This video says pretty much everything I have to say about “Lost,” except this: If it hadn’t been something I watched regularly with my daughter, I would have bailed early in Season 3. What an aggravating show.

Other unanswered questions:

Why did Lee stay up ’til 8:30 a.m.? Does he regret it now? (No. So there’s one answer.) Will he able to sleep tonight? Is he ever able to sleep on any night? Is it better to plan in advance or take life as it comes? Is anything else thinking about this right now?

A few days ago I set out to write a tribute to my friend and former student, playwright EM Lewis. Along the way, the piece also turned into a rumination about being a playwright, and being a playwright in Los Angeles. Here’s the piece.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’m in Omaha at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, where I’ve seen many old friends and made some new ones. I’ve also been making new Friends — Friends with a capital “F” being the designation one gives when it’s someone you know, or will know, primarily through Facebook.  Lately I’ve noticed a new dynamic:  Friending snobbery. I note it when two strong egos clash over who Friended whom (and, therefore, was seemingly the weaker person in the engagement). Several months ago my son claimed I had Friended him. I had not. I pointedly had not. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be reading his wall. But when I received a Friend request from him, I figured he was permitting that relationship, so I confirmed him. He still claims he didn’t do this. Twice since then I’ve come into contact with well-known people who had Friended me, and I’ve mentioned our Facebook Friendship and they’ve immediately clarified that they didn’t Friend me — I must have Friended them. And they didn’t. Really. Before they made an issue of it, it didn’t matter; now it seems to establish some sort of bragging rights. So I’m considering unFriending them. I also sense that this is going to turn into a short play of mine in the near future.

Final note on this topic:  If you’re on Facebook, please join this page:  Yes for State Parks.  This initiative will generate nearly $500 million to preserve California’s state parks. Full disclosure:  I am working on this initiative. And no, I don’t generally support initiatives, because I’m hoping for overall state constitutional reform. But as my family and I have seen first-hand, California’s historic state parks are in a desperate state of disrepair — last year nearly 150 of them were shut down part-time or suffered service reductions; for the two years prior, they all almost got shut down due to our ongoing budget crisis — and honestly, I’ve lost faith in elected officials to solve this any time soon. For an $18 registration fee on every California license plate, we can directly fund the parks, protecting and preserving trees and water and animals and keeping it all open and available to the public. So I hope you’ll join me in Friending the parks.

Every year now, comics fans who attend the Comic-Con in San Diego complain that it’s too crowded. But what would it be like if someone threw a comic-book convention at a big convention center and no one came? This video, shot this weekend at the Pasadena Rock ‘n’ Comic Convention, answers that question.

I’m wondering once again why I do things like what I’m about to confess in just a moment. But some backstory first.

I’m in Omaha, Nebraska for the Great Plains Theatre Conference. This is the third year that I’ve been booked in for this conference, where I lead a couple of workshops, and serve as a panelist giving feedback on new plays throughout the week. It’s a great gig, run by kind, talented, generous people, on an absolutely beautiful campus, where I spend lots of time smoking cigars and writing and drinking and where I get treated in a fashion I could easily grow accustomed to. Last year I left here with two plays. This year I would be happy to make major headway on my new full-length play.

So tomorrow is the first of the workshops I’m leading. It’s called “Starting at the Start” (or, as it’s listed in the program, “Starting with the Start,” which to me is a somewhat different thing. But anyway.). Usually I go over all my material in advance. Days, if not weeks, in advance. There are books I read from, and chapbooks, and writing exercises I like to employ, and visual aids — the whole works, in a very low-tech format. In the past two weeks I don’t think I had a minute anywhere to review any of that. Just before leaving town, I did lay hands on the pendaflex folder holding all the assorted precious paperwork from last year’s conference; a quick review satisfied me that some (if not most, or all) of the stuff I’d need was in there. So I put it into my suitcase.

I was supposed to arrive last night around 11 p.m. Instead, for no fair reason ever given, United canceled my connecting flight and I and many many other people were stranded in Denver half the night. I finally got here and into my room at 3 a.m. Then I stayed up ’til dawn playing Civilization 4 Warlords on my laptop because believe me, I was in the mood to plunder and sack someone else’s city. All day, since then, I’ve fretted about this workshop tomorrow. I’ve thought about it constantly, and meant to sit down and get ready for it, and tried to crack open the pendaflex folder and see what’s in there and get started… and I just haven’t. Instead, I read every single wall post ever made by anyone I know on Facebook. I walked to Popeye’s and bought myself a spicy wing sampler and biscuit. I went next door for a beer. I borrowed a car from the college to drive over to Target to buy myself new luggage. I came back and went back next door for another beer and had a great time swapping bad-production stories with Constance Congdon. Then I came back over here and read what had newly been posted on Facebook. Then I fired up Civilization 4 Warlords again and attacked the Mali empire, taking two cities away before they begged for peace. Then I went back on Facebook. Then, finally, with the clock past 10 p.m. and the constant awareness that this workshop is in the morning now thrumming and slamming in my head the way the deafening clanging machinery did in the engine room of my father’s automatic carwash, I cracked open the pendaflex file.

Whereupon I found, right on top, all my notes from precisely the same workshop last year.

Relieved, I grabbed a cigar and decided to head next door for a beer. But first, I thought I’d post this. Because I’m left to wonder just why I couldn’t bring myself to look in there at any time over the past 24 hours — or even sooner. I guess it was just the fear that it wasn’t in there. But even then, I figured I’d just wing it. I’ve been teaching playwriting in one form or another for 20 years; I like to think that in that time I’ve developed some ideas of how to make use of 90 minutes with a roomful of playwrights. Maybe my reptile brain figured that looking in the pendaflex folder equated somehow with “work” and I just wanted a day of no work. Who knows?

I just know it would’ve been a lot simpler to have looked in there earlier.

As I said the other day, they just come to me.

But if you’re really really really stuck for a script idea, this little tool will take care of it for you for free. Here’s what it suggested that I write next:

• A bug-eyed monster and a couple of child-like steelworkers find themselves trapped in a shopping mall.

Except I think I’ve already seen that one. Instead I guess I’ll be writing this one:

• Six bounty hunters form a rock band in a corn field.

But wasn’t that a John Cougar Mellencamp video?

This capture is from the home page of the LA Times. True or false: It becomes harder to accept the veracity of what’s printed in the newspaper when its editors and writers can’t distinguish between a contraction and a possessive.

In which a penguin chased by a pod of killer whales outsmarts all of them.

(Which doesn’t explain how this guy keeps getting away.)

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a planet-eating star. There it is above, as a poor little planet tries desperately to zigzag out of its way. (I am hoping, by the way, that the new iPhone will feature photo resolution on this scale.)

Given that many of us place little faith in the new Doctor (Who), no one’s sure what to do about this. It’s only 600 million light years away, meaning that it will get here long before BP figures out how to cap their oil spill.

Wal-Mart just cut the cost on the current model by half. The 3GS with a 16 gig hard drive will run you — wait for it — $97. I bought the 3G (before the “S,” so it was slower) with 16 gig hard drive 18 months ago for… was it $300? $600? Who can remember any more?

When I got home this evening I was glad to see my vote-by-mail ballot waiting for me. I had mailed in the application only a few days ago and was worried I wasn’t going to get the ballot before leaving town on Thursday for three weeks, thus missing the election. And I always vote. Always. We had a special election a couple of months ago and I purposely booked my flight for a couple of hours after polls opened so that I wouldn’t miss the chance to vote. That wouldn’t work this time, though, and given the frequency of my travels the past year I figured it was better to file for a permanent absentee ballot, despite my preference for tradition:  going to the polling place, lining up with people, discussing politics and local issues, greeting the polling-place workers, and proudly leaving with a sticker on my lapel that reads “I voted.” Yes, I am corny about my vote. So I was pleased to see that the ballot had arrived.

What surprised me was how relatively complicated it was to fill out. Remember the infamous “butterfly ballot” that was the excuse some people gave for seating George W. Bush after the election that Al Gore won? Thousands of surprised seniors, many of them liberal Jews, learned that they had accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan for president. Here’s why:

Gee, wonder why they got confused. The GOP apologists said that people who couldn’t understand their ballot shouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway, but look at that image, and then imagine you’re in your 80’s and you know perfectly well whom you want to vote for. But because of the layout you vote for someone diametrically opposed to most of what you’re trying to support. (Which wouldn’t have mattered if the state had counted all the black votes in other districts… but that’s a separate story.)

Now let’s take a look at California’s absentee ballot kit. Here’s an example (yes, taken from 2008, but the components are the same):

You get a general election guidebook, mailed separately. Then you get the kit, which includes, from left to right, the envelope in which to mail it back, the “privacy sleeve” for you to insert your completed ballot, your actual ballot (tucked in this case inside that privacy sleeve), your voting instructions and sample ballot containing the candidate names and issues on which you’re voting (plus a numbered bubble next to each option, and the Vote By Mail instructions and guide. I opened this up, looked over all of this and — was confused. A few facts before we go on:

1. I’m 47, not 87.
2. I read, and write, for a living.
3. I am a delegate for one of the two major parties, and in this state.
4. I have three college degrees.
5. I’m a reasonably intelligent person.

To me, the first indication that this might be confusing to a great number of people was that I actually had to read the instructions.  I know that they are there to be read, but how often does anyone have to read instructions any more? I didn’t read them for my iPhone (which should be far more confusing than a ballot). I didn’t read them for setting up my home computer. Have you read them for your microwave oven or your coffeemaker or your refrigerator? But to vote, you need to read the instructions — not to grow informed about candidates and issues, but to fill out the form. That seems wrong. And it is mandated mostly because the candidate names and issues are on one booklet of paper, and the ballot is a separate piece of paper with just numbered bubbles in it. And those numbered bubbles aren’t printed in the same array as the representative numbered bubbles in the official sample ballot. Also, the back of the pink return envelope has three places to sign it — I signed it on the left side only, which seems to be correct, but the two options on the right side seemed like viable choices as well before I studied it more carefully. All of this left me wondering how many of these would be left uncounted because of a technical foul — signing the wrong side, let’s say — or how many of these would result in votes that are counter to the wishes of the voter. But then, I was also left wondering this:  How many of these just won’t get delivered? Because, you’ll note, it requires a stamp. If someone is mailing in a ballot, should we really require the postage? If members of Congress have the franking privilege, could we at least extend it to voters when they mail in their ballots?

I’m now a permanent absentee voter. Unless I go through the process of changing that status, I’ll be dealing with these ballots every time. That prospect makes me miss the voting booth. It also reminds me again how far behind our public institutions are; surely there must be a viable secure way to vote online, and if there isn’t, we should develop one. Until then, we’ll be seeing more and more of these mailed ballots — some elections are mail-only (including some here in Burbank), and in some areas of California, all elections are done by mail. That may be good for the post office, and good for voters, like me, who can’t make it to the polling place. But the only way we’ll know it’s good for democracy is if the format is simple.