Here's an item from this morning's Los Angeles Times, purloined right off their website…
A water main break sent more than 15,000 gallons of water flowing down Laurel Canyon Boulevard on Thursday night, prompting authorities to close the street from Canton Place to Mulholland Drive. The broken pipe in the 3200 block of Laurel Canyon was reported at 5:41 PM, said Gail Harris of the Department of Water and Power.
So guess who was driving North on Laurel Canyon Boulevard last night at 5:41 PM? Actually, I think it was a bit earlier than that…but Carolyn and I were en route to a party and it was like cruising the Nile for a few blocks there. Still, we made it. The great composer Richard Sherman arrived an hour later at the party and from what we could figure, he and his wife couldn't have been more than five minutes behind us entering Laurel Canyon. They were sent off by the fire department in a winding maze of detours through side streets, before finally being routed back to Laurel Canyon, heading back the way they came to find an alternate route to the valley.
Richard has a new hit musical in England — soon to alight on Broadway — based on a movie for which he and his brother wrote the music, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He could sure have used that flying car last night.