A handful of pixie dust

COULDN’T YOU just gag over all this Anna Nicole Smith coverage? Here we have suffered through February, a cruel and chilly month dominated by the underdressed -- Cupid and Oscar strumpets. And the best we can do is tune into this gawd-awful Florida hearing over where they will bury the poor dear, assuming that’s even physically possible.

The entire nasty episode is exposing us for what we really are, the “trailer trash nation.” Who needs serious newspapers in a country like this, where Britney’s bad haircut counts as a current event? I fear for our once-great nation. Soon, even Bangladesh will be whipping us in math and building better sedans.

Speaking of Smith, which everybody is, wouldn’t the ultimate American sex symbol be an 80-foot-tall blond with a 500-inch chest and one brain cell? I hope to see such a divine creature in my lifetime, if only to chuckle over the tabloid frenzy it might cause. Maybe she’ll come along when I’m 90 and I could marry her, father a few 80-foot-tall children and revitalize the species.

That’s assuming, of course, that such a union would be OK with my current wife, who’s always been pretty reasonable about my oddball behavior. A polygamous relationship with a big, bleachy blond might be just the thing our marriage needs. Note to self: Don’t give up on married life just yet.

All this is a roundabout way of saying it might be good to get out of the house awhile, in the name of a little fresh air and sanity. Sometimes no sound is the best sound. Sometimes the best sound is just the sound of no TV.

“You should take him tadpoling,” my wife says, eager to be free of me, who knows why.

“Take who?”

“Him,” she says, pointing to the 4-year-old in the corner, who sits on the carpet pulling dust particles out of the air.

I don’t know if I ever told you this, but the little guy likes to sit in the sunlight, the sharp shards of early morning, and grab the shiny little dust particles out of the air. In the light, the drifting little specks sparkle like angels. I tell him that if he likes dust, he’s come to the right place.

“Let’s go,” I say.

“Where?” he asks.

“We’re going to find tadpoles,” I say.

“Can we go to McDonald’s?” he asks.

“They have tadpoles?” I ask.

“Silly Daddy,” he says.

So off we go in pursuit of tadpoles, which seems like an easy endeavor, given all the rain we’ve had lately -- half an inch since October? We’ll be fortunate to find a live tree, let alone tadpoles swimming in the usual spring soup.

“This was your mother’s idea,” I remind the little guy.

“That’s OK, Daddy.”

“We’d have better luck finding gold,” I tell him.

The weatherman keeps saying “RAIN AHEAD! RUN FOR COVER!” but the storms never arrive, just delirious predictions of monsoons and anarchy. After last week’s dire predictions, I started to build an ark, even sketched out a nice little cabin cruiser on some scrap paper on my work bench, where I’m always sketching out weekend projects or writing lewd love sonnets to my wife, Zsa Zsa.

“Roses are red,

my boxers are blue,

I wanna get crazy,

with you, you, you, you ... “

OK, it needs a little work. But unlike a lot of lewd love sonnets, this one’s not offensive. Plus, it’s pretty easy to remember after a couple of cocktails.

“Are we there yet?” asks a little voice from the backseat.

Oh, that’s right, the tadpole. Turns out it’s pretty tricky juggling midlife and this new little boy, who wakes up each morning expecting new and exciting things at just the moment in life when I’m realizing all the cartilage is gone from my knees. The two of us are an odd couple: him the innocent with the Disney deer eyes; me the war-weary mentor. Like Lennon and McCartney, a little acerbic and a little sweet.

“Hey, this area looks pretty good,” I tell him.

“Maybe,” he says.

We are entering the hills around Lake Hollywood, just off Barham, not far from Warner’s. Lake Hollywood is like L.A.’s little Appalachia, brimming with scrub pine, coyotes and all sorts of hillbillies. It is also renowned for its tadpoles, active as wild salmon. If we can’t find the little critters here in the primeval muck, we may as well throw away our tadpole guns.

“Yep, this looks pretty good,” I say, spotting the lovely crystal surface of the big blue reservoir.

“I love tadpoles,” the little guy says.

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” I say.

Next week: Snout to snout with the mighty tadpole.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com. For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.