Stan Lee is the speaker at this month’s Hollywood Networking Breakfast. ‘Nuff said.

By the way, one link on the site above promises “History of Breakfast.” Which I expected to begin with “mastodon.” But no.

For almost three months now, my state of California has been operating without a budget, which has made me irate (as I noted here and here). Like the House of Usher, the entire economy seems to be slipping into the tarn, but the legislature in California has been unable to get its act together and pass a budget. In a classic case of chicken, the GOP has insisted on draconian cuts, while the Democrats have insisted on more taxes instead, with both parties refusing to budge. (And Schwarzenegger, as a governor with no party loyalty to call upon, appearing utterly powerless in this ideological death match.) In the meantime, state workers have been laid off, vendors aren’t getting paid, and schools and communities and who knows what else have been going unfunded.

Today I went to the opening of the Democratic Party of San Fernando Valley’s campaign headquarters. It was a mob scene. It was like the turnout of an Obama rally, without the rally space. If this is any indication of excitement about Obama and fear of Palin (and it largely isn’t), the reports of McCain’s impending electoral victory have been greatly exaggerated. (Especially when one figures in Obama’s just-announced $66 million fundraising month.)

I ducked back outside for air and saw Karo Torossian, one of Assemblyman Paul Krekorian’s aides. I’ve written here several times of my admiration for my assemblyman. (I’m one of his delegates.) Before I could ask Karo where Paul was, he told me that Paul was running late and might not make it — the state Speaker, Karen Bass, had just set a conference call for 3:30. On a Sunday. I could figure what that was about. Anyone could have.

“They better pass a budget,” I said.

Karo said something like, “They have to pass a budget that protects against cuts….”

“They better pass a budget,” I repeated, being well aware of the statewide bipartisan anger over this issue. People who had lost their jobs or gone without pay were literally in tears on the news or the radio every day.

Well, it looks like they’ve got a budget, and one that will pass. As this story in the Sacramento Bee avers, it’s a budget that nobody likes. It looks like there will be further cuts and no new taxes.

But at least they’ve got a budget. Eleven weeks after its passage was mandated by law.

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia has announced he’s leaving his post in January so that he can return to writing poetry. (The Chair is prohibited from getting published while in office.) While I wish him well, I have to say I’m sorry to see Gioia go; he’s done a terrific job, bringing Shakespeare to communities across the country that in previous years have gotten nothing for their arts dollars, getting private funding for projects that enrolled Iraq War veterans in documenting their experiences, and making friends and allies everywhere for a department that was used as a kickball for most of the 90’s.

Gioia is so highly respected that the venerated Onion put him on their front page today. Here’s the news of his last, and largest, project at the NEA.

Click here to find out.

(And check back frequently for updates.)

Theatre of the absurd is one of the most misunderstood forms — probably because of the unfortunate name Martin Esslin stuck it with. Thirty years ago Saturday Night Live ran wonderful parodies of bad theatre of the absurd and its accompanying high-minded criticism; Dan Ackroyd, as the sour confection Leonard Pinth-Garnell, would watch a pretentious bit of downtown performance art with us and then sniff, “Mmm. That was truly bad.” That’s very funny, because it takes the perceptions of that period about theatre of the absurd, which had sprung up on these shores in New York in the 1960’s, and magnifies them.

Funny, but not accurate. Because, as Edward Albee pointed out in 1962, if there was an “absurd” theatre, one devoid of life and humor, it wasn’t the one downtown. The theatre of the absurd I’ve always loved is packed with meaning, and tends toward the very funny. This includes the work of Pinter, the supposed playwright of menace, and the bleak existentialist Beckett, as well as Ionesco, and Shepard, and the other major writers Esslin put together. They were all saying important things, and they were all funny.

The most important class I took in college was Theatre of the Absurd, an elective taught by professor Jeanne-Andree Nelson. I took the class on a lark: I liked Jeanne-Andree and I figured I could sail through it and get on to the serious business of graduate school and becoming a novelist. But I emerged from the class someone I hadn’t intended to be: a playwright. Theatre of the Absurd was so much fun, so filled with wild energy, so easy to do at any place and on any budget, that fiction looked like work.

In Jeanne-Andree’s class I learned about the writers above, as well as Boris Vian (whose “Empire Builders” I still revere), and Amiri Baraka, and Jean Genet — and I learned about the wonderful comedian Emo Phillips. In 1984, Emo was doing a sort of standup comedy that no one had done before, an insanely inventive and funny comedy that functioned on two levels: piercingly intellectual on the top, and clownishly foolish on the bottom, as though a cocktail-party philosopher had been cross-bred with the town moron. In other words, like theatre of the absurd. Professor Nelson, to whom I remain indebted, was smart enough to recognize the affiliation and to somehow secure a tape of the newly emergent Emo and screen it in class.

Here’s a copy of that first recorded Emo Phillips video, which I just found on the web. (It’s on Emo’s MySpace page, but it hasn’t always been there.) I recognized it immediately because it left an indelible impression on me (especially the joke about the basement). (You can find part two of the video on Emo’s site.) My friend Mark Chaet and I went to see Emo last year at the Steve Allen Theatre and I’m happy to report that Emo is as clever and funny as ever. I’m sure he’ll be back there at some point; you might want to sign up for the email alert.

The Earliest Emo ('83) Ever! (Part 1 of 2)

Almost every day I think about Anita Page, and several times a week I check online to see if she’s still alive. No more. She died today at the age of 98.

Ms. Page was a movie star of the 20’s and 30’s, appearing in the silent era in one of MGM’s biggest hits, which ultimately led to her being partnered with — and this is why she matters to me — Buster Keaton, in his first talkie, “Free and Easy,”  in 1930. Keaton liked her so much he requested her again for “Sidewalks of New York” the next year, making her the only female costar he worked with twice in movies with sound. Neither movie is very good — Keaton was drinking heavily and furious with MGM for taking control over his movies and changing his character; the ending of “Free and Easy” is especially hard to watch, as Keaton, made up as a sad clown with a teary expression looks on hopelessly as the shallow male romantic lead makes off with the girl. But both movies have their bright spots, and in both of them Anita Page is very good as a moll with wonderful comic moxie.

The reason I’m reminded of Anita Page on an almost daily basis is that above my desk I have a statuette of her that she signed for me almost 15 years ago. (When I retrieve my camera I’ll post a photo.) Back then, I went to the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax every month to see all the Buster Keaton movies, and in the process got to meet Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Dom deLuise and other Keaton fans who would come by. On the night of what would have been Keaton’s 100th birthday, I took with me another Keaton fan, the Ohio playwright Kevin Barry, who was in town because I was producing his play, and I wound up sitting next to another one of the great comic’s co-stars, Eleanor Keaton. I can’t remember what we talked about (except our mutual affection for her late husband), but I wish I did.

Some time after that, Silent Movie held a tribute to Anita Page and my friend Joe Stafford and I went. Ms. Page was selling and signing these statuettes, and Joe bought one for me as a gift. I’m still grateful. It’s one of the nicest gifts I’ve ever received. (Another is the framed photo that Paul Crist took for me of the lake deep in the woods where I spent so much of my youth.) It’s a reminder of friendship, and it’s a reminder that I got to meet two people who worked with Buster Keaton, who has brought me immense joy.

Here’s the above image in context on flickr.com.

The young woman pictured above is named Elizabeth, and by all reports is not running for Vice President. (Yet. McCain may change his mind when he sees this picture.)

The exhibition on R. Crumb that got so much attention last year in San Francisco is now showing in Philadelphia through December. I should have taken a day to fly up to SF last year to see it — still not quite sure how I missed it — and I don’t foresee being in Philadelphia again in time. So if you’re nearby, please go see it for me. (And bring me back an exhibition catalog.)

Thanks to Paul Crist (who is close to Philadelphia, where that catalog would be… ) for making me aware of this.

Over on the Huffington Post, a former constituent in the small town where Sarah Palin was governor writes a long letter about Palin’s decidedly poor track record. Admittedly, no mayor anywhere is loved by everyone, but these excerpts below speak directly to why she scares me:

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6
years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over
33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the
City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation
(1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a
regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she
promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they
benefited residents.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office
redecorated more than once.

 In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she
recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while
she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s
surplus, borrow for needs.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected
City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from
the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents
rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s
attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew
her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the
Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

So what do we have here?

• Poor administration
• Bad fiscal management
• Intolerance for disagreement

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sounds precisely like the Bush administration. Whether or not McCain is “four more years of Bush,” if he’s elected and is incapacitated, his v.p. might very well fulfill that mandate.

Thinking back to when I was an 11-year-old taking my required hunter safety classes, I can’t recall anyone else out in the field looking anything like the vice-presidential candidate above. If there had been someone similarly outfitted, my seriously hormonal self would have taken note. But no, it was a cleared field filled with somewhat clueless boys in dungarees and hunter-orange vests getting tutored in the way of the gun by middle-aged men who were passing on what they had once learned at the same age.

One of the things we were taught is that a gun is not a toy, that it is not to be treated as such, and that because we should always assume it is loaded and ready to go off, we should never point it at anyone or treat it as anything less than an instrument of death. It’s because of that thinking, which has informed my life, that I look at this image with nothing but dismay. Sarah Palin is by all estimates a skilled hunter and fisher — but I don’t like her cavalier attitude with that gun.

In most political seasons at least half of one of the main tickets scares the pants off me. In 1992, it was the utterly unqualified and unmoored Dan Quayle (and, more precisely, his scarily intolerant and rigid wife, who would have wound up running the government had something happened to Bush the First); in 2000 it was Dick Cheney; and in 2004 it was a trifecta:  Bush the Lesser, Cheney, and John Edwards, a hypocritical ambulance-chaser of the first order (which made it hard to support John Kerry — except for the alternative, which we’re now enduring).

This year, it’s Sarah Palin who gives me the shivers. I don’t like what she says, and I don’t like what her choice says about John McCain.

I think Palin’s shortcomings have been widely documented already, so I’d rather discuss McCain, a man I used to esteem. McCain is running on a platform of “Country First,” which by extension indicates a criticism that someone else — perhaps his opponent? — is not putting country first. But in picking an utterly unqualified number two, has the aged and cancer-prone John McCain put country first, or has he thrown a sop to the fringe elements of his own party while nakedly attempting to attract even a sliver of the disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters? Every year around budget time, I have seen McCain on C-Span voting against and speaking out against budget earmarks — but he has just selected a running mate who sought (and got) dozens of them for her small town and for the state of Alaska. Is this truly the person he thinks best equipped to step when the president is incapacitated? While I’ve rarely agreed with his politics, I’ve generally admired John McCain. Now that he’s caught Potomac Fever and is willing to sacrifice good judgment for his own election, I just think he’s a hypocrite. Embracing Bush the Lesser was bad enough; positioning someone for the presidency whom you cannot believe is capable is just selfish and unpatriotic.