By Chris Erskine
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES ~ Random thoughts, while waiting for my advanced-placement steroid tests to come in:
* I don’t want to go to any movie that’s louder than my own kids.
* Joe Torre is the best thing to happen to Los Angeles since the movie camera.
* When someone says, “Believe me, you don’t want to know,” it makes you want to know that much more.
* Beer summit? How about a margarita summit?
* Los Angeles doesn’t really have rude waiters, just dispirited ones.
* And for some reason, that’s worse.
* The best healthcare plan is a sweaty workout, five days a week.
* The best therapy: funny friends with short memories.
* HBO’s Entourage is still the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
* If you want a kid to listen, whisper.
* If you want a kid to read, read yourself.
* Surest bet for an upcoming Napa Valley promotion: “A Chardonnay summit.”
* “It isn’t premarital sex if you have no intention of getting married.” (Drew Carey)
* A telling trait among summer sports: None of them – baseball, golf, tennis – features referee whistles.
* One of the most important things a parent can learn is how to say no effectively.
* My wife says no all the time. Very effectively.
* World’s biggest health club: the California coast.
* Worst word-of-mouth for a movie in recent memory: Funny People.
* “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.” (Will Rogers)
* A bougainvillea is the only shrub that attacks you back.
* Designer dogs? We used to call them mutts.
* I wonder who they’d send if I ever got seized by North Korea.
* Tea Leoni? Just a suggestion.
* Breeziest summer read: The Dawn Patrol, a Don Winslow crime novel set amid San Diego’s surf culture.
* The Rose Bowl is college football’s Churchill Downs.
* In August, the male body is about 80 percent beer.
* Like Elvis, Michael Jackson will be bigger dead than alive.
* I wonder what the great Mike Royko would have had to say about blogs.
* I wonder what Royko would have had to say about Jackson.
* Like computers, TV remote controls should have “undo” buttons.
* Somewhere along the line, that show Weeds just went wacky.
* But that new show Hung gets better every week.
* Oh, God, I know who they’d send for me: Brent Musburger.
* If Lorne Michaels is so brilliant, how come SNL has been awful for most of its 387 years.
* The British Open always seems like the first hint of fall.
* Long as I live, I’ll never be able to tell a heron from an egret.
* “Your picture’s in my wallet, and I’m sitting on it. And if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.” (Larry Linville, as Frank Burns, on MASH)
* Why does it suddenly seem like today’s top actors are all furry and animated?
* Hey, I’m furry and animated.
* Most days, I’d rather have a sandwich than a steak.
* Most nights, the best show on TV will be a rerun.
* Sinatra songs always lifts my spirits, especially the sad ones.
* When someone says, “That’s going to come back to bite us,” I always think, “Hmmmm … at least I have that to look forward to.”
* Best summer sound: a creaky cabin door.
* Best summer treat: the ice cream left at the bottom of a root beer float.
* If you can read this, thank a teacher.
* If you can’t understand it, blame a columnist.
* Just how furry am I? Believe me, you don’t want to know.

Erskine can be reached at chris.Erskine@latimes.com.