…and I’m out of here.

It’s been another fruitful trip to la-la land, although I could have done with the site of my fellow critics trying to keep up with the “Dancing With the Stars” pros at last night’s party. Here’s a few nuggets from my final days:

Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons”:
“You know what really bothers me about animation? Every one of those CGI animated movies that has a cute animal in it, for me they look like toys. They look like figurines that you would see in the toy store. But that’s OK. I can get by that. It’s that they have human eyeballs with little human irises, and so whenever I’m watching any of those movies, I get freaked out because I go, ‘They put human eyeballs in those characters.’ That really bugs me. So I like the fact that I get to work with animators who is are able to draw almost perfect circles, little ovals with dots. That’s an eyeball.”

Legendary actress Joan Leslie on the first day of shooting “Sgt. York”:
“I met this wonderful-looking creature, this Gary Cooper with the handsomest, sweetest-looking face. And I didn’t know what to say. And he felt that, so he addressed me first and said, ‘Howdy, Miss Gracie. And I said, “Oh, howdy, Alvin.’ And he referred to me as Gracie, my part in the picture. So we called each other Alvin and Gracie all the way through the picture. I never called him Gary. I thought that would be very presumptuous on my part.”

“Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, appearing after a Fox News panel:
“This is where Karl Rove sat, ‘cause I don’t want to get AIDS.”

Richard Lewis on his comic influences:
“My parents used to hide their Redd Foxx albums with the condoms in the bedroom.”

Jane Seymour, star of the upcoming Lifetime movie “Dear Prudence”:
“I think some people who do ‘Dancing With The Stars’ do it to get into reality programming. I am not a reality person. I like drama. I have enough reality. I have six kids.”

Celebs often whisper among themselves when they’re sitting together on a panel, but the conversation between Peter Krause and Lucy Liu of “Dirty Sexy Money” seemed particularly, well, interesting, with Liu erupting in giggles. When one reporter asked if they would reveal the contents of their private chat, they both declined. “I feel like I just got caught passing notes in school,” Krause said.

The first question at the press conference for ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson, came from a particularly pushy reporter from the back, who insisted on knowing whether the network was going to abandon Jimmy Kimmel for Jay Leno. “If you do that, do you worry that something might happen to you or your car?” It slowly became clear the loudmouth with the mike was none other than Kimmel himself who then snuck out the back to big laughs.

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