madonna has very effective hedges. Un-leapable.
Brad & Jennifer live on a Cul-de-sac, but not like the one you live on.	And their own manhole. Note to stalkers, could be a way in.