You don't need a cookie phone to get stopped. I once got pulled over by a cop who said he saw me talking on my phone. In fact, the phone was in my pocket and powered off. And even if it had been on, I couldn't have made or received a call--it was a prepaid phone with no minutes on it.

(Luckily, the cop was reasonable and let me go with an apology.)

Did you apologize or did he?

[A.] Props for your semi-sarcastic deployment of "life model," suggesting that "role model" will soon suffer the grisly, suppurating, lonely death in public discourse which it so richly deserves.

[2.] I thought the rule was that you could talk to anyone you wanted anywhere in the world on the phone from a Cali freeway on-ramp as long as you were using hands-free technology.

I quit talking on the road after a 2005 cellular dressing-down from my loving mother, who wants me to live more than she wants to hear whatever line of bullshit I'm peddling on any given day.

But Amy, as you are, for many of us, the leading SoCal authority on speeding music and other automotive distractions, we expect clarity in these details.

Not quite sure what the link has to do with speeding music!

A friend of ours swears he stuck a sweet potato in his underwear on his way to the airport. When TSA stopped him as he went through the nudie scanner, he told the lady it was in in-flight snack for his penis.

I hope it's true.

Amy, darling, I was going to share this story in links column, but I'm so glad you found the story and posted it, where more people will see it.

I'm so glad this douchebag was hauled in (and moreso that he apparently learned his lesson). I might have problems with some of the things that the police have done but distracting them from their duties with pranks is a huge no-no.

Did you apologize or did he?

He did. But I think it would have gone differently if I wasn't older and respectable-looking.

Is driving with a cookie held to your ear less dangerous than driving with a cell phone held to your ear?

I just saw, while I was at the gym over lunch, a story on America Now about a cop who apparently pulled a cargo van over because it "looked overweight". The driver may have gotten a bit mouthy at that (it was hard to tell, the sound was off and I was trying to read the terrible closed-captioning), but anyway the cop called for backup. Mind you, the driver was unarmed. Anyay, they eventually browbeat the driver into consenting to a search, and when they opened the van's rear doors, they found... it was empty. The driver was smart; he was ABR (Always Be Recording) and got video of the whole thing. When they finally decided to let him go, the last thing the cop said was, "You're not going to post that to Youtube, right?"

"What Kind Of Idiot Pranks The Cops?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8Zh-mhqYM