You’re invited to join me (but you’ll have to get tickets):

1. On Wednesday evening I’m attending the opening of “Pippin” at East West Players with terrific playwright friend Dorinne Kondo. As regular readers of this blog know, I’m not much for musicals (even though I did see four in one month recently), but EWP routinely does some of the best theatre in town, and this piece in today’s LA Times further whetted my appetite.

2. On Thursday night I’ll be slinging my axe, virtually, in Koreatown when I take on “Guitar Hero” as part of Moving Arts’ one-act festival fundraiser. Ten bucks gets you pizza, snacks, a drink, and all the humiliation you can take. Here’s the Evite; hope you can make it and hope it’s a full Rock Band set-up (guitar, keyboards, drums, vocals) because I sing a mean “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

3. On Friday night I’m seeing “Trying” at the Colony. This is a show I’m dearly anticipating. I missed it last year during its first run; now it’s back for two weeks only. Here’s the press release. The play stars Alan Mandell, an actor I dearly love and one I’ve seen I don’t know how many times on stage and on screen. There are two reasons I’ve seen him so often on stage: He is a legendary actor of Beckett’s plays (and my mission, upon arriving in Los Angeles 20 years ago, was to see as many plays by Beckett, Pinter, Albee, and Ionesco as possible, because their availability in southern New Jersey was scant), a personal friend and collaborator of the playwright and a co-founder of the San Quentin Drama Workshop (in 1958!). And he’s performed countless times with some of the most inventive small-theatre practitioners in town. On screen, he pops up in “Shortbus” (where he’s The Mayor, a character clearly, um, influenced by Ed Koch) He’s a wonderful actor and seemingly tireless at age 80; but, given that 80 is indeed 80, now is the time to see him. (And below, you can see him appear in a trash can as Nagg in Beckett’s “Endgame.”)

4. No tickets needed for this one. On Saturday I’m emceeing a political event for area Democrats. Here’s the link for more information. The press release reads (and you’ll note we’ll be doing voter registration, so this provides another opportunity to test Frank Rich’s theory):

Come hear the candidates and gobble some BBQ!

This year the Burbank Democrats’ annual family picnic joins up with the Glendale and Northeast L.A. Dems for a pre-June 3 primary event with politicos from the tri-club area.

Currently confirmed to speak and take questions are U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of the 29th, and Democratic challenger Russ Warner of the 26th; retiring state Sen. Jack Scott of the 21st District and Carol Liu, contending to replace him; former Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer; and Assembly members Paul Krekorian (43rd) and Anthony Portantino (44th). Judicial and central committee candidates will also be in the mix. Not confirmed yet are U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (27th), State Assembly Member Kevin deLeon (45th) and state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo (22nd)… or the chance of a surprise or two.

Keynoter will be Rick Jacobs of Courage Campaign; Burbank founding president/Truman Award winner Lee Wochner will emcee. Voter registration before the May 19 cut-off will be available.

Please note! Meat and side dishes are provided, but please bring your favorite salad or desserts as pot-luck.

For more info and updates, see www.burbankdemocraticclub.com or call 818-288-2649.

5. On Sunday I’ll be running 3 miles in Santa Monica, testing out the $250-worth of running and hydration gear guaranteed to make me run better. I don’t expect to see you there. And don’t expect to see me here immediately afterward.

This Tuesday I’m having lunch with Gerald Locklin. It’s my treat, in more ways than one.

A year and a half ago when I learned that Gerry was going to be joining us in the USC Master of Professional Writing program, I was delighted. I knew him in two different ways: as a poet whose work I greatly enjoyed, and as a famed friend of Charles Bukowski.

Since our first meeting at a faculty luncheon, Gerry has been unfailingly kind. As someone who writes faster than most of us can read, he’s had I think four books come out in the past 18 months, and he’s put a signed copy of each one in my MPW mailbox. He’s also shown up at every one of my own events, including Moving Arts’ 15th Anniversary. This sort of support from a fellow writer, especially one as highly esteemed as Gerry, means a lot.

Last week I ordered his book “Bukowski: A Sure Bet” from an obscure bookseller on the internet. It arrived at my office and I started to read it and immediately thought I should order another copy for my good friend Rich Roesberg, who introduced me to Bukowski’s work 25 years ago. That night when I checked my mailbox at USC, I found that Gerry had already put a copy there. So among his many other gifts, he appears to be psychic as well. (Note to Uncle Rich: this is your other non-birthday present, when I see you in June.) I saw Gerry that night at a reception and invited him to lunch. Until recently, I haven’t made enough time for friends and colleagues, and that was something I resolved to change in 2008. None of us knows how long we have before getting hit by that metaphoric big bus, and I didn’t want to miss the chance to have lunch with Gerald Locklin. I’ll let you know how that goes.

In the meantime, here’s a poem of Gerry’s that I particularly admire. Garrison Keillor loves it, too, and has read it on the air and included it in his anthology “Good Poems.” It’s a good poem.

The Iceberg Theory

all the food critics hate iceberg lettuce.
you’d think romaine was descended from
orpheus’s laurel wreath,
you’d think raw spinach had all the nutritional
benefits attributed to it by popeye,
not to mention aesthetic subtleties worthy of
verlaine and debussy.
they’ll even salivate over chopped red cabbage
just to disparage poor old mr. iceberg lettuce.

I guess the problem is
it’s just too common for them.
it doesn’t matter that it tastes good,
has a satisfying crunchy texture,
holds its freshness,
and has crevices for the dressing,
whereas the darker, leafier varieties
are often bitter, gritty, and flat.
it just isn’t different enough, and
it’s too goddamn american.

of course a critic has to criticize:
a critic has to have something to say.
perhaps that’s why literary critics
purport to find interesting
so much contemporary poetry
that just bores the shit out of me.

at any rate, I really enjoy a salad
with plenty of chunky iceberg lettuce,
the more the merrier,
drenched in an italian or roquefort dressing.
and the poems I enjoy are those I don’t have
to pretend that I’m enjoying.

–Gerald Locklin

Frank Rich thinks this election is not like any in at least the past 20 years, and I hope he’s right. He doesn’t think finding a new Willie Horton is going to deep-six Obama, or charging him with elitism. And he thinks that the white working poor and middle class will come back to the Democrats.

One of the reasons he thinks Obama is going to prevail is all the new Democrats showing up at the polls already, in caucuses and primaries. Judging from my own limited personal experience, he may be right. Last year whenever I had a few free hours on a weekend, I helped register voters. Three out of every 10 voters we registered were people switching party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. We’ll see if that portends anything more wide scale.

What spurred me to sign up for the AIDS Marathon? A mailer that arrived at my office. Why did I get that mailer? I’m sure it was because of my subscription to Men’s Health.

(The very same reason I got a somewhat graphic postcard mailer from Playboy — delivered to my office — which I didn’t appreciate. And which I continued to unappreciate for at least a couple of minutes before tossing.)

I get a lot of magazines, and accordingly wind up on a lot of lists. Sometimes I wonder what the magazine marketing people make this somewhat eclectic grouping of 13 different publications.

There are the Men’s magazines: Men’s Vogue, and Men’s Health. (If it’s a men’s magazine but doesn’t say “Men’s” in the title, I don’t get it.)

There are the business publications: Portfolio, Inc., Fast Company, Los Angeles Business Journal, and San Fernando Business Journal. The last two are, respectively, weekly and biweekly. Fall behind by one issue and the next time you’re driving around and your wife says, “What’s that they’re building?” you’ll have no idea. I know: I’ve been there.

There are the general interest magazines: the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Harper’s. I never know what’s going to be in any of them, and I like it that way. I dislike the New Yorker’s “special” issues — The Money Issue, The Style Issue (especially loathed), the current Innovation Issue, even the Winter Fiction and Summer Fiction and Cartoon issues. Argh! If I wanted theme issues, I’d subscribe to magazines covering those themes! I know these are just thinly disguised plots to sell more ads around those themes, and to do it with my hard-earned 37 cents an issue or whatever.

And there are the one-offs: Wired (I’m a tech junkie, although mostly a window shopper), Reason (if only the Libertarians weren’t, well, nuts I’d join them), and the Dramatist.

My favorite of all these magazines will surprise most people who read this blog: Whenever it arrives, I lunge for that Inc. magazine. I actually have two subscriptions to the same magazine — one at home and one at my office — so that I’m never Inc-less. Every story is essentially a profile of someone somewhere in the U.S. faced with some odd opportunity or challenge, and how they resolved that problem — or failed. It’s like a monthly magazine of bitty biographies straight out of Sinclair Lewis. The writing is strong and the photography is excellent. I’ve taken to clipping out photographs of the people profiled and using them as writing prompts for students: who is this guy? What does he want? What is his problem? And so forth.

I love the New Yorker too; bless them for bringing Roz Chast into my life, and Jin Ha (with that recent short story about the Chinese house brothel in Flushing, NY; now I have to pick up the novel!), and Anthony Lane and so many others. I like the hard-hearted simplicity of Reason, which mandates that every judgment should be made completely free of compassion for one’s fellow man or of optimism for the future — surely, this is a model we need more of, hence my interest in learning more about it every month. And I like the Atlantic for reminding me seemingly every month that global warming already happened and now is the time to buy a retirement villa in soon-to-be sunny Siberia.

The subscription that I’m going to let lapse? Harper’s. It’s just too twee for me. I don’t understand the front section at all — the “Readings” are snippets yanked wholesale from other publications of any sort and any era; being unclear on the organizing principle, I’m unclear what I’m to make of it. It’s like the egghead equivalent of dropping acid: “Look at the bright colors of this writing!” You can see how reading both Harper’s and Reason in the same month might drive one to psychosis — and scuttling back to the safety of Men’s Vogue, where one can look at the smart Burberry jackets (the preferred label of Obama!) in peace.

Right now, I can just about run out to get the newspaper. But on October 19, 2008 I’ll be running 26.2 miles to raise money for AIDS Project LA.

Yes, I am training for the 2008 Amsterdam Marathon, which will take place on October 19, 2008. (Please click here to sponsor me.) From May until October, I’ll be logging nearly 500 miles in this six-month training program put on by the National AIDS Marathon. It’s an exciting journey. The worst part will be getting up before 10 a.m. (like — SIX A.M.).

But it’ll be worth it. Not only will I lose 15 pounds or so, enabling me to return in November to a diet of beer and buttery clams, the money I raise will benefit AIDS Project LA, the largest provider of HIV/AIDS services in Los Angeles. Their clinic provides direct medical care, food, dentistry and other essential AIDS services — to people with no other options. 100% of APLA clients make $19,000 or less a year (in Los Angeles!); of those, half earn less than $9,000 a year. And they’re all uninsured.

Please show your support now with as generous a contribution as you can make. My personal goal is to raise at least $1,500 by May 31st. Your contribution is tax-deductible and it will make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of people living with AIDS. Every donation of any size will help.

(But not recently.)

Yesterday I signed up to do the AIDS Marathon in Amsterdam this October 19th.

More to follow, I’m sure.

Love this short piece on Salon about just how Hillary Clinton blew the nomination. Yes, she was the wrong candidate with the wrong message and the wrong position (nearer Bush) at this point. But more importantly, her campaign arrogantly bet the farm on an early victory, and her chief strategist didn’t understand the rules. That’s really bad.

I would add on more theory, relative to Indiana and North Carolina:  When your opponent is running as the candidate of “change” and “truth,” and you decide to pander on the gas tax, you’re just handing him ammunition.

Never forget that everyone has his own point of view.

Case in point:  “Sex dungeon dad says, ‘I’m not a monster.'”

VIENNA, Austria – Austrian Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered her seven children, said he was no “monster” and he could have killed her and her children had he wanted to, according to his lawyer.

“I am not a monster,” Austrian daily Oesterreich quoted Fritzl as saying in comments relayed by his lawyer Rudolf Mayer. Fritzl also criticized media coverage of his case as “totally one-sided.”

Seen from his point of view, the coverage does seem incredibly biased, no?

Investors in presidential memorabilia, take note.

This is the Hillary Clinton bobblehead, available here.

Given what just happened — a blowout win for Obama in North Carolina, and a squeaker in Indiana — I’m thinking that between the bobblehead and its model, the bobblehead has a promising future.

Yesterday I went to the mall on a personal errand. The mall has a bookstore, or at least a Borders Express posing as a bookstore, so I also thought I’d drop in there and buy a play to read. A 30ish clerk of indeterminate shape came over to help me.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

“I’m looking for your drama section,” I said.

“That would be in with literature,” she said, corralling me precisely where I already was and was already looking. Then to confuse matters, she added, “If what you’re looking for isn’t there, it’ll be in fiction.”

“Why?” I said. “It isn’t fiction.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s drama.”

“What’s drama?” she said.

I glanced at her badge to make sure that she did indeed work at this bookstore, then looked around to make sure that this was indeed a bookstore. I gave myself a qualified yes to each inquiry. “Plays,” I said.

“If we have any, they’ll be on the bottom shelf.”

So of the literature section, which contains novels that are in some way “literature” but not “fiction,” the bottom shelf would be reserved for plays if there were any. I looked. There weren’t. Unless you count those of Mr. Shakespeare, which don’t count: In my mind, they are there by dint of being “literature” and because no one can hang a shingle that says “book store” without having them, even if your name is Borders Express. What was there, on the “drama” shelf of the “literature” section of the “bookstore” were a few anthologies of poems. I leafed through one and liked it a lot and was going to buy it but then quickly decided that I didn’t want to reward Borders Express, so I put it back.

Macy’s, by the way, had socks in the menswear department next to the shoes, and handkerchiefs where one would expect them, too, and both salespeople I asked knew this. If only Macy’s sold books.