What elements work to scare people to death? (Other than what’s happening to the country.)

• surprise
• inappropriateness
• shock
• exaggeration
• pain and suffering

What elements work for comedy?

• surprise
• inappropriateness
• shock
• exaggeration
• pain and suffering

As Buster Keaton said, “Nothing is funnier than a guy falling down a flight of stairs.” (Or something to that effect.) The line between horror and humor is thin indeed.

I was thinking about this last night as my friend Trey and I made our annual pilgrimage to Knott’s Berry Farm (rechristened every year as “Knott’s Scary Farm”) for the Halloween Haunt, now in its 35th year. Inevitably, my favorite part is the evil clowns. No, I don’t know why. They’re simultaneously hilarious and horrifying, so maybe it’s the double visceral thrill. I especially enjoy being in one of the mazes — preferably a 3D maze like the clown house from two years ago — and getting surprised by one of these twisted bozos jumping out from a blind corner (as perhaps happened to Trey in the photo below, taken in the “Doll Factory” maze).

Here I am, below, in another area of the same maze. I think the idea here is that the doll makers were trying to make a doll of the woman in this case, who unfortunately was still alive. Given that these mazes are mostly dark, with pounding music, strobe lighting, psychedelic effects, and hidden doors and switchbacks for hideously garbed performers to jump out at you from, it’s difficult to muster the concentration needed to make sense of much of this. Perhaps that’s the key to the fun: It’s like reliving all your childhood nightmares and laughing them off.

We’ve gone every year for five years now, I think. I took my wife with me for our anniversary (yes, we were married on Halloween) 12 years ago and she felt too old for it and derided me for my enjoyment; I was all of 33, she was 30. This year I couldn’t help noticing that the average age of attendees does seem to be that of Archie and his pals at Riverdale High, but occasionally I would catch the eye of some other guy in his 40’s and we’d look at each other knowingly. In “Tender is the Night,” Dick Diver’s annual test of his youth was whether or not he could leap over the couch. As for me, I plan to keep going to Knott’s Scary Farm every year until one of the damn clowns actually gives me a heart attack, and then I’ll know I’m finished.

Last week’s New Yorker had a piece on “The Wire,” my candidate for best drama ever on television.

When HBO premiered “Rome,” I asked my son if he’d like to watch it with me. Given the show’s content networks — what the networks call “adult themes,” as well as what everyone calls “extensive nudity” — my wife was initially aghast; she was never a 14-year-old boy, though, and if I had already seen and heard all these things in the 1970’s I was confident he had as well. “Rome” went over big with all of us, my wife falling into line, and when the show was over Lex asked, “What’s next?” because now HBO on Sunday nights had become a ritual of sorts. So he started watching “The Wire” with me in its fourth season.

(And no, he is not watching “Tell Me You Love Me” with me; I do have standards.)

He grew to love “The Wire,” as I have, and in the same way:  initially flat-out confused, but with growing respect. I put the whole series in my Netflix queue, and watching the show straight through in this way has only deepened my appreciation for an intricately woven storyline that seems at the same time to be utterly organic. Every character on the show has layers of shading and history — just like, um, real people.

“The Wire” returns for its fifth and final  season in January. You’ve got just enough time to catch up if you start now. Whether you watch it or not — and given that seemingly no one here in LA has watched it, that means you probably haven’t already seen it either — this New Yorker profile of creator David Simon is worth reading. Simon sounds like someone who got into the newspaper business because he believed in its Camelot mythos; based solely on this profile, I’m not sure he yet realizes that that beatific past never existed.

Good news that The Silent Movie Theatre in the Fairfax district has reopened again, according to the Los Angeles Times. Better news, I think, that in its new incarnation as a revival art house the venue isn’t limited strictly to showing silent movies. I love silent movies, but in the DVD (and, soon, post-DVD) age, I doubt there’s enough of an audience to sustain the theatre. Best news:  96-year-old Gaylord Carter is still the organist. Yes, I said 96. Mr. Carter accompanied Buster Keaton films in their original release; 80 years later he’s still magnificent.

It’s nice to know that LA is going to have another revival house, one that sounds like The Little Art Theatre. I have many fond memories of the long-lost Little Art, deep in the woods of Bargaintown, NJ. In the early 1980’s before the advent of home video, this was the only place anywhere near my home to see art films, foreign releases like “Jean de Florette” and its sequel “Manon of the Spring” (both of which we just Netflixed last month), and assorted strange offerings like the Herve Villechaize / Oingo Boingo vehicle “Forbidden Zone.” The Little Art was also where I had my first date with the woman who would become my wife; we drove over there after a college event to see the midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and wound up being the only two from our crowd who went.

Even with all those charms, though, it had never had a 96-year-old organist.

Last week while I was in Las Vegas, I caught the act of revered colleague Shelley Berman. In fact, in retrospect I wonder if I didn’t go to Las Vegas precisely so that I could see the act of the revered Berman.

I grew up seeing Shelley do his act on The Mike Douglas Show and The Merv Griffin Show and the like and even then thought there was something special about him. In an age that spanned far-out groovy comics, new absurdists (Steve Martin, Emo Phillips, Steven Wright), and human jumping beans frantically yanking props out of boxes (Gallagher, are you out there?), Shelley’s act was practically zenlike in its comparative stillness. His humor moved at the speed of erosion, and with similar particulate precision.

Although every year for almost 20 years I’ve seen him do some variation of his act in his capacity as a lecturer the Master of Professional Writing program at USC — even when his act that day revolved around mocking the miniscule salad at a faculty luncheon — I’d never seen him do stand-up in a club. So the opportunity to see him at Harrah’s, where he headlined the Improv, wasn’t one to miss.

And I’m glad I didn’t miss it. As a generous courtesy, Shelley had me seated next to his wife of 60 years, Sarah. Especially from that ringside perspective, my admiration for his comic facility grew. It’s pointless to try to recapture his lines here, especially without his delivery, but few people know how to work a room like that, improv off people in the front rows, weave in old bits seamlessly, or maintain a meticulously calculated pace, let alone do it so well at age 81. It felt wonderful to laugh that deeply.

His career revival is in full flourish. He’s recurring on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Boston Legal,” he plays Adam Sandler’s father in that comic’s forthcoming new film, and he was recently given a lifetime achievement award at the Boston Comedy Festival. With all that, though, at the close of his act he said he always returns to live performance because of the bounce he gets from an audience. “This is what I live for,” he said.

Here’s Shelley’s website. You should check in once in a while and see if he’s performing live somewhere near you. Then you should go.

Although seemingly all of Southern California is burning down, no, my family and I are not personally in any danger. We’re in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, and the fires in Los Angeles County are mostly along the coast, or north of us beyond the valley. I post this by way of response to the people who have called and emailed with concerns.

What we are experiencing, and will continue to experience, is the fallout — for everyone who has lost or will lose their homes. More than half a million people in this state have fled their homes. Where will they all go?

Monday night coming home from USC, which is downtown, I had the top down on my convertible, as I do most nights. The air had the smell of a clogged chimney, and the night sky glowed a faint orange. Tonight, driving toward downtown again but earlier in the evening, the sunset was apocalyptic, a thick stew of smoke and pollution and ash with a tinge of red and yellow. Traffic was light as it has been much of the week in the downtown to valley corridor; people busily fleeing fires are off these roads.

A couple of years ago the hills that surround this particular city did catch fire; they burned for days. It was remarkable to drive to appointments and to attend events and check in occasionally with the status of the fires above and ahead: Yep, still burning. I remember visiting the Taste of Downtown Burbank outdoor food festival and hundreds of us standing around eating while sprinkles of ash gently drifted from the sky and onto us. No matter where you were in the city, you could see and taste the fires.

This time, they are farther removed. But they will be with us for a long, long time.

We are at an odd point in comic-book history:  At a point when the sales of mainstream comics in the format most of us grew up with have nearly reached the vanishing point, comics in new and more adult formats have seen sales spikes. Maybe you can’t find comics on a spinner rack at the market or to any great degree at 7-11,  but you can find them in collected editions at Barnes & Noble, where they are selling in increasing numbers.

You can also find them deeply rooted in our mainstream culture, where they have enormous influence and growing general acceptance. Without comics, we’d have no “Heroes,” and without comic books I’m wondering what movie studios would be releasing on most of their screens any more.

In addition to their new marketplace foothold, comic books in my lifetime have become a source of worthy academic and literary  investigation.  Case in point:  the new biography of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. Having come of age during the strip’s decline into cuteness and Hallmark merchandising, I haven’t been a fan. But I have to admit that the earlier strips show a multi-leveled psychology that underpins its later enormous success. (The same can be said with Spider-Man, and Superman, and all iconic character creations, Spider-Man being a loser unable to strike back against a bullying society, and Superman being an alien Jew determined not to lose another homeland or see his new race perish.)

I’ve decided I’m going to read that Schulz biography  early next year. (Yes, it’s gotten to the point that I’m scheduling my book reading. It’s the only way to accomplish these goals.) As much as being a biography of Schulz, and one related to comics, it also sounds like a biography of our culture in a certain time and place. Similarly, I’m looking forward to Mark Evanier’s forthcoming book, “Kirby, King of the Comics,” a mini-bio of sorts of Jack Kirby in preparation for Evanier’s long-in-development biography.

For insights into these two books, as well as other thoughts about the place of comics in our culture today, I suggest this fine piece in today’s Los Angeles Times.  While I bemoan its title — “Comic strips aren’t just for laughs,” which is, after all, a variation on the tired “Hey, comics aren’t just for kids!” angle — the piece itself is dead-on about something that has been signally important in my life and the lives of many, many others.

1. How to identify the front runner? The front runner is the candidate who is so concerned about being perceived as a front runner — and therefore someone whom the actual electorate can take down a peg in a looming contest — that he denies it. (Or she, as this case may be.)
2. Similarly, beware of candidates who run as “fiscal conservatives.” For examples, please see Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush, et al.
3. Also, always be wary of “the people’s candidate.” What people? Which people? I’m part of the people, and so are all of the people I know, and yet we almost never support “the people’s candidate.” In one example from 2004, Dick Gephardt was a guy who clearly needed to meet more peoples. Even the peoples he knew didn’t support him, so I was never sure who he meant.

In Las Vegas, imploding old casinos to make way for new ones is almost a way of life. (And, judging by the casino hotel I stayed in there just yesterday, it needs to happen a little more frequently.) But in my old stomping grounds of Atlantic City, it hadn’t happened until last night, when they blew up the Sands real good.

I remember playing blackjack at the Sands when it opened in 1980 (and when it was called the Brighton, after the hotel that originally stood there), and yes, I was underage and got in anyway. (I don’t recall any of my friends ever being stopped at any casino hotel.) I would drop in occasionally for the next eight years until relocating to Los Angeles, but after that I never went again. If they blow up Harrah’s — or, perhaps, when they blow up Harrah’s — I will lose a large chunk of my history: just out of college, I worked at Harrah’s for almost a year, and often booked suites on the sly so I could host poker parties; at the end of one of them, my father sadly shook his head and said about one of my more, um, entertaining friends, “Joe shouldn’t play cards,” and then left with all of Joe’s money in his pocket.

Here’s the true lesson to learn from this implosion: that Kansas was right, and we are indeed all dust in the wind. Because if in Atlantic City nobody was able to save the site of the final concerts by New Jersey native Frank Sinatra, then there is no final hope for a legacy by any of us.

Thomas Friedman on who really won in the long strange story of Bush v. Gore. Truly an epic saga, except the critics would say it was too neat, with the loser triumphant and the winner losing everything.

Steven Colbert he suited up and ready to run.