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.)

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.

Push-up men’s underwear, the “Wonderbra for Men.”

(Just as I suspected.)

The rest of the awful secrets are here.

Here’s an interactive map that helps you figure your carbon footprint.

My daily commute, annualized, is 352. Take that, Al Gore.

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’.

My kids have good teachers. One of the best is my son’s high-school English teacher from last year, Sam Kuglen. Mr. Kuglen, as he’s known in these parts, is very smart and passionate, and a man with a discerning eye for talent (even though he had me in to guest lecture on playwriting a couple of times last year). He’s also a credible singer on “Rock Band.”

Sam’s background is in theatre, which as regular readers of this blog know, I feel prepares you for anything. In addition to doing things like writing, directing, acting, singing, and dancing, theatre people hire and fire, do bookkeeping, set up complicated online systems, build sets, paint, sew, fight (mock or real), cater, and on and on. What person do you really want if you’re stuck on a desert island? A theatre technician. They can fashion a raft out of conch shells and seaweed. Trust me on this. Day in, day out, they put up multimedia extravaganzas with chewing gum and clamp lamps.

In typical fashion, Sam has talents even I didn’t know. I knew he was smart. What I didn’t know was that in the 90’s he was actually a big dummy.