As frequent readers of this blog may have noted, I’ve been traveling frequently since January. (I was in Irvine on Monday, San Francisco on Tuesday, Denver on Wednesday, and between now and next month I’ll be in Napa Valley, Philadelphia/NJ, Utah, Omaha, San Francisco again, and probably some other places.) The successful outcome of all of these trips to some degree require internet technology — the ability to access the web on location, and to project video and Powerpoint and audio. Past experience has taught me that it’s best to bring the tech with you. Dating back to my adolescence when I was a comic-book dealer exhibiting at one or two conventions a weekend, I learned the hard way that when you didn’t bring it with you, whatever was provided just wasn’t enough.

I saw that again in January when I attended Twiistup, a two-day confab in Los Angeles where tech startups make presents to venture capitalists and angel funders. The tech guys weren’t able to get WiFi to work for much of the conference, and the projector and screen rarely seemed to be in synch. I felt bad for the presenters, all of whom are timed, who complained that their time was cut in half because of faulty tech. And this was at a tech event.

That doesn’t top this story, though. This weekend I’m at the California Democratic Convention. A friend just sent me this text:

So, at the Computer and Internet caucus, they couldn’t get their Powerpoint to project properly, and they had no internet connection.

I’m sorry to hear that. But any more:  I’m not surprised. So if you see me in some airport around the country lugging around my laptop, and a projector, and even a small case of speakers, you’ll understand why.

What’s the one jury you definitely don’t want to serve on?

It’s not a homicide prosecution, or a lengthy federal trial.

No, it’s the drama jury for the Pulitzer Prize. At least as a member of the jury on a homicide or any other trial, you’d get listened to in the end. As a member of the drama jury for the Pulitzer, you’re likely to do your service and then get utterly ignored. That’s the ignominious pattern of the drama jury. Here’s Charles McNulty on how that feels.

 They’re all good, but I have a special fondness for:

• WeightNags, which sends dieters mildly abusive weekly messages to “encourage” them
• the company that offers testicular implants for dogs, to “allow your pet to retain his natural look [and] self esteem”
• and the drive-through strip joint in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania. Because, you know, men in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania are so busy they don’t know whether they’re coming or going.

Click here to see them all.

Next to my laptop here at home, my daughter just the agenda for my Saturday night meeting here;  “Agenda for Saturday Fringe Meeting.” She said, “You had a Fringe meeting?” and shuddered.

No, not that Fringe.  (Although I did tell her yes, we’re conducting radical experiments in the basement. When she noted that we don’t have a basement, I answered, “You haven’t seen it because we’re keeping it in the other dimension.”) This Fringe:  The Hollywood Fringe festival.

The festival is June something to something (click the link above to learn more). Consider this your advance notice to hang onto the evening of Saturday, June 17th. That’s when a bunch of us from Moving Arts are going to do some instant and impossible new plays all around the grounds of a noted landmark in Hollywood. More details to follow.

There’s a difference between horror and hilarity. Whoever is behind this movie doesn’t know what it is. Which means that if I were 20 years old and had a keg of beer, three pizzas, and a roomful of friends, this is the movie I would rent.

I’m tempted to say that this singing style must leave the singer feeling hoarse.

Werner Herzog has a new movie out, “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” Here’s Roger Ebert’s review. He likes it enormously — and makes it sound similar in tone and style to Herzog’s smashing (to me!) film of last year, “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” (Or however that’s punctuated.) Which means I’ll be seeing this movie too. Eagerly. Ebert’s lede about the new film provides a thrilling reminder of why I adored the previous one:

Werner Herzog’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” is a splendid example of a movie not on autopilot. I bore my readers by complaining about how bored I am by formula movies that recycle the same moronic elements. Now here is a film where Udo Kier’s eyeglasses are snatched from his pocket by an ostrich, has them yanked from the ostrich’s throat by a farmhand, gets them back all covered with ostrich mucus, and tells the ostrich, “Don’t you do that again!”

I too am tired of formula, and cheer Herzog for violating it. Or ignoring it. Or misunderstanding it. Or all three.

Earlier in the week, Ebert also supplied this sublime appreciation of Herzog and, specifically, “Aguirre, Wrath of God.” And it now occurs to me that it was watching Siskel & Ebert, 28 years ago, that turned me onto “Fitzcarraldo,” and therefore Werner Herzog. Siskel didn’t like it, but Ebert’s passion for it, accompanied by the sort of strange but compelling clip so typical of Herzog,  compelled me to see it. I owe Mr. Ebert a debt of gratitude.

Q: After learning of potentially deadly problems with their accelerator pedals, when should Toyota executives have disclosed them?

After Watergate, after Iran-contra, after the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases, after Monica Lewinsky, after Scooter Libby, after whatever John Edwards is up to this week, after all this and more, you would think that finally, finally, people would realize that the cover-up will always be uncovered and that they would just be better off to come clean immediately.

In the case of Toyota, we should herald company spokesman Irv Miller, who apparently pushed for full disclosure while others wanted to keep it quiet.

There’s a fair chance that Atlantic City’s first casino hotel, Resorts International, will close. The casino lost $18 million last year — almost $11 million of it in the fourth quarter alone. Here’s the story.

I hope that Resorts, which opened in 1978 when I was in high school, survives. Its closing would sadden me for a couple of reasons.  I have at least one good friend who works there, and this is not a job market I hope to see friends entering. Also, my father was one of the people who built Resorts. (He was a crane operator.) He was proud to have worked on all of the first 11 casinos built in Atlantic City.

On another personal note, the newspaper article I’m linking to above is from the Press of Atlantic City (which old-timers still call “The Atlantic City Press”), where I was an editor from 1987-1988. The casinos are still there (for now), but newspapers are vanishing all over the land. (Denver, for example, no longer has a daily print newspaper.)  I’m glad to see that the paper is still there — and it reminds me of another job market — or industry — I wouldn’t want to see friends entering right now.

On Saturday night, after seeing a friend’s play (which we thoroughly enjoyed), my compatriot Trey Nichols and I headed to the Apple Store down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to check out the new iPad, which debuted that day.

Some photos documenting that historic occasion:

That’s me, considering all the cool things I’ll be able to do with it when I get one (second — or third — generation).  By the way, these photos are taken with my iPhone (third generation; see the pattern?) by iMyself or iFriend. The only thing not i in these images is the clutch of i-worshipers in the background, and they’re pretty i-dolatrous themselves. Side note to good friends Terence Anthony and Steve Lozier:  Please note which site I’m checking out. No, the image wasn’t blurry — that was Trey’s hands shaking in anticipation of getting to touch the iPad.

And here’s Trey, actual iPad in hand. But now he looks, well, somewhat… skeptical.

This is before we visited a cigar shop around the corner where the UCLA student working the counter rhapsodized about the iPad and how eagerly he was awaiting his own. While we didn’t plunk down the 600 bucks for the latest buzzy techno device, we did each plunk down six bucks for a Punch cigar.

Even though both of us are still sentimentally attached to paper and the things that come on it (books, magazines, newspapers, comic books), we were also drawn to the novelty of the unit and enjoyed its sleek interface. We also noted its limitations — no camera, no 3G/4G.  In the meantime, Amazon, in an attempt at a marketing pushback, sent out an email today to various and sundry announcing that Kindle books are readable on — the iPhone. So I downloaded the Kindle app and am now reading three books on the iPhone (starting with a short story collection by the ever-reliably good Mr. Anton Chekhov, and Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir, and a compendium of 19th century American fiction) — all of them free, just as the app was. One sort of calculus would have it that I just got the e-reader and saved $600.

But here’s one question Trey and I didn’t think to wonder about the iPad:

Will it blend?