Some of us pride ourselves on being able to write about anything. Usually this involves having been at some time a general assignment reporter or a magazine freelancer (I was both).

After more than 30 years of writing magazine pieces, comic books, television scripts, books, variety shows, newspaper columns, cartoons, and who knows what else about countless subjects and with great wit, my pal Mark Evanier finally found the one thing he couldn’t write. Here it is. This amused me greatly.

Forget ADD — which as a culture we also have. The real menace is American Impatience Disorder.

On February 9th, Barack Obama promised the people of Elkart, Indiana that he was working on fixing the economy, and that meant jobs. Now it’s all of three months later and MSNBC.com says they’ve “given up on him.” It took 30 years of bank deregulation to get us here, but somehow he was supposed to undo it all in three months. And, I suppose, feed the town with loaves and fishes.

Last month I was among the countless Californians outraged that the leaders of the California Assembly had decided to give a raise to some legislative aides at the same time the state is sliding into a fiscal abyss. The hue and cry was so great that within a day Speaker Karen Bass reversed herself.

Now the state faces what the Governator is estimating as a $21.3 billion budget gap if the May 19th budget propositions don’t pass (which they won’t). And here’s Karen Bass in today’s LA Times, still not getting why nobody people were outraged by pay hikes for staff aides:

She expressed frustration over the criticism she drew during last month’s salary-hike flap, which would have boosted the wages of about 10% of the Assembly’s more than 1,000 employees at a total cost of about $500,000.

“I regret the timing,” she said of the wage increases. But, she added, “I felt after cutting $15 million … spending $500,000 was a reasonable approach.”

I’ve met Ms. Bass and I like her, and I know this is a difficult job she’s got. But how one can rise this far in politics this quickly (she was first elected to her seat only five years ago) and not understand that this is no climate for bureaucratic pay raises is beyond me.

Number one: It seems to me that the U.S. taxpayer just paid Fiat $8 billion to take over Chrysler so that Fiat can get access to the U.S. market in exchange for pretty much nothing (except the strongly opinionated management of the Fiat CEO). Am I wrong about this? Is it just me?

Number two:  Last night at the opening-night performance of the play Loveswell, an event benefiting Heal the Bay, a woman said to me, “Were you an actor?” “No,” I said. “Oh,” she replied, “You look like you were an actor.” What does this mean? Do I somehow look wrung out from years of waiting tables or bartending (two occupations I’ve never held)? Also, if I were an actor (which I am not and never have been), how does one look at me somehow reveal that I’m now through with it?

My friend Hoyt Hilsman suggests we waterboard Sean Hannity.

The grandfather of my friend Hoyt Hilsman was a POW held by the Japanese during World War II. As Hoyt writes in The Huffington Post, it’s important to investigate what happens under torture policies, even when they’re government-ordered. (Especially when it’s our government.)

That didn’t take long. After hearing from everybody who reads this blog (as well as others), California State Speaker Karen Bass has cancelled the pay raises for Assembly staffers. Seems these raises had become a “distraction” while she was campaigning for passage of all the propositions the state now needs to balance its budget. I wonder just how many votes she lost today. Message to the Speaker:  Welcome to the 24-minute news cycle.

You may have heard that nationwide there have been millions of layoffs.

And that California is, once again, projecting a budget deficit. Estimates vary, and the final number will be partly determined by whether or not a slate of propositions pass next month, but the range is estimated as being between $8 billion and $42 billion.

All across the land, public officials and public servants alike — teachers, city managers, librarians, police — are taking salary cuts in an effort to reduce layoffs.

Everyone seems to have heard about this — except the California state Assembly, which is handing out raises.

Someone should really let Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D) and Minority Leader Michael Villines (R) know about this economic downturn. Except I suspect that millions of people are about to. If you’d like to join them in doing that, here’s Karen Bass’ website and here’s Michael Villines’.

Several months ago I was over at 18th Street Arts Center knocking around ideas with my friends there. This year is the center’s 20th anniversary, and clearly a celebration is in order, and preferably one that raises money as well. At one point, one of them volunteered that he knew Sir Ken Robinson, and perhaps Sir Ken would agree to speak at a fundraising dinner.

“You know Sir Ken Robinson?” I sputtered. I’m not given to sputtering, but in this case I did.

Sir Ken Robinson is one of the world’s foremost authorities on creativity and innovation; his principle bailiwick is creativity in education, a field in which his endeavors resulted in a knighthood. (Don’t take my word for it; consult Wikipedia.) Here in the U.S., he is an ardent foe of No Child Left Behind, a pernicious system that has further regimented lower education and has served to hamstring even the best of teachers. And he’s a witty speaker, as demonstrated by this video I posted a year ago this month. Did I want to meet him? You bet.

Then yesterday 18th Street’s executive director (and longtime friend and comrade-in-arms) Jan Williamson was kind enough to call me on my cellphone to tell me that she was seating me next to Sir Ken Robinson at the dinner. Being the first to buy a ticket ($250) was good, but I think sputtering was even more helpful. Never forget:  Enthusiasm always gets you far.

I was also eager to speak with him because  education has been much on my mind lately. I agreed several months ago to serve on the budget  committee for the Burbank Unified School District. As I’m sure you can imagine, this year any recommendations we make are going to be in the form of budget cuts. I didn’t expect this particular community service to be easy or fun, but I felt that I owed something to the system. All three of my kids are in Burbank schools, and they are receiving fine educations. We always hear the negative — about bad public schools — but my experience with my kids is precisely the opposite. The teachers they’ve had and the education they’ve received far outstrips anything I got when I was a kid. Every kid should be so lucky.

Sir Ken was absolutely delightful to dine with last night, and in his remarks after dinner. A Liverpool native who moved to Los Angeles shortly after September 11, 2001, he noted ruefully that until recently his entire time living in the U.S. has been under the Bush Administration, and he was just sure we weren’t really like that. He mocked the idea of testing kids to get into elite preschools (“They’re three years old!”) and the lockstep notion that one has to set a life plan from Day One. He quoted Erma Bombeck, who didn’t start to write until she was in her 50’s. Throughout life, people should be encouraged to go where they’re interested, he said, and that’s where they’ll flourish. It’s always important to encourage creativity.

(Most of us reading this know this. But it always bears reinforcing.)

Over dinner, I shared a story with him.

Last month, it was Back to School night for my two elementary-school children. When I went into my 10-year-old daughter’s science classroom, I did a doubletake. There was some sort of Andy Warhol project all over the room. All different sorts of pictures done in Warhol’s pop-art style. Wasn’t this a science class? Then I noticed that every project looked at first glance like an art project. (The other major theme was comic-book heroes.)

“Isn’t this the science class?” I asked my wife.

“Ask the teacher about how he teaches,” she said.

What I got from the teacher was what I thought was a very smart answer about whole learning, the scientific underpinnings of all these projects, how best to teach analysis and synthesis, and keeping kids interested. “I’m meeting all the state guidelines for science instruction,” he said. “But if I did it the way the state wanted, I’d need 30 sleeping bags.” And sure enough, to my daughter it seems like a great art class, but I see the science she’s learning.

Yesterday when she learned whom I was having dinner with, my wife added the kicker to this story:  the next day, the principal had received complaints from parents that that didn’t look like a science class. I shared this with Sir Ken.

“Yes,” he said. “You see the depth of the problem.”

Bill O’Reilly recently added the Chicago Sun-Times to his “Hall of Shame.” No, that’s not the corridor that all the Bush apologists have disappeared into; it’s a place for “media operations [that] have regularly helped distribute defamatory, false or non-newsworthy information supplied by far left websites.” (In other words, the sort of thing that Fox News does for far-right nut jobs.)

Getting slandered by Bill O’Reilly is high praise for most of us. Roger Ebert thanks O’Reilly for the compliment (and reduces his manhood in the process).

Thanks to Paul Crist for alerting me to this fun piece of writing.