Every year, my good friend Trey Nichols and I go to Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween extravaganza, “Knott’s Scary Farm.” Assuming we land on a date that works for our complicated schedules — we’ve exchanged numerous emails on this subject — this will be our 11th straight year attending. (And here are a couple of photos from last year. The picture on the bottom remains a favorite — even ghouls need to know when they’re scheduled to work.)

I think Knott’s Scary Farm is a fine tradition. It makes the two of us giddy with delight. Giddy — and sometimes scared out of our bejeesus. We love the mazes, we love the rides, and we especially love the 3D killer klowns, who are genuinely terrifying and kreepy. Every year, we leave at 5, grab something to eat, and then proceed to do every conceivable thing at the park until closing it down at around 2 a.m.
All of this is why I’m so saddened to hear of an incident that happened tonight at Knott’s:  one of the roller coasters failed to make the incline, and slammed back into the one behind it. Here’s the story. I hope that no one was seriously injured, and that park officials find and fix the problem quickly. I’m confident they will. I’ve been going to this park for 20 years, and this is the first incident I’ve heard of. The park is impeccably well-managed and well-maintained. The roller-coaster malfunction is frightening, but it shouldn’t scare anyone away.

Today while in line at a business conference to speak with a reporter, I was privy to the tribulations of the two young men behind me in their dealings with their employee Stu. Here’s what I learned:

• Stu has lost his enthusiasm and answers their questions in a dull monotone
• Stu is due in at 8, but sometimes shows up at 11
• Stu is starting his own startup and has been caught working on it at work

When they realized I’d overheard all this, they asked what I’d do. I told them: “After firing Stu? Celebrate.”

For the past four days, I was at a business conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Here’s some of what has happened during this trip:

• I took a shuttle from Dulles airport to the hotel. Who sat next to me on the shuttle? A reporter from a magazine. So I pitched her.
• At the conference, two women recognized me. We had seen each other at another conference in March. It turned out that my company uses the business they were representing. So they gave me an iPad.
• I wound up in three different online videos representing my company, all put together by exhibitors. Most attendees didn’t get into one.
• I got interviewed twice more for the magazine.
• In a sea of 1000 people at a cocktail reception, I wound up standing right next to the reporter from the shuttle again.
• On Friday morning I was in the elevator on the ballroom floor (second floor) when a woman got on and rode up in the elevator with me. She asked me where the ballrooms were. I told her she just left the ballroom floor and now she’ll have to go back down. She gets off at the next floor. At six o’clock I head down to the seafood restaurant in the atrium to eat a quick dinner before going to see a play. I sit down — and that woman is seated at the table next to mine. In a hotel and conference center with thousands of people, there she is again. She and her husband and I start to talk. They are there for a different conference than I am. It turns out that her son is a playwright. I am a playwright. At the end of dinner, they decide to pay for my check. I try to beg off, but they insist. “You’ve been so helpful,” they say, and I honestly have no idea what they’re talking about.
• After the play, before she leaves, a woman who had overheard me talking turns to me and says, “Hey, California. We didn’t meet, but you’re really cute.” I think this last happened in… 1995.
• I go to the cast party with two of my friends. I meet an older gentleman and we start to talk. He tells me about a woman he knew, and as he gets about two sentences into the story something about it makes me stop him to say, “I know her. Peggy Miley, right?” And he looks at me astonished. The two of us have never met, and this gentleman has nothing to do with the theatre — he’s just at this party tonight — and we seemingly have nothing else in common, except we both know this woman. “How do you know her?” he says. I answer:  “She was in my workshop.” My workshop has only nine people at a time in it, and openings are rare. And this was in Alexandria, Virginia, and my workshop is in LA.
• The next night I’m buying a cigar at the hotel steakhouse. The young man who stocks the humidor is very knowledgeable and proud of his work and I tell him I’m impressed. I select a cigar and pay for it and then ruminate aloud of whether I should buy one for my friend who’s going to join me later that night. He goes back to the humidor and gives me a cigar, free, in case my friend needs one.
• I’m heading from Maryland on the interstate up to New Jersey to spend a night with my family when I start to think back to Roy Rogers fast-food restaurants, and how I liked them. It turns out there’s one left — and there’s a sign for it directly in front of me. So of course we stop there and eat.
• As we near my mother’s house, I start to think what a shame it will be that my brother Michael won’t be there. If he were there, then all my siblings and I and our mother would be together. We pull up — and I see his car out front. It turns out that Lufthansa has lost his luggage, so he’s had to stay here overnight.

I could go on, because I feel that there was even more. Somehow I ran into a spate of kismet or something; strange, coincidental, good things kept happening. With some advance notice, I would have headed for the nearest casino.

My next car won’t be this one — but you can get it.

Thanks to Paul Crist for letting me know about this.

Here’s one of the featured books in the window of the bookstore at Los Angeles International Airport. Nice to know we’re peddling this to the world. The most chilling aspect is the top line. It’s hard to believe that the people who buy this book can read. But maybe it’s purely ornamental. “Look what we have on our coffee table:  The TRUTH.” Because, you know, I’m sure that the recognized leader of the free world, the head of the world’s most powerful nation, a man who came from extremely humble origins and rose to the highest station achievable, is eagerly working in secret to advance someone else’s agenda. Yes, that’s how egoless someone who is that driven must be.

When a gnat flies into your wine and you immediately drink it down, thinking, “Mm. Protein.” Which I just did.

Yesterday, my son was home from college for all of about five hours. At around hour three, his 8-year-old  brother said, “Hey, Lex, aren’t you supposed to leave? ‘Cause you suck up all our food. No offense.” He then added that, “You can say anything if you add ‘No offense.’ “

Seems true!

Southern California is in the beginnings of an historic heat wave. Today it was 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles. In Burbank it wasn’t much cooler — especially after one of the air conditioning compressors powering my office chose today to go on the fritz. When the indoor temp hit an honest-to-God 97 degrees and I started to feel weak in the knees I announced, “We’re all going to Yogurtland!” And so the six of us in the office at the moment trooped down to get frozen yogurt and cool off. The frozen yogurt helped, but here’s the irony:  It turned out that Yogurtland’s a.c. wasn’t working either. Before my no-fat frozen blueberry coolant had its desired effect on my insides, I was melting along with it. We finally returned to the office and found the a.c. restored and struggling to bring the temperature below 87.

My kids and I just returned from our nightly bicycle ride with the dog. (We ride bikes; she runs alongside. She still hasn’t learned how to pedal.) We passed my daughter’s school and read the temperature on the big sign outside:  96. At 8 o’clock in the evening. On the ride back I kept wondering why my bare foot kept getting splashed with water. Where was it coming from? Finally I figured it out:  The wetness striking me was drops of saliva being flung from my dog’s panting tongue.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Colorado Springs, where the temperature is predicted to be a comparatively balmy 88 degrees. Thursday through Sunday I’ll be in Baltimore, DC, and Virginia, and then I’ll be in southern New Jersey for about 24 hours ’til Monday. I’ve been to all of those East Coast destinations before, and they strike me collectively as exemplars of the maxim that “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Today I definitely felt there’s something to be said for “it’s the heat.” But I’ll save my final judgment until my return next Tuesday.

We’ve seen Lord knows how many different takes on Batman, “Star Trek,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Dragnet,” and any number of other literary creations.

But I have to say, I was completely unprepared for this bold new take on Harry Potter, as shown just now on the LA Times website.

We’ve written here before about our enjoyment of Sir Ian McKellen. Here’s a photo of his participation in the recent protest against the Pope. (To quote a gay friend of mine, “Just say nope.”)

By the way, posting this image earlier a little bit ago on my Facebook page resulted in the following dialogue with a Facebook friend (whom I actually know but haven’t seen in… 10 years?). This little exchange really shows how issues of sexuality, politics, and Sir Ian McKellen, all intersect over the all-important topic of Marvel Comics.

• LEE:  Mind you, I had my doubts about Gandalf, but I did not realize that Magneto was gay. What about his two children, Wanda (The Scarlet Witch) and Pietro (Quicksilver)? Which brings us to the question of “how exactly do you define ‘gay’?” At least with regard to Marvel comics characters. By the way, Magneto himself is confused — 40 years as a villain, but with recurring stints as a hero. What’s up with that?

• FB FRIEND: And ‘Scarlet Witch’ married an android — what do we call THAT orientation?

• LEE: And then they had “children” who, it later turned out, where magical constructs who destabilized the entire Marvel universe. Things were so much simpler when relationships were between one human and another. Now you’ve got mutants and androids and magicians and supervillains. And whatever The Beast is, what with the blue fur and flews and all.

• FB FRIEND: I didn’t know that about their kids. (Sorta wondered how they could…you know.)

• OTHER FB FRIEND (whom I also haven’t seen in at least 10 years, and probably more like 15): I think he is saying he is both Gay (Gandolph) and Straight (Magne to),,,right?

• FB FRIEND: I want to go on record, though, in supporting equal marriage rights for mutants, androids, Inhumans, aliens, cyborgs, wizards, ghosts, angels, demons, demigods, elementals, monsters, talking animals, and humans exposed to radiation (that somehow made them stronger, faster and better looking).

• LEE: What kicked off Avengers Disassembled was the Scarlet Witch’s discovery that her “children” were magical constructs accidentally created by her chaos magic. From there, things got worse: She wished into existence the notion of “No …More Mutants,” which recast the entire universe into one without mutants. When the “real” Marvel Universe was finally reconstituted, most of the mutants were gone, and no new mutants were being born — a problem that has bedeviled them since. Recently, the first new mutant, named, of course, Hope, and related, of course, to Scott Summers (as, seemingly, all red-haired women in the Marvel Universe are), was born. Once you put it all down in writing as I just did, it’s easy to understand, though it does give succor to the notion of certain Evangelists and U.S. Senators that mutants and androids should not procreate. (Lest we all wind up in an alternate universe. Which seems like a danger we’d all want to avoid. Unless we’re working a dead-end job at 7-11.)

• FB FRIEND: Yeah, “Disassembled”, “House of M”, “Civil War”… Ya notice that all the major trouble used to come from the bad guys, but now it’s mostly traditional heroes causing all the strife? Is this meant to mirror the divisions in our own “real”… universe?! Hmmm… The Republican party IS disassembling itself, and the Scarlet Palin’s ‘House of Tea’ is taking over. Whoa! I need to get current in my comic reading! I believe ‘Daredevil’ is the heavy now? Who could he represent? Maybe Rahm Emanuel quitting the White House to run Chicago. Yeah…I see it now…

• LEE: You are mostly right, although we should remember that the Skrulls were stirring up trouble as part of their Secret Invasion. Re Daredevil, he is some combination of the Tea Party, the Minutemen, and U.S. black ops — he’s lost all faith in the system and has now built his own Guantanamo Bay beneath the streets of Hells Kitchen. He’s also running The Hand, but in the belief that he’s using them as a force for good. And he’s switched his costume color to black — need we say more?