The ‘NCIS’ star loves a good deal

THERE aren’t many actresses with graduate degrees, yet Pauley Perrette’s master’s in criminology -- which jibes nicely with her role as forensics queen Abby Sciuto on “NCIS” (Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS) -- only scratches the surface of her depths. There are her poetry and spoken-word gigs, a music CD and the documentary she’s doing on civil-rights lawyer Mark Lane.

So how does the Hollywood resident describe herself? In a word: “Simple.”

Movies and a Bud

In preparation for our weekend, my boyfriend Michael and I will have gone to Borders on Tuesday and picked up some new DVD releases, because we love to sit home on a Friday and watch movies with our two rescue mutts and a cat. I love documentaries of any kind and my boyfriend is into anything with great cinematography.

We might go out to dinner first at El Coyote on Beverly -- awesome Mexican food, and even though they don’t take reservations, they always take good care of our group, which is usually me, my boyfriend and about 10 of my gay male friends from the neighborhood. I’ve been going there for 10 years and always sit on the patio, and I always order the exact same thing: ground-beef burrito with cheese and sauce on top, no onions and a side of sour cream, and a Budweiser longneck in the bottle, with no glass.

Or if we felt like bringing food home, we’d go to Shintaro for great sushi. That’s the only place I order something other than Bud. I’d get an Asahi.

Cops and robbers

On Saturday I’ll get up and grab a cup of coffee and take the dogs for a long walk. If Michael takes them, they go all the way up to the reservoir, but if I’m taking them we never seem to get that far. Then Michael and I always look forward to going to Home Depot, because we really enjoy building stuff or fixing things around the house. I also like to plant things, so I’ll stop at OSH for some seeds.

But everything stops on Saturday nights at 9, because I have to watch “America’s Most Wanted” and everyone knows it. After that, my favorite thing in the world is a gay dive bar with a pool table that serves Budweiser in a bottle. I have a place in mind, but I’m not going to tell you the name because I don’t want other people to know about it. All I’ll say is that it’s walking distance from my neighborhood.

Down and across

On Sunday we’ll go to Denny’s for breakfast. It’s my favorite restaurant in the world, and I always order the All-American Slam with extra cheese. So I’ll sit there and eat and do the L.A. Times’ crossword puzzle, and I’m in heaven. After that, I might go to the United Methodist Church on Franklin and Highland. When I first moved here from New York, I was driving down Franklin and saw this beautiful old building with a big red AIDS ribbon wrapped around it. That was the church, and for the first time I started feeling comfortable about living in L.A.

After that I’ll go hit all the thrift stores, but my favorite is right nearby, Out of the Closet on Sunset. It’s a really colorful, happy place, and all of the money goes to AIDS research. And you can walk from Denny’s to Out of the Closet. Can you imagine? That’s so great.

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-- Mark Sachs