Excuse a moment to vent:
Los Angeles has a law making it illegal to hold a cell phone and talk while driving. Also known as the "earpiece manufacturer's full employment act", it kind of makes sense. We've all seen phone-crazed/distracted drivers doing insane things while talking and driving, so anything that minimizes that is probably a good thing.
As a law abiding (mostly) citizen, I dutifully bought my earpiece after the law passed and yes, I use it. As I was yesterday morning, driving through Hollywood.
A brief aside on how my earpiece works. It's called "The Jawbone" and it has some screwy noise-canceling circuitry that kicks in when it is securely touching, well, your jaw. It also has volume and "on/off" switches in the earpiece itself. Connecting a call or disconnecting or raising or lowering the volume requires one to touch the earpiece. So there I was, driving down lovely Sunset Blvd., touching my earpiece to end a call, when a motorcycle cop flashes his lights and pulls me over. Since I was sober (*whew*) and, well, innocent, I was baffled. Befuddlement turned to cranky anger when the cop accused me of using my cell phone. I showed him the earpiece in my ear, explaining that no, I was on an earpiece. The Officer (*) then accused me of lying, claiming I had stuck the earpiece in before pulling over (!). After "some words", I got a ticket and a stern warning to "not get into this here."
So I guess I'll get into it in court...
* I had a litany of colorful epithets ready to describe this fella, but I have eschewed them so as to encourage impressionable readers of this blog to respect law officers. Except, of course, FOR THIS KNUCKLEHEAD (**).
** That was one of the milder epithets.
