I was getting my hair cut at the Malibu Barber Shop and thinking about that Steve Lopez column, the one about how our little city got a lot of hate mail after the fires. With early TV coverage tending toward a breathless tally of the pricey chandeliers and precious couture handbags lost when a castle (!) burned, then switching to news that James Cameron and Olivia Newton-John had to evacuate their homes, but Jennifer Aniston, Nick Nolte and David Geffen were OK, the fact that people were peeved came as no surprise.

And while I was thinking about how it's not really all that strange here, how Malibu's 13,000 residents include people who clean houses and mow lawns, fix cars and unplug your toilet, cut your hair and run the registers at Ralphs and Ralph Lauren, rent apartments and share houses, live in their childhood homes homes, which their parents or grandparents paid maybe $40,000 for way back when Malibu was a rural backwater, while I was thinking about all that, Kelsey Grammer walked by.

Which reminded me that Pam Anderson had been in line in front of me in Starbucks and that Jerry Seinfeld's Porsche had been parked at the cafe next door. Headed for the barn, I passed Don Henley's vegetable garden and, back on PCH, paparazzi lurked in wait for poor, sad Britney Spears.

On the way home I saw Minnie Driver and just as I turned into the Cove, there was one of People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive guys (think naked bongo drums) jogging.

And that's as far as I got with my little column about how Malibu, really, it's not that different from anywhere else.