Schlitz beer is returning, and I have one bit of advice for its brewers: Make it better.

As the story linked above notes, Schlitz was pretty bad, at least in the incarnation I remember. It tasted so bad and was so cheap to buy, that my father drank it. That’s how bad it was. The only beer I remember him preferring was Black Label, and that’s because it was even cheaper and even worse. Schlitz tasted like the can it came in, with rust added; Black Label tasted like the can and whatever died inside it.

I have no intention of switching from my occasional Newcastle, which I fully switched to when Anheuser-Busch bought out Rolling Rock and screwed up its formula — even while nervily retaining the slogan “Same as it ever was.” But if or when I run into Schlitz someplace I’m going to try one, just to see if I can keep it down.

One of the great pleasures of going to the theatre in Los Angeles is becoming reacquainted with wonderful character actors you grew up watching on TV and subsequently forgot about.

A few years ago I saw my friend Aram Saroyan’s play “At the Beach House,” which I knew starred Orson Bean. And it was a treat seeing Mr. Bean — er, not that Mr. Bean — onstage. The surprise was coming across Dena Dietrich in one of the other roles. Yes, she had a career on stage and television, but my generation remembers her more for this:

She was utterly delightful in Aram’s play.

Tonight I went to see a couple of other friends in the appropriately titled “My Old Friends” at the Victory Theatre in Burbank. Appearing in one of the roles was the terrific character actor Malachi Throne. Name not ring a bell? Mr. Throne played Robert Wagner’s boss on “It Takes a Thief,” which debuted in 1968, and, along with what IMDB pegs at 100 other television roles, played Commodore Mendez on the “Star Trek” two-parter “The Menagerie.” Here’s a picture.

Throne has a deep, rich, unforgettable voice. His performance tonight as a man who realizes he’s built nothing in his life was simple, touching, and true. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him on stage again, but I was glad to luck into him tonight, and told him so afterward.

(Hey, as an aside: Given Malachi Throne’s “Star Trek” work (including on “Next Generation”), this seems like a perfect news bit to be on my friend Larry Nemecek’s soon-to-be-renamed blog.)

As I reported here, the Los Angeles Times recently canceled its book section and its opinion section (which had been cohabiting like bad roommates recently anyway), the real estate section, the automotive section, and the magazine. While I was at the San Diego Comic-Con, the final Sunday Times with these sections appeared, wrapped with an editorial message that no one I know buys. To paraphrase:  “while we’re downsizing, we’re still going to be better than ever.” While acknowledging that it would be difficult for them to say anything else — other than the noble thing, like “This is a retreat and we’re saddened and ashamed” — this sentiment is so unbelievable it leaves my trust in the media even further diminished.

Tomorrow the first Sunday Times without all those sections will arrive on my doorstep. I’m not sure what I’m going to read in it. I suppose I’ll flip to the back of the front section to see what remains of Opinion, and I’ll take a look at the Calendar section now retitled “Arts & Books” to see how much book has squeezed out art, or vice versa. Or maybe I’ll subscribe to the Sunday New York Times, which has wisely done a major media buy in the area, aimed at people like me and like all the locals who’ve recently told me that if the LA Times doesn’t have a book section, it also won’t have them for long.

While we heretofore loyal readers scratch our heads and figure out how little newspaper still qualifies one as a major newspaper, we can take comfort in something new that the Los Angeles Times has added. That’s right — even in an age of cutbacks, they’re looking to expand coverage into vital new areas.

Click here for their new and much ballyhooed database of dog names in Los Angeles County.

It turns out that “Princess” is the most-registered dog name in Los Angeles County. And it turns out that there are 24 (!) other dogs in the County sharing the name of my dog, Gem.  I found this unsettling, knowing as I do that she is definitely one-of-a-kind, but was relieved to see that she’s the only Australian Shepherd in LA with that name. So I am vastly relieved.

I know that the LA Times’ new dog-name database will have snobs in other cities with other metropolitan daily newspapers howling in derision — people in cities like New York and Washington, DC — but I think they’re barking up the wrong tree. There are only so many dollars and man hours to go around at the LA Times. If I want to learn about books, I can walk into any mall and see what’s in that little window of the Borders Express, and if I want to know opinions about important issues, I can just listen to what the government tells me. But how else would I find out how popular my dog’s name is?

I think my friend Larry Nemecek’s name is fine. It’s his blog that needs a new name.

Larry is acknowledged as the world’s foremost expert on “Star Trek.” (Note to my modest friend Larry: “Who acknowledges you as that? Me. So there.” Me, plus all the people who put his book “The Star Trek Companion” on the New York Times bestseller list, plus all the readers over the years of his other books and magazines, including “Star Trek Communicator.”)

Larry is smarter than I’ll ever be about “Star Trek.” Perhaps too smart: He’s named his new blog about all things Trek “Check the Circuit.”

Huh?

Oh, yeah. Larry informs me that that is the very first line of dialogue ever spoken on “Star Trek.” (It’s in the background in the first scene of “The Cage” and is spoken by Mr. Spock.) Of course.

Like me, you might think this reference too arcane for a) anyone under 45, and b) anyone who also has other interests in life. Both of which would disqualify 99.9999% of the people I expect to be seeing the new “Star Trek” movie when it comes out. Or, as I like to think of them, new people who might become interested in my good friend Larry’s blog.

So I entreat you: Help me come up with a new name for Larry’s blog.

Ideally, it should reference “Star Trek.” (Which, sorry Larr, “Check the Circuit” doesn’t quite do.) Larry is widely known in his field, and he deserves a great blog name. Anything less and he should just pick one of the two blog names I suggested:

• “LarryNemecek.com”
• “Fred.”

It’s 5 ’til 2 a.m. Monday morning, and we just got back from the Con, after almost five full days of great fun (and after not one, but two freeway detours on the way home).

Much more to say about the Con, and several screenings we took in, but later. Right now:  bed.

Two years ago when we spent two hours waiting in line Thursday morning to gain admittance to an event we had already paid for, and for which we had our bar-coded admissions, our group determined that thereafter we would come down early on Wednesday for Preview Night. Available only to people with 4-day admission, Preview Night seemed an ideal solution:  Breeze in, get badged, check out the exhibit hall for a bit, then off to eating, drinking, poker, and such forth. Perfect. And last year that worked.

This year, everyone else had the same idea.

We approached the front of the San Diego Convention Center and were immediately struck by the size of the line: about four across, and stretching down the block. Our first debate was where the line began (or ended). Finally I picked a direction and started walking and everyone followed. We passed Convention Hall A, then B, then C, then D, then E, then F, and on and on, past all the letters, then past the park, then past all pavement, then we wrapped around, then we noticed that all the lines snaked back and forth, so everything we had passed was actually four times in length, as we continued to wrap around, and finally found ourselves behind the convention center. If the Con maxes out at 125,000 paid reservations (as it does), surely every single one of those people were in that line. We were dumbstruck. Everyone else was dumbstruck as well. No one had ever been in a line this long, this big, this hard to comprehend. Each of us was like an individual grain of sand on the beach.

Theories arose as to what would happen when some of us wouldn’t get in. After all, badge pickup was announced as ending at 8:30. We discovered that when it was 6:30 and we were halfway between the supposed front of the line and, well, oblivion. I told my son that if whoever was producing this event was smart, they would extend badge pickup, even if that meant paying union overtime to Elite (the crowd-control people). Consider the opposite:  Telling people that badge pickup was closed and running the risk of a very large and very angry crowd — and then compounding the potential problem of Thursday morning when the rest of the 125,000 people would arrive. We were weighing the pros and cons, and what we would do — stick it out? give up? — and whether or not we’d get into the premiere screening of the ballyhooed new J.J. Abrams show “Fringe,” when, astonishingly, the line started moving at hyperspeed. I have no idea who did what, but within minutes we were inside and picking up our badges.

In the day plus since then, I’ve been repeatedly impressed with the management of this convention. It’s a (large) non-profit, manned almost entirely by volunteers, with a volunteer board of directors, and all of those people are doing a fine job of dealing with an enormous crowd and doing it efficiently and with great sensitivity. At one point today I accidentally broke through one line and into another (I got confused about where the line wrapped around) and one of the volunteers stopped me and turned me around. When he saw me again a few minutes later, now in my proper place, he apologized. I said, “That’s okay. I wasn’t trying to cut. I just didn’t know which way to go.” But still he was apologetic in what could have been a trying and stressful situation.

Last night on the shuttle bus when I got up to get off at the Ralphs supermarket stop, the young guy in front of me made way for me and my large bag of con stuff to get by. “Thanks,” I said. “No problem,” he said. “It’s the Con. We have to be courteous.”

It took almost five years, but Arnold Schwarzenegger finally has done something as governor that I can cheer.

You may recall my fury with the California Legislature’s dithering over a state budget while the state economy is falling apart. There’s been no sense of urgency on their missed deadline. Instead of dealing with our enormous budget gap, our (well-paid) representatives are doing things like fining businesses for selling mylar balloons.

Turns out I’m not the only one who’s fed up. Our governor has come up with an ingenious solution: He’s going to cut the pay of about 200,000 state worker back to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until there’s a budget signed.

I love this plan. I’m sure all of the Sheraton Suites heard my roar of excitement last night when I read this story.

Do I think these state workers are to blame? No. Do I think their intense panic and displeasure is going to force action from the Legislature? You bet.

Schwarzenegger hasn’t been a good governor. I didn’t vote for him, either time. But tonight, he gets a tip of the hat. And I make this prediction, assuming he can legally follow through on this threat: our budget impasse will be magically solved within a week of those new (lower) paychecks going out.

I’m off in 5 minutes to the San Diego Comic Con, my 21st annual attendance. Back in 2008, my then-roommate and I took a drive, so to speak, down to San Diego to check out the Con for a day. We liked it so much we decided that the next year we’d actually stay over and go for a couple of days. Now it’s a five-day affair, with a rotating lineup of friends and allies sharing a large suite. Last year there were seven of us, this year there will be six, and next year there may be eight or nine (depending upon the college destinations and summer plans of my son and his friend, as well as what is a promised “Return to the Con!” by pop-culture-ephemera inspiration Joe Stafford — for whom there will Always be sleeping room on the floor by the window).

As this piece in today’s LA Times (hey, look: They still publish that!) details, the idea of “dropping in” on the Con is now quaint and ludicrous. The Con is now big business. But y’know what? The people running this very large, very sprawling, very economically and culturally important event are doing a great job. Really. That it’s a non-profit run mostly by volunteers makes it all the more amazing.

If you’re going to the Con and things like poker, whiskey, and cigars interest you, drop me a line.

Well… either that’s a clone or a long-lost cousin of the dog owned by my neighbor two houses down. Or, rather, of the dog who owns my neighbor two houses down, because clearly that’s the relationship. Two beings live there: the owner, and the human. The owner, who had the human buy the house about six months ago, loudly proclaims his territory to all and sundry when anyone ventures within a hundred feet. Many have been the times when passing by that I or at least one of my children have wished the dog a slow, painful fate. But then other times it’s the human I (more properly) blame, because she’s encouraging this constant ear-splitting yapping behavior. She gently strokes the dog and says, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” adding names that sound to me like “pookum” and “snookum” but which I, thinking about the dog, re-imagine as “punch him” and “shoot him.” See, it actually isn’t all right; the dog is turning me against a neighbor.

Or, I could blame my neighbors on the other side of us, who actually sold the house to this person. Problem is, I like these neighbors. A lot. They were one of the reasons we built an addition to the house rather than move; we liked the neighbors and the neighborhood. I did say to Brad one day, though, “Oh, that dog!” And he responded mildly, of course, “That’s her child.” Sure. But children who behave like that get disciplined. Or sent away. (Or wind up president.)

So when you watch the video above and come across the neighbor of the yapping dog who says, “I’d like to kill it,” imagine that’s me. Because I’d like to kill it. If not with my bare hands, then at least release it into the mountains so the coyotes could eat it.

So here’s something that my state senator, Jack Scott, has been concerning himself with while California enters a new fiscal year without a budget and with a massive deficit:  the horrors of mylar balloons.

Mylar balloons, it turns out, very occasionally “become enmeshed” in electricity lines and cause outages. Here’s the crisis that has my senator all charged up:

“Burbank Water & Power officials in 2007 recorded that more than 4,600 customers were affected by eight power outages, which lasted an average of 77 minutes per customer. The outages caused more than $10,000 in property damage. Though not the sole culprit, metallic balloons were found to have caused a portion of the blackouts. No metallic balloon-related outages have been reported in Burbank this year….”

In other words, there were some outages last year, but we don’t know to what degree they were caused by mylar balloons, and damage was about $10,000. This year, there are no balloon-caused outages. Clearly, this is a far more pressing issue than the state budget crisis.

The representative from the Balloon Council (no, that’s not your local city council, it’s a lobbying group)  shares my doubt that this is important legislation, but Senator Scott’s spokesperson “dismissed such flippancy, contending that Mylar balloon-cased outages are a serious problem.”

“If you’re in the operating room at [Providence] St. Joseph [Medical Center] and the electricity goes out and you have to wait for backup electricity, it’s a problem,” she said. “If it’s 100 degrees out and Southern California Edison is saying we’ve got six outages and they are all Mylar balloon caused and your fridge goes out, that’s a problem. To say that’s it not a problem, is understating it.”

Perhaps. But if she’s comparing this to the potential of a power outage during surgery, may I compare the impact of police, firefighters, and code enforcers ceasing work because the state can’t pay its bills? If the state doesn’t pay its electrical bill, I doubt legislators will be able to blame the balloons.

Luckily, a compromise was managed so that the balloon imbroglio came to a happy conclusion. Instead of, in the words of my local paper The Burbank Leader, “illegalizing the sale of the shiny, metallic balloons — as the bill’s author, state Sen. Jack Scott, had intended — the compromise will now penalize sellers and distributors of the Mylar balloons up to $250.” One would think that if these electrical outages were so potentially dangerous that the balloons would be banned. But no, I guess it’s enough to fine everyone who sells them — even though the balloons are legal — and thereby let more hidden tax dollars fly off to Sacramento.