WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Beach blanket bozo

Beach season will soon be upon us and I should get down there at some point, but I don’t see how I can. Not until we’ve got a little open-air Internet café at Main Beach.

Now don’t get in a huff. The beach is supposed to be a paradise, isn’t it? Shouldn’t paradise have everything? I can’t take my laptop down there; there’s too much sand. A Blackberry would be too small. I need my big screen. There’s just so much on it.

For one thing, I check my e-mail 15 to 40 times a day in case there’s something I have to act on. You think I’m just making myself sound important, but here’s an example:

I just got one from a businesswoman in Nigeria who has $10.5 million to distribute and, in searching for a good and honest person to help her, found me. I can have 30% for helping her donate the rest to charities and “Motherless homes.” These are the kinds of opportunities you need to be able to jump on.

But what really made it clear how much I need my screen is a recent AOL picture — one of those news stories they rotate all day to keep us au courant. It was a candid photo of Lindsay Lohan with one finger, possibly, in her nose. You hit the link to find out for sure. If I’d been at the beach I’d have missed it. And on a Blackberry I wouldn’t have been able to see it.

You might not think such a photo is news, or even entertainment news. But the good folks at AOL wouldn’t put it up there if we weren’t interested. Inquiring minds want to know if Lindsay’s finger was in her nose — although that says more about our picking on Lindsay than it does about Lindsay picking anything else.

My point is that it no longer works to have the newspaper in the morning and the TV news at night and maybe go to the beach in between. I need to be up-to-the-minute. I believe we’re accelerating toward a cultural silliness bottom, and I want to be there when we hit it.

I don’t want to miss the next ambush of Lindsay or Britney, or the next dumb thing Jessica says, even though I’m not sure who Jessica is.

My suggestion for Main Beach is a walled, wireless, grit-free platform next to the playground, for those of us who want to get away from it all and still bring it all with us.

The thing that’s always kind of bugged me about the beach, anyway, is the sand. It’s so ... grainy. Worst thing for a computer, except water. If I get sand in my laptop I might as well go ahead and throw it in the ocean.

Yeah, I know, not a bad idea. But it’s too late for me. I can’t go back. Can you?

SHERWOOD KIRALY is a Laguna Beach resident. He has written four novels, three of which were critically acclaimed.