I’ve never cared for or about musicals. This may be a bias picked up from my father, who tended toward the literal and couldn’t figure out why a guy in a movie would break out into a song while getting drenched in the process. (“Hey, dummy — get outta the rain!”) It’s surprising to say the least that I’m seeing three musicals this month: “1776” (which I already saw, at Actors Co-Op, and loved), “Sweeney Todd” (seen last Friday night at the Ahmanson. in a not-good production), and, this Friday night, “The Dead” at Open Fist in Hollywood. I saw “The Dead” about five years ago at, again, the Ahmanson, and although my seats were somewhere up on the surface of the moon, I was completely drawn in to this musicalization of the story by James Joyce; it was utterly moving without being sentimental. (Treacly sentiment being one of those things that tend to keep me away from musicals.) I hear that production by Open Fist is good, and I’m greatly looking forward to it. But three musicals in one month, and all by choice? That’s unprecedented.

And actually, it winds up being FOUR, if you count this one:

Just because I didn’t blog yesterday or today doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about what to blog about. So here are the things I thought about blogging about that I didn’t blog about:

1. That it now occurs to me that counting students, thesis students, workshop members, private dramaturgy clients, and me, I’m knee-deep in 19 different new plays — and exactly one of them is by me.
2. That I’m reading three books — and not at the moment writing either of the two I’m working on.
3. That “John Adams” on HBO leaves untouched the great question: How someone like Paul Giamatti gets someone like Laura Linney. And then leaves her behind for years at a time.
4. That yes, I can do a baked dijon flounder at home and have it come out well — but it will never be the baked dijon flounder at Smith’s Clam Bar in Somers Point, New Jersey.
5. That while Eliot Spitzer is a hypocrite who needed to go, I have to wonder again how many violent crimes could be prevented and how many roads and bridges and schools rebuilt and able-bodied productive non-violent people released from prison to help feed the economy if we legalized prostitution and decriminalized marijuana and taxed them both.
6. That Wizard World was in Los Angeles this weekend and I didn’t go because Comic-Con comes but once a year and Wizard World ain’t it.
7. That the Fed bailed out Bear Stearns, and it was those “free marketers” who cheered. In a free market, failing businesses fail. We had NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard); now we have NIMBA (Not In My Bank Account). By the way, the Fed funds that backed up Bear Stearns came from the Treasury — which means they were tax money. Which means you and I bailed out Bear Stearns. And yet we never got any of those windfall profits. This seems like something potentially more worthy of a federal investigation than call-girl rings.

I’m sure more will follow as I think about it.

Yes, I’m producing two readings, two nights in a row. (And I hope you can join me)

Despite her successful career, Katie is a bit lost. Half Caucasian and half Japanese, and cut off from both parents at an early age, she isn’t sure who she is. But a forced reconciliation with her crazy mother — and then a roadtrip to visit Grandmother — bring her face-to-face with the women she was eager to leave behind.

“Lies My Mother Told Me,” a dark comedy by Connie Yoshimura, receives a staged reading this Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Studio/Stage in Hollywood.

Please join me for this free event, with catered reception afterward. I’m the dramaturge on this project and am eager to hear your input.

“Lies My Mother Told Me” by Connie Yoshimura

directed by Joe Ochman

with

Alice Ensor, Helen Slayton-Hughes, and Linde Gibb

Studio/Stage is located at:
520 North Western Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90004

Click here for directions.

What: rehearsed reading of “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Connie Yoshimura, with reception

When: Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Studio/Stage, 520 North Western Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90004

Please join us.

Above we see the bucolic bungalow once inhabited by Charles Bukowski. (And it looks more appropos than ever.)

This is just one of dozens of wonderful atmospheric photos of Los Angeles landmarks one may find on this site, where you’ll find everything from Walt Disney’s first studio (a garage), to the home of Zappa Records (which I’ve passed about a hundred thousand times), to our local stand-in for The Daily Planet.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for letting me know about this.

Tonight my son Lex and I went to screening and talkback on campus at USC. The guest was David Simon, executive producer and creator of “The Wire,” which we are sad is ending its five-season run next Sunday.

As LA Times television critic Howard Rosenberg noted in his introduction, “The Wire” is far too complicated to synopsize easily, but if you haven’t watched the show, let’s just say it’s about the long-ranging and wide-reaching implications of the war on drugs and all the institutions it touches. It is not a show that an optimist could embrace.

Admidst talk of the show’s themes, Simon recounted the latest statistics on our country’s prison industrial complex: 1 in 100 people in this country are in prison, 1 in 9 black men in this country are in prison, 1 in 4 black men are in some way under the aegis of the enforcement or corrections. We are the most imprisoned people in history.

It’s the war on drugs that has gotten us here.

“No politician in our lifetime will touch this,” he said, “Not Obama, not Clinton, not McCain. The only thing that will end it is massive civil disobedience.”

His plan is this: That if he ever winds up on a jury in a drug case where no one was harmed, he plans to vote not guilty. If asked, he’ll admit during voir dire that victimless drug crims shouldn’t be prosecuted. If everyone did this, he said, and the system couldn’t empanel a jury for possession cases, then the system would have to adapt.

That’s his proposal to end the war on drugs: not to play the game.

He says his fellow writer-producers on “The Wire” have already signed on, and tonight he was spreading the word to the 300 or so of us.

Now I’ve posted it here.

Thoughts?

Watch this trailer and tell me it doesn’t have everything one might want all wrapped up in one movie.

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.

Just now I was on Slate.com reading John Dickerson’s piece on why Obama swept the Potomac Primary — my own hunch being, “People prefer him” — but then a banner ad caught my eye. It was for Office 2008 for Mac. Hm, I thought:  productivity upgrades for the Mac. What are they?

Then I clicked. You can do so too, if you’re curious yourself.

What I got was an endless, uncute, and meaningless cartoon in the Thurber style, accompanied by a light bop bass line. A cartoon van pulls up, a stick figure guy is jugging three balls, letters roll back and forth… I still can’t figure out what it’s about. But it went on and on. I finally ditched the site figuring that improvements like this I didn’t need. Note to Microsoft:  People in general don’t wait this long on the internet to learn things, especially people who are seeking increases in productivity!

My good friend Trey asks about “There Might Be Blood,” which he and fellow friend Mark and I saw the evening of January 1st, “Have we exhausted this topic yet? This review from Salon really gets at the things we’ve been talking about quite eloquently. Thought you might enjoy….”

I’m not usually one to link to mainstream reviews (let alone to care what they say generally), but Stephanie Zacharek’s review on Salon.com gets right to the core of what’s frustrating and complete about what could have been an awe-inspiring film. The subhead: “This sprawling, ambitious film strives for boldness yet rings with false humility.”