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?

How fortunate we are in this great land to have Free Comic Book Day. And woe to the nations that do not observe it! They do not know the despair they endure.

This year’s Free Comic Book Day might place in your hands free retro reprint editions of classic Marvel comics (Avengers #8, the first new Ant Man, the first Spider-Woman, an early Iron Fist, and so on), a great Simpsons comic starring Comic Book Guy (!), a new New Avengers / Dark Avengers mini, Sonic the hedgehog for younger boys and Betty & Veronica for stinky older sisters, and on and on. All for the cost of nothing!

Submitted for your perusal, photographic evidence of just some of the wonders available to you at your local comics store. These esteemed visitors were seen at House of Secrets in Burbank.

Mr. Incredible, defending my ability to secure free comic books.

My favorite artist, right, gets a sketch from comics artist Tony Fleecs.

My daughter Emma considers a future line of work. (After asking me why Supergirl had a navel piercing, which was “wrong.”)

Mr. Incredible trying to horn in on my action. Right after this pic, I dialed up Mrs. Incredible and that put an end to that. Still, I’m glad to be seen with four defenders of truth, justice, and the American way (the three heroes in the flesh and the hero depicted on my shirt).

Afraid you’ve missed out? There’s still time to discover similar wonders at your local comics shop. This link will direct you hither.

Just got in from a night spent bowling in Hollywood. Bowling is not what it was when I was a kid:  filthy lanes with middle-aged guys in NRA hats chain-smoking and chugging Schlitz, getting served greasy snacks by a washed-up bottle blonde at a grimy window into a dank kitchen area. Now it’s video screens, club music and a deejay, Asian wraps, a serious dress code, and the hipster Hollywood contingent. At least that’s what we found at The Lucky Strike in Hollywood,  on the corner of Hollywood and Highland (our town’s new epicenter).

The lane next to us was taken up by six playboy bunnies and their photographer and videographer. How did we know they’re bunnies? One of our crowd asked the girls, “Why are all of you blonde?” and one answered, “Because we’re Playboy bunnies.” That, plus when they were checking in, they announced at the shoe counter, “We’re the Playboy party.”

The eight of us in our lane bowled two games and I lost both of them. (Well, the second time I tied for last place, so see, I was getting better.) Somehow or other I bowled a gutter almost every time. Not that the Playboy bunnies were a distraction. I don’t know what it used to cost, but tonight bowling for eight for two hours with drinks and snacks ran three hundred bucks. And it seemed like a bargain.

Charles McNulty reminds us where Bea Arthur developed the killer comic delivery we loved so much on television:  in the theatre.

My friend Hoyt Hilsman suggests we waterboard Sean Hannity.

Click here for some photos of the abandoned house that Steve Jobs has owned — and hated — since 1984. He wants to tear it down and — perhaps in the spirit of the times — build a new, smaller mansion.

Some of these pictures remind me of the state my then-girlfriend (now wife) found our apartment in one a.m. after an infamous party. After bidding six or so of us farewell at 6:30 p.m., she came home from work at 6:30 a.m. and discovered us still up drinking and unmoved, the apartment trashed, and a stick of butter mysteriously adhered of its own power halfway up the kitchen wall. Jobs has only skunks and rain to worry about; we had musicians and gamers.

Just got my renewal order form for Portfolio magazine.

Four hours after Conde Nast announced they were shutting down the magazine.

I don’t think I’ll renew.

390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo was the first Pere Ubu album I bought — and I bought it on vinyl. I remember slapping that onto the turntable in the house that I shared with my then-girlfriend (now wife) shared in Ocean City and getting absolutely blown away by the sonic roar that came from the speakers. I have that album on CD now too, but the impact isn’t the same. So I do understand the allure of vinyl, and some of the possible causes for its apparent rise from the grave, as documented in this piece from the LA Times. But let’s take a moment to remember why some of us were so glad to get to cassette tapes (and then CDs, and then digital files):

1. Just try playing a vinyl record in your car. Hit one bump and it’s all over.
2. I have several Pere Ubu albums on my iPhone, always by my side. Now imagine my stapling the vinyl versions onto my belt and walking around with them. Wouldn’t work so well.
3. With digital downloads, you don’t run the risk of accidentally having to see the cover of Frampton Comes Alive again. Now imagine flipping through your records and seeing it there.
4. My digital download of David Byrne & Brian Eno’s last album will never get mold on it. Which I can’t say for my old Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band album.
5. I don’t need boxes to store all the downloads.
6. I don’t have to get up to flip a download to side two.
7. Finally (although I could go on in this vein), I’ve never played had digital download develop a heart-rending big frickin’ scratch all the way across it after just one play. Which is precisely what seemed to happen with every brand-new LP circa 1979.

No, I was glad to see cassette tapes arrive, and even gladder for CD’s. To me, this vinyl craze is yet another reminder that the past wasn’t that golden, and some of us are glad to have left it behind.

With apologies to “I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream,” The New Beverly Cinema is hosting a Harlan Ellison festival for the next week. I’ll be out of town, but that doesn’t mean you should miss it. I’m posting the schedule above — the festival is mostly made up of Ellison’s favorite films, things he thinks you should watch, lending further credence to his viewpoint that it’s his world and we’re just visitors in it.

Ellison made an early and probably deleterious impact on my writing, which I’ve yet to fully scrub out. Viewing just the trailer for his autobiographical self-produced documentary, below, reminds me why I stopped reading him almost 25 years ago. The only thing less self-indulgent than his writing was his self. (Reason number two was that I got tired of an ongoing feud via printed letters that we had for a couple of years.) (Reason number three was the zealotry of his acolytes; I almost got into a fistfight at a Directors Guild screening about 20 years ago when I had the temerity to venture to the friend of a friend that Ellison is, well, an asshole.)

Judge for yourself:

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.)