These seem to be our choices for the next president.

(And, for the record, I’m an ENTJ, a type never mentioned in this piece.)

Above you see an artist’s representation of what the prehistoric Devil Frog, freshly discovered in fossil form, may have looked like. In the foreground is its smaller cousin, the Malagasy frog.

What I like so much about this rendering isn’t the impressive size of the Devil Frog, although I’m sure that if I ever came up against a frog the size of a basketball I would take notice. No, it’s the human psychology underlying this illustration. Good art always tells a story, knowingly or not. Bad art just sits there. One of the games I play with my students is to ask, “What happened just before this scene?” Because scenes are extensions of character, and these characters did something before this scene. In the above illustration, it looks to me like the smaller frog has just rounded a corner and screeched to a halt before colliding with serious trouble. The Devil Frog, or Beelzebufo ampinga, meanwhile, wears a sanguine expression, the sort recognizable by every littler guy all over the world. From the brow ridge to the faint jowly smile, that is an anthropomorphosized expression. Did the artist put it there intentionally, or was it discovered after creation? In my experience of my own writing and that of my students, I don’t know any more. Did Kafka intentionally set out to illuminate in his body of work the 20th century’s bureaucracy of death and degradation, or is it the fortunate byproduct of what he happened to be writing anyway? No matter what the adherents of formalism thought, there’s no separating the creator from the creation, the subtext from the context, or the figment of fossilized frog from the artist rendering it.

This video is well worth your five minutes.

Remember how I was saying that every day is a lesson in what I don’t know? Today’s lesson would be about octopi.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for alerting me to this.

In what is shaping up as a rough year for heroes of my comic-book youth, “Howard the Duck” creator and “Man-Thing” scribe Steve Gerber has died. Gerber wrote the strangest comic-books of his time, ones where cigar-smoking ducks dispensed wisdom and cows were struck by vampirism and Satan’s son was somehow a rebellious hero, and on and on. Thirty years later I still can’t understand what “Omega the Unknown” was really about, but it stuck with me. (And I still have all eight — only eight! — issues.) Mr. Gerber was very kind to me when I interviewed him for my badly mimeographed fanzine circa 1975, and his comics are proving to be kind to my two younger children, who are currently reading their way through his run in “Defenders,” a comic that once featured a supervillain team that included a woman with a red ball for a head and a gorilla with the balding head of an accountant. His work will live on.

In June of 2001 at a conference in Philadelphia I heard New York Times columnist Tom Friedman complain about what he called the “evernet.” Friedman said that increasingly we’re all in a condition of being ever-connected by cellphone and internet, a state that doesn’t allow for thoughtfulness, and that he personally was doing what he could to unplug by checking email relatively infrequently and by not… owning… a cellphone. I found the latter claim incredible, and he said so did most people who would call the Times insisting on having that cellphone number, only to have Mr. Friedman’s assistant say, “He doesn’t have a cellphone.”

These past four days I’ve thought a lot about what Friedman said, because I switched off my cellphone and email for four days (and counting) and left town. I had already been out of town for three days on business, and had been shall we say “robustly scheduled” for the four or five weeks prior. Now what I wanted was to talk to no one (except to say something like, “Yes, I’ll have another”) and I wanted to do nothing according to schedule. I didn’t even want to know what time it was. I wanted to be able to order room service if the mood struck me. And I wanted to be able to get everything I might want in one location. With those parameters in mind, I went to Las Vegas. While there, I checked no email, answered no cellphone calls, observed no appointments save one (which I’ll get to), and, incidentally, ordered no room service.

It felt strange. And wonderful.

One morning I ate “breakfast” (it was 11:30 a.m.) at the oyster bar. Breakfast consisted of New England clam chowder, six freshly arrived Bluepoint oysters, and a whiskey and soda. The day before at 6 p.m. I had had “lunch” there: steamed mussels, six assorted oysters, and two whiskeys with soda. On some day during my stay I ordered a meal that one would actually associate with breakfast — eggs, sausages, potatoes, orange juice — at 3 a.m. I don’t know what day that was.

I did some writing while I was there, just because I felt like it. It turned into a completed short story, written in one sitting. I still write plays that way, but I don’t think I’ve written a short story that way in 10 years.

And at some point Friday I decided that I was going to see the Cirque du Soleil show and Beatles tribute, “Love.” Once I bought the ticket, that was the one appointment I had to keep. When my wife and I went to Las Vegas in December I took her to see “Ka.” I had wanted to see “Love,” but it was dark that week. “Ka” had its moments, but its specious advocacy of primitivism over advanced civilization annoyed me in its naivete. (More about that soon, probably. I still have my notes.) “Love,” on the other hand was, well, awesome. In the literal sense. Everyone in the house felt awed by the performance, by the staged interpretations of the music, by the physical accomplishment and the ingenuity of the staging and most of all, afresh, by the music itself, no matter how rejiggered. Said mash-up did nothing to improve the original music, but by nature of the new context it did everything to remind one of its inherent originality. At one point, the entire audience is submerged, so to speak, down below with the Yellow Submarine. That feat alone showed the work of genius. I made a mental list of everyone I would like to bring back to see the show.

So, I had four days off. (I’m officially back checking email and the link tomorrow at noon.) It’s certainly not a lot of time. But in an over-connected and over-scheduled evernet time in my life, it was a welcome respite, the sort of thing done more easily before three kids with schedules all their own, and a hodgepodge of personal and professional obligations, all of them important to me. In the week before I left, while I was considering where to go, at one point I mentally had my passport in my hand. With a few more days I might have gone that route; Costa Rica looks beautiful and remote in those photos on the internet.

I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am that John McCain won the Florida primary today. Perhaps we’ll have a real choice this fall, the most interesting in my adulthood, between McCain and Obama.

Once upon a time, I was a McCain supporter. I wish they had run him in 2000, instead of that boob whose friends stole the election for him. I don’t care for the Senator as much as I once did, given his truckling embrace of  Bush’s extremist evangelicals, or his silly assertion when surrounded by military and tanks and Blackhawk helicopters that a neighborhood in Baghdad was safe to “walk freely.” But I do respect his heroism and his character, at least most of it, and certainly in comparison to most of his colleagues.

And I’m interested in Obama. I was proud to make a donation in support of that South Carolina win. He’s thoughtful — imagine a thoughtful president — and he’s made every right call on foreign policy recently regarding Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and every place else we seem to be in a mess. His plan for Iraq seems reality-based:  no fake timetable, no jingoistic assertion that we’re in it ’til we win it. Looking into my crystal ball, I think that if he gets the nomination there’s a good chance he’ll ask Joe Biden to serve as vice-president or secretary of state; that would give me even more confidence. (And I fear that McCain would feel obliged to ask someone like Reverend Huckabee. I’ve got nothing against pastors, having been partly raised by a good one, except for those who want to do things like rewrite the Constitution to jibe with sacred text.) As his campaign has shown, Obama wants to unite people — but he isn’t afraid to brawl when he needs to.

I’m hoping we get to mull over this choice in November. In the meantime, it’s nice that we’re having an actual primary contest. Because, let us not forget, for the past year we were told this was a done deal:  Hillary vs. Rudy.  But as I noted here and here and most especially here when I was really mad about it, that was all mass-media hoohah, and I’m glad none of us fell for it. Now people are actually voting, and the pundits are revealed for what they really are:  showmen. Bad showmen.

Just now while driving my two younger children to school, we came past the neighborhood playhouse, which on its marquee announces the current production as “The World’s Largest Rodent.”

” ‘World’s Largest Rodent,’ ” I read aloud. “Hm.”

From the back seat, my nine-year-old daughter said flatly, “Capybara.”

A learned a few days ago of the death on New Year’s eve of Bill Idelson but didn’t figure I’d blog about it until the Los Angeles Times ran an obit. Now they have, and you can  click here to read it.

To most people reading this, Bill will be known for either or both of two credits: a recurring role as Rose Marie’s boyfriend Herman Gilmscher on “The Dick van Dyke Show,” and for having written the “Long Distance Call” episode of “The Twilight Zone,” wherein a toy telephone provides the link between a boy (Billy Mumy) and his dead grandmother. Bill also wrote and acted in many other television shows, and for years ran a writing workshop from his house that at least a few of my friends signed up for.

He was also one of my professors in graduate school at USC, where he made an indelible impression. Ostensibly, Bill was teaching sitcom writing. In actuality, Bill was teaching Thinking For Yourself 101. He wasn’t interested in seemingly clever puns — I remember him ripping a fellow student apart for writing a scene about a gorilla in a cage in a suburban household that included the very bad line of dialogue, “But there’s a gorilla in our midst!” (This was around the time of the release of the film “Gorillas in the Mist.”) He was interested in the reality of the situation and your take on it. Both elements were important: There’s a reason that good sitcoms reflect the word blend they arise from — situation, and comedy.

On the last day of class, at the height of the reign of Bush the First, Bill decided to go for broke. He stripped away the outer shell of the lesson — the “writing” part — and left only the cold hard center of the “thinking” part. Bill let us know how he saw the world, in terms of the powerful and the powerless. This went over about as well as one would imagine with a much younger generation succored (or suckered) by Reagan/Bush, and in particular with a group of 12 or so who wanted to write junky pun-laden television with creamy caramel centers. Bill didn’t even expect them to agree with him — he wanted them to argue, to defend their positions, to think for themselves in the way he thought writers should — but they turned cold and a pall fell over the room. At the end of class, two of us hung around to console him. I didn’t come of age during McCarthyism, and I wasn’t writing the nakedly enlightened humanism evidenced by “The Twilight Zone,” but I liked to think I thought for myself, and I could surely see the dynamics of the room, and I generally side with the underdog, and in this case that was the aging writer who hadn’t had any reason to risk his self-image in such a personal campaign with disinterested students — except of course he had to.

I will never forget Bill for that lesson. Or for another.

When my play “Guest for Dinner” was produced in the USC MPW one-act festival — a festival that oddly enough I now find myself executive producing — Bill came to see it at my urging. He brought his wife, the actress-producer Seemah Wilder whom, through further odd circumstance, I would wind up producing in a play about 10 years later and whom I hadn’t remembered as Bill’s wife until reading these obits the past week. “Guest for Dinner” had been produced at Stockton College when I was an undergrad and it had been a sensation, with extra chairs required for every performance and big laughs and a sense of minor celebrity in the making. If anything, the USC production had better acting and better direction, and was clearly working better than at least two of the other plays in the festival. (The fourth play, by a fellow grad student named Peter Chase, was very strong.) On opening night, as people streamed outside filled with what to me seemed like excitement, I asked Bill what he thought. He said something short, friendly, and noncommittal like “Congratulations.” But I wanted to hear more, and said, “No, what did you really think?” And then he told me. Within the space of about two minutes, he ripped the play to shreds. I guess my face betrayed my shock and disappointment, because when it was over, Seemah gripped my arm warmly and said, “Well, I liked it.” I thanked him for his honesty and walked away, licking my wounds. As I thought about this later, I grew to agree with Bill that the play didn’t really work: The writing is self-conscious, the motivations at times weak, the conflict muted. These are mistakes I like to think I haven’t repeated, and as for the play, I allowed one further production and haven’t sent it out since.

People who teach writing aren’t there to be your friend — at least, the good ones aren’t. They also aren’t there to feed their own ego by destroying yours. They are there to teach you something about writing. It’s not always an enjoyable process, either for the provider of advice or the recipient. Given my personal experience with him, I have to think that Bill really cared about what he did, and I’m in his debt.

Today I was reminded again just how grateful I should be for everything I’ve got.

I took my laptop out back early this afternoon to do some writing while admiring the new lawn, courtesy of our gardeners, and smoking a Christmas-present cigar and polishing off the last of the red wine from Friday night’s party. I was happily typing away for about an hour and a half when my wife came out with a flashlight and a grill lighter in her hand, looking at me as though I could possibly imagine what these might be used for at the present moment. All I could think about was the interior workings of the new play I had just begun, which was proving to be something about a man who grows infatuated with a young woman at a party and who then wrecks his life over her against the advice of everyone far more sensible, including his wife. I had 12 pages already, but now my generally sensible wife was muttering something about hot water.

As she drew closer, these odd implements in hand, she told me that the “hot water heater” was off and that the pilot light needed to be relit. I replied, “Why is it a ‘hot’ water heater? Wouldn’t hot water already have been heated? It must be a water heater.” She had the good grace to smile. Her tolerance is one reason I’m still here.

I accompanied her over to the “hot water heater” around the side of the house so that I could at least appear useful while leaning against the brick wall abutting our neighbor’s property and thinking about what Scene 4 would be — probably something further at the office, but now with the man’s friend who had brought the attractive young thing to the party. My wife twisted the pilot knob back and forth as far as it would go, peered into the blackness where a flame should be, twisted the knob again, complained that the knob didn’t turn far enough, then got up to look at me. I knew that was my cue to try to turn the knob further. To do that and to take turns shunting our five-year-old two or three feet backwards in case we accidentally blew ourselves up. I couldn’t get the knob to turn any further either, but having put in the effort I stood up and announced that it was time to call someone. Because, unsaid but clearly heard, I was now returning to writing my play.

Another 40 minutes or so later, I figured I was done and told my wife that I was going to run a couple of errands and wanted to see what she wanted to do about the water heater.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I called Mike.”

“Mike? Who’s Mike?” For the life of me I couldn’t think of any Mike in our lives aside from the dog whose ashes had resided on our mantel since this time 1999.

“Mighty Mike,” she said. Mighty Mike is the plumber who lives across the street. We call him Mighty Mike because that’s what his truck calls him: Mighty Mike Plumbing.

“Great,” I said, picking up my keys and heading off.

At my office, more money had arrived. I did what I always do – went immediately to the bank and deposited it – and then went to Reese Liquor for essentials. Beefsticks, to be precise. Thirst Quencher Liquor, which I prefer for the name, was out. Driving home and remarking to myself what a beautiful day it was to have a convertible, I couldn’t help reflecting on my good luck. 2007 seemed like a blessing in every way. Certainly catastrophe was in the offing – some unforeseen illness or accident – but it wasn’t here now, and I wasn’t allowing misfortune to elbow its way to the front of the line. I got a text message from my friend Alan sledding in snowbound Massachusetts, and we textually committed to more friendship time next year. I was making resolutions for 2008 — not to give up things, but to embrace some things more.

When I got home, my wife announced that Mighty Mike had been there and lit the pilot. The hot water heater was again heating hot water. Then she added, “Did you hear about his boy?”

His boy, it turned out, whom I recalled as a baby but who had turned three when I wasn’t looking, had been urinating blood. Tests revealed kidney cancer. He’d had one kidney out and was now in week five of chemo. My wife said Mighty Mike revealed all this when she’d asked about the boy. I don’t know much about chemo, but I know a lot about three-year-olds. I’ve personally seen three people through that age.

“Makes you realize what you’ve got, doesn’t it?” I said to her. She looked at me soberly. I pulled her to me and kissed her warmly. We have been very skilled in what we’ve achieved in 2007. We have also been very lucky. We don’t have any war, famine, disease, or poverty at our house. I say that with full recognition that many others have some or all of that. We have had some of that ourselves in the past, and no doubt will have some in the future.

In the meantime, we have the present. And, starting tonight, and starting every moment of every day, we have the future – what will come, and what we will make of it.

When asked why we are here, Brion Gysin said, “We’re here to go.” True. But in the meantime, we are here.

She served dinner and we ate it and she went to work and after a while the kids went to bed. And now I am here, telling you this.