Rogers Hammerstein, a television reality-show producer of some renown, is pounding his thumbs on top of his iPhone screen, writing a rather too-long group text to a bunch of industry pals.

Two years into the pandemic, what had been a regular Saturday morning gang whose members met for breakfast at Art’s Delicatessen in  Studio City had now almost entirely devolved to a virtual social circle, with a few tidbits of studio gossip thrown out, along with a few lame golf jokes, all into their collective telephones.

God, how Rogers hated the virtual stuff. The Zoom meetings, the FaceTimes, the whatevers. Fine, you can get some work done as opposed to none. Swell, you were never caught in traffic yourself or having to listen to the tiresome stories of those who were late because of the 405. But he missed the 12:30 table at the Ivy. He missed the Polo Lounge martini after. Really, he missed the guys.

“Pals, listen up,” he texted. “You know that SB 9 nonsense? The thing from our Sacramento buddies to whom we send such resources when election time rolls around? The granny flats, the duplexes, triplexes, the four houses to a lot for godsake?”

He stopped and hit send. Seconds later, Brownie White, the bigshot lawyer, texted: “Accessory dwelling units. ADUs.”

“Right, Brownie, the technical term. Point is, are we gonna let these Silicon Valley er fat cats up in bucolic Woodside eat our L.A. lunch when it comes to stopping this mass densification of California?” He pressed send.

Randy Peters, the Disney exec: “Have to admit that Palo Alto-adjacent wildcat action is a pretty smart scam, though. But what about the mountain lions? they say. Where the cougars gonna live if the rabid real estate guys pock the sprawling Woodside lawns with little dingbat rental units? Pumas got rights, too!”

“Point is,” Rogers continues, “these Facebook schmucks in Woodside have never even seen a mountain lion in their town! Yet they’re using — or were gonna use, I think they folded already, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea, and we can take it to the bank — this ‘mountain lion habitat’ storyline to sell to the bleeding hearts in Sacto so as to keep the grannies out of the flats in their neck of the woods, capice? But right here in your Brentwood, your Tarzana, your Hollywood Hills we’ve got our mountain lions on the record! Remember that big cat P 22? The one on the Sports Illustrated cover with the Hollywood sign in the background?”

“It was Nat Geo, babe. This is a feline, not a swimsuit model,”  Walter Luger reminded the group.

“Same difference,” Rogers continued. “He’s world-renowned! Got video of him holed up under that house in Beachwood Canyon in January. He snarfed that koala at the L.A. Zoo just the other day. He’s the king of Los Feliz! Girl in the Times talked about his ‘tawny good looks’! ‘He’s the Brad Pitt of the cougar world,’ says that chick with the big cat tattoo. She’s talking our language! I’m telling you, 22 is our boy against this whole lousy dense L.A.”

“I don’t know, Rog,” the lawyer chimes in. “We got to keep our powder dry with the electeds for when we really need to grease the wheels — in-state production tax breaks, that kind of thing. The lions? Didn’t work out for our Big Tech brethren.”

“They didn’t know how to sell the story!” Rogers responds. “Who’s better at storytelling than us, the big cats of Hollywood. Am I right?”

Radio silence from the gang. Rogers gave up.

“OK, I got a tee time at Lakeside in an hour anyway. Just trying to protect your sacred overpriced real estate. Ciao for now and, hey, next year in the old booth at Art’s, am I right?”

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. [email protected].