I’d also like to say a belated public thanks to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who stunned this blog and a small swarm of guests with not just a primo batch of seats behind home plate, but a personal escort and pre-game field passes, allowing us to tromp around the edges of the field itself while the pros were taking warmups.

When I was a kid in Cleveland in the 1970s, Dodger Stadium was this unimaginably faraway place where it never rained and the team never sucked and the players seemed friendly and the stands were filled with people from TV.

Sure enough, we got a perfect night, the Dodgers were playing for first place, and while we were hanging out, closer Takashi Saito wandered by to greet a Japanese guest near us. Then Dodgers manager Grady Little wandered over for a quick chat with us all, and about five seconds later I started noticing the stands behind me filling with recognizable faces. So this was exactly what I had imagined about 35 years earlier. I wondered briefly if I was actually still eight years old and only daydreaming.

Anyhow, this whole thing was unexpected and severely cool, and I’ve been meaning to grab a minute and say how much I appreciated it for weeks. So to Ellen and the entire Dodgers front office: thanks from all of us for a wonderful, memorable, terrific evening.

Didn’t mean to let the site go slack for so long, but life got busy on me. I’m sure you survived. Meanwhile, much fun cooking here.

However, now that I’m briefly home again, I must first head to the dentist, because the other day a poppy seed challenged one of my molars to a duel, the molar accepted, and the poppy seed promptly kicked the molar’s ass. So I’m down several minor tooth chunks and an aggravated tongue, actually, although that didn’t stop me from some weekend goofiness I’ll write about later today while the novocaine dissipates.

Said goofiness made me feel like a pudu among giraffes for a little while. And, handily enough, when the L.A. Zoo’s docent was leading Team Pudu around the facility (see below), I got a shot which may or may not have depicted that very thing, shown at right.

The pudu would have been just slightly out of frame.

A small festival of gratitude and contentment will likely begin occupying this page for a while. I know the world is a nigh-hopeless mess, yes — I just wrote another book about that, if fact — but kindnesses should be acknowledge, and there have been many in my own life lately.

WARNING: The following photo contains intense adorability. Observe at your own risk.

On the left, a tiny duiker, the stackable South African ungulate.

In the middle, a trained professional capable of withstanding high levels of cuteness.

On the right, an even tinier baby duiker. Ankle high. The neutron bomb of cute.

Once you regain consciousness, just remember: you were warned.

This picture (and others which are coming shortly) only exists because of the kindness of some nice folks at the Los Angeles Zoo who have recently taken a shine to this site’s weekly pudublogging. In fact, last weekend, the entire puduland braintrust was given a remarkable VIP tour of the whole place, complete with a well-informed docent explaining all sorts of magnificent things about which animal puts what unexpected thing in some unimaginable orifice for unanticipated reasons, making it all sound so utterly cool. I have rarely been so entertained and delighted.

This was an amazingly wonderful day. Many thanks to Suzanne, Nancy, and Joleen.

Incidentally, if you live in SoCal and haven’t been to the zoo lately, go. Take the kids. Want to help save the world? Teach young people to appreciate wildlife and the environment. Plus, it’s fun as heck.

The pudus are sort of in the back to the right. The nursery, where you’ll find baby whoknowswhats, is in the front to the right. The baby duiker is probably still there if you hurry.

PS — I should also add that I’ve had a fabulous run of fortune lately, and there are lots of other people I need to thank profusely — folks with the L.A. Dodgers, in NY publishing, and doing several varieties of Hollywood thingies. I’m traveling and visiting family at the moment, but there will be much gratitude here asap.

In Los Angeles, the Telemundo news anchor reports on the mayor’s admission of the end of his marriage…

… without mentioning that her own ongoing affair with the mayor is a big reason the marriage is breaking up.

Replace the sex and intimacy with the seductions of power and access, and suddenly the massive shortcomings of nearly the entire Washington press corps seem completely understandable.

[LA Weekly graphic.]

This baby pudu is determined not to let Mitt Romney and his roof mounts anywhere near:

Vigilance: the eternal price of not being strapped to Mitt Romney’s family car and driven around at high speed for hours until your bladder gives out.