Breakfast with Warren and Annette

I take my breakfast most mornings at Le Pain Quotidien, a Belgian café on Ventura Boulevard. I don’t usually use phrases like “take my breakfast,” but something about Francophone cafés calls for snobbish diction. I like to think it’s a classier place than the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf where Perez Hilton grows his beard.

Sitting at a corner table this morning were Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. Senator Bulworth was rolling calls about a talk he planned to give on an unspecified ballot proposal, and he was speaking loudly enough for everyone in my half of the café to hear. His wife was actively engaged in the goings-on but, perhaps aware that she was in a public place, spoke in an indiscernible low rumble.

Bugsy was concerned that the text of the initiative he had in his possession was not the exact text which was out for signatures, and he was trying to confirm which text was which. He had a point.

Last year, Governor Schwarzenegger got into a pickle because the Attorney General approved one version of a ballot initiative but the version which was circulated for voter signatures had somewhat different wording. Two lower courts kicked the proposition off the ballot, but the California Supreme Court bailed the Governor out and ordered the proposition to go before the voters, the legal impact of the disparate wording to be decided after the election. The proposition failed, and the state Supreme Court, in ruling that the specific dispute had become moot, warned that “proponents of initiative petitions would be well advised to take all steps necessary to ensure that the mishap that occurred in the present case does not recur in the future.” So give Clyde Barrow credit for keeping up with precedent and voicing a legitimate concern.

Then John Reed said the words you never want to hear from the guy talking next to you on a cel phone: “Let me put you on speakerphone.”

I jerked my head and gave Dick Tracy my best hairy eyeball. Everybody has the God-given right to sit in a café and plot the revolution. But if you’re going to put your comrade on speakerphone, take it back to HQ.

Whether or not he saw me, the taller one from Ishtar changed his mind and continued talking normally, saving the other patrons from hearing the musings of his cadre. I finished my Paris ham and Gruyere cheese omelet, served with mesclun salad and black coffee. Man and wife were still at their table, rolling calls, when I left.

Finally, the conventions of celebrity reportage obligate me to inform you that both Mister Beatty and Miss Bening looked radiant, were dressed in understated but expensive-looking clothing and were not in the company of any of their perfect, sparkling children.