The whole Tom Hanks, pre-Larry Crowne premiere, scooter-brigade-down-Hollywood-Blvd. thing went out the window yesterday afternoon when I threw my right leg over my scooter and my back dress slacks ripped open at the crotch. A big gaping hole with frayed threads, and it was 6:05 pm — five minutes past the scooter get-together hour and 90 minutes before the start of Larry Crowne, the movie.

It would have been humiliating to schmooze around the Chinese and the after-party with my white briefs on display, so I definitely had to fix this. The smart thing would have been to drive straight home and slip on a new pair of dress pants, only that would have eaten up a good hour, or nearly that. I still had hopes of doing the scooter parade so I went around looking for some black underwear that would make the hole less noticable. Except I couldn’t find the right store with the right briefs. I finally found a pair at a West Hollywood Target (La Brea and Santa Monica Blvd.) and put them on in the rest room. But by the time I got back to the Chinese it was 7:10 pm. So I shined the scooter thing and just parked and went upstairs to the Chinese, all flustered and sweaty but at the same time relieved.

How was the movie…? That’s another riff. I’ll post it in an hour or two.

The Larry Crowne after-party was murder. Way too many bodies, too much noise, a terrible cavern-like atmosphere downstairs, grotesque house music…not a place of peace or fulfillment. The character known as Larry Crowne (i.e., the guy played by Tom Hanks) would have taken one look and turned around, gotten on his scooter and puttered down to the Piano Bar on Selma, which is what I did (along with the lady I was with). That was the way to go, all right. Seriously — the party was against everything that Larry Crowne tried to say and be.