My joke about LA is that we don't have seasons; we have fires, mudslides, earthquakes, and freeway chases.

Speaking of LA freeway chases (perhaps the most famous one, even though it really wasn't a "chase")...

I never saw the original Terminator and finally caught it when I happened upon it on TV this past rainy & windy Saturday (Seattle has, ugh, now begun its 6-month slog through shitty & depressing weather.)

After watching the film -- which I enjoyed but didn't love -- I decided to read about it on Wikipedia and I found this particular tidbit highly ironic:

One of Cameron's first tasks was to find someone to play Kyle Reese. Orion wanted a star whose popularity was rising in the United States but who also would have foreign appeal. Orion's co-founder Mike Medavoy had met Arnold Schwarzenegger and sent his agent the script for The Terminator. Cameron was dubious about casting Schwarzenegger as Reese as he felt he would need someone even bigger to play the Terminator. The studio had suggested O. J. Simpson for the role of the Terminator, but Cameron did not feel that Simpson would be believable as a killer.