Well, I’ve broken in my new writing office at home. Just finished the first draft of a new play in here. While running downstairs periodically to check on a big complicated soup I’m making.

I watched the first Democratic presidential debate of the season last night, with my daughter, who is 17 and a soon-to-be first-time voter. Her insights into the debate were somewhat different than mine. To my ear, it took Hillary Clinton all of 10 seconds to start pandering on issues that she knows she couldn’t affect if she were made president for life (such as mandating profit-sharing by corporations). My daughter, in addition to cheering on free college tuition and railing against what I know she was mentally characterizing as “handouts” (she’s rather conservative on some issues; one of her brothers called her a fascist the other day), she had this to say about the candidates: “They’re all so olllddd. Lincoln Chafee looks like a turkey. And Hillary dyes her hair.” Which reminded me that, eons ago, Millicent Fenwick, a female candidate for Senate in New Jersey, lost her race purely because she was photographed smoking a cigar. (Far ahead of her time, Ms. Fenwick.) With about 15 minutes left in the debate, it occurred to me that while Emma will be a voter in next year’s presidential race (she’s already registered), she won’t be eligible to vote in the primary, which in California is in June, because her birthday is in July. So, to some degree, the debate would have been pointless to her. The instant I related this to her, she picked herself up and left the room.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be looking to do a quick polish on that play, then I have a meeting I’m looking forward to, and then later I’m off to Knott’s Scary Farm (!) with said daughter, her ominously silent boyfriend, my elder son and my good friend Trey. Every year for more than 15 years now, Trey and I partake in haunted mazes. A couple of years ago, I swore off Knott’s Scary Farm (our usual haunt) because it had grown so colorless, but last year Universal Studio’s Haunted Halloween was so over-saturated with shuffling bodies standing in line for hours desperately trying to get elsewhere that you’d have thought the zombie apocalypse had begun. Given that, plus a rave review for the reportedly massive upgrade that Knott’s has done this year, we’re back at Knott’s Berry Farm. So: not sure if there’ll be a post here tomorrow. I hope I’ll be getting the bejeezus scared out of me in an entertaining fashion.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2015 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Playwriting, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.