We were vacationing at an eco-tourist resort on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica a few years ago (where the picture of me sitting barefoot to your left there was taken), learning about the rain forest and the peninsula’s micro climate when we weren’t drinking fruit juice and relaxing. The resort had a naturalist on staff who would take you out and introduce you to the many worlds beneath the surface of everything — the colonies of cutter ants, the fruit bats that swarmed the skies at dusk. it was a little hair-raising at times to learn just how much life was teeming all around you.

Because of its proximity to Southern California (the Osa is a straight shot, via plane, from LAX) and the excellent surfing to be found on its beaches, the place got a lot of Hollywood traffic. The guide told us about one tour he gave to a famous movie producer, a one-man show in keeping with the producer’s schedule and need for exclusivity. This mogul was famously ADD and grew flustered as the guide explained in great detail what was going on in the ecosystems at his feet and above his head. “Too much information!” he shrieked at our hapless docent, putting his hands over his ears like that fellow in The Scream. “Can’t you just make it simple?”

This was clearly a man who had heard too many high-concept pitches but our guide was obliging and started giving the producer the bare bones that’s-a-bird-and-that’s-a-bee version of his tour, but before long he found himself on the receiving end. His guest began bragging about his sexual conquests — from the models in surfing magazines to A-list movie stars — none of which the guide gave a damn about. “I wanted to cover my ears and yell back at him: ‘Too much information!'”

Having heard yet one more report about newly inaugurated New York governor David Paterson’s life as a legally blind buccaneer, I’m starting to appreciate how he felt. In the wake of the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal, Paterson thought it best to talk frankly about his own sexual past before he was sworn in, and in a bizarre news conference, the former lieutenant governor and his wife answered questions about their past infidelities. Then it turned out that there may have been more than one extramarital adventure (bringing to mind one of David Letterman’s Top Ten Eliot Spitzer Excuses: “Have you ever been to Albany?”).

Now he would like us to know that he also used pot and coke — okay, I got the message! If you want to get the party started, call the governor. I’d just like to say that if getting high and messing around was all it took to get appointed to political office, I should have been king of the world a long time ago. But for the time being, can’t we just give it a rest? Unless you were using the public’s money to cover up your shenanigans like the mayor of Detroit, I don’t really care what (or who) you were doing. Last I heard, New York State has a $5 billion budget deficit. Why don’t you work on filling that hole, and leave the partying to the folks in New Jersey?