I stopped off at the Barnes & Noble in Marina Del Rey to buy the new Michael Connelly book, "Echo Park." The store was quite empty and I asked a cashier where they had a copy. She walked me over to the front of the store that has new arrivals on a big dark brown table and I picked one up. On the same table, there were several copies of Bill O'Reilly's new polemic "Culture Warrior." His head had a shiny glare from the florescent lights up above.

I asked her how the book was selling and she told me that Woodward's book knocked all of them off of the B&N's charts. I told her how Billy was bad mouthing Nancy Pelosi last night because the polls were favoring the Democrats when suddenly, a man probably in his late seventies or early eighties dressed in small yellow shorts and a red cap grabbed O'Reilly's book off the table and yelled at me,

"Damn Liberal! Now I'm buying this book, you goddamn liberal," and he stormed away.

I turned to the cashier and started laughing as she was trying to restrain herself. I mean, that came out of nowhere.

"Now there's an O'Reilly fan for you, " she said.

I felt really bad because he did get quite excited.

I said, "Wow, he became unglued just because I said Billy dissed Pelosi. I'd like to talk to him for a few minutes and calm him down."

We were both kind of surprised because it seemed like he popped out of the ground right below our feet. It also seems to support the NY Times article about his age demographic, but I digress. I asked her if she liked hard-boiled detective fiction when suddenly, the man scurried past us with Billy's new book in a plastic bag tucked under his arm, head tilting to the ground and yelled at the cashier.

"Don't talk to him. He's a liberal!"

And he stormed through the doors and out into the parking lot.

I looked at her and said, "I guess a nice little chat is out of the question."

Well Bill, I think you should thank me personally for selling a copy of your book and all. It's the least you can do.