The person in the above photo is comic legend Shelley Berman. I don’t think I need to go into his credits, but just in case, here’s his bio from his website. Let’s just say that for more than 50 years, Shelley has been acknowledged as a comedy legend and now, unbelievably to someone who grew up watching him on television, I get to call him a colleague. We both teach in the Master of Professional Writing program at USC.

Shelley teaches humor writing. You wouldn’t think this could be taught, except the evidence is that maybe it can: Shelley is very, very funny, and so are several writer friends of mine who are former students of his. Shelley is effortlessly funny. Last month at a faculty luncheon he said, “I want to ask a question, and that is, ‘You call this a salad?'” Indeed, the “salad” consisted of two stalks of lettuce-like things. “Maybe a little tomato,” he went on, “or a cucumber?” His real problem at lunch was being serious. “I’m not joking now, I’m being serious,” he said when he was trying to be serious, but even then not all of us were sure.

Tonight, as I was standing at the copy machine violating Harold Pinter’s copyright (sorry, Hal — just a few pages, I promise), Shelley came by and started sharing the advice he gives his class. The essence is this: shorter sentences are funnier, and beware of actors who add extra words to your lines. Whether or not you already know these things to be true, they sound truer coming from the mouth of Shelley. For 10 minutes I felt that I was getting a private lesson in comedy writing from an expert. Some of us see Shelley every week and we don’t think twice, and I understand that. But just this once it occurred to me that I was talking to Shelley Berman.

Almost 20 years ago, I studied screenwriting with Robert Pirosh. The name won’t mean much to most people, but among other things, Bob was a writer on two Marx Brothers films, “A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races.” I never got to meet the Marx Brothers, but I got to study with one of their screenwriters. It was a fleeting chance. At the end of the semester, he died.

The past few years, Shelley’s career has been back in bloom. It’s been a wonderful thing to watch. He was in “Meet the Fockers,” he’s a regular on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and he does numerous charity gigs. And, if you’re lucky, he does a private bit now and then on Monday nights.

Although this is not a recent photo of the battery that came with my MacBook Pro last June, it is an amazing simulation. A twin, if you will.

A couple of days ago I noticed that one of my business laptops had, well, a wobble. Although lying seemingly flush on my desk at my office, it had a distinct sway as I typed on it. I flipped it over and saw that one corner of the base of the battery was lifting off, creating a metallic flipper of sorts. I pressed it firmly back in place and it peeled away again. It seemed like a situation caused by glue that was no longer joining two discrete surfaces. The battery had some sort of problem requiring immediate attention.

And then I did what we all sometimes do in such situations: nothing. Because I couldn’t envision being without this laptop (which is what I thought a trip to an Apple service station would entail), I thought I’d do nothing, at least for now.

But then I dwelt on it. And realized that my entire writing and business careers (hopelessly entertwined) reside within this laptop and that not all of it is backed up. Quickbooks, yes, to my .Mac account. Same with my calendar, contacts, and so forth. Most of my creative writing has been backed up to one of the desktop machines at home. But did I have all of it stored in one easily accessed backup location? No. So I went to CompUSA and bought a Maxtor 320-GB hard drive with backup software and backed up everything from this laptop, all 116,000 documents. It took about 18 hours, and there’s the irony:

Because the backup took so long, the laptop overheated and the battery cracked nearly in half.

Imagine my reaction seeing this in the morning: the laptop battery is clearly a goner, and while I hope the laptop isn’t irreparably damaged, I do have insurance. So the real question becomes, Is my data saved?

A quick check to the Maxtor showed that it was all on there. I turned off the laptop, obverted it, took out the battery, and surveyed the extreme damage — much like the photo above, but worse. In the photo above you can’t see a complete crack of the plastic shell. You also can’t see grave concern writ large on my face.
The laptop itself is fine, it turned out — I’m writing this on it — and everything is cogently backed up. A quick trip to my local authorized Mac dealer resulted in a new battery, at a cost of $129 plus tax. I didn’t lose any data, and the battery is under warranty from Apple, so a replacement is winging its way to me. So, no harm, no foul.

But this incident has made me think what it would feel like to lose all the data I have been shuttling forward from computers for years and years and years now, dating back to stories I wrote on a IIGS in the late 1980’s. In short, it wouldn’t feel good. At the same time I thought that, though, I figured that I would get over losing all of it and would just write more, and that might even be a good development, freeing me further from the past.

So, in 2007, here’s the verdict: Despite my attempts at cynicism while I was an undergrad, and my decidedly skeptical viewpoint, I am indeed a glass-half-full sort, the kind of deranged optimist who sees the loss of all his data as an opportunity.

One day later, I see it’s an opportunity I’d rather not seize.

Click here to watch a video that forecasts where we’re going with videoscreen technology. You’ll be glad you’ve watched this. Then come back here. We’ll wait.

What was the inciting incident for this new tech? This is an example of life imitating art imitating life imitating art.

The film “The Minority Report” was based on a short story by Philip K. Dick (one of my favorite writers, whom we’ve been discussing here and here ). As you’ll recall, there are many shots of Tom Cruise and others manipulating holographic images by hand. The filmmakers researched cutting-edge technology, got wind of research into this particular idea, and decided to incorporate it into the film. Here’s what happened next:  Some entrepreneurs saw the movie, decided that that looked like really great tech that they could get into early, and found venture capital money to start the further research and development. Then it was reported in Inc. magazine, where I saw it.

To people like me — interested in science, but working in arts and entertainment — the story of art influencing science and vice versa is thrilling. All of us who are writers tell ourselves that we are changing the world, or at least trying to.

And while I’m on the topic, the most obvious recent example of that phenomenon, of course, is a little movie called “An Inconvenient Truth,” which has utterly changed the political climate in the U.S. (And, perhaps ultimately, the world climate.)

When I first moved to Los Angeles to go to grad school at the University of Southern California, I checked into taking the bus down to campus. Sure, the distance is only 16 miles and I had a car, but I figured that if taking the bus made sense, I could do that and read or write.

The first time I checked — in 1988 — the one-way trip was calculated at about 3 hours.

Lately I’ve been hearing from various pundits that bus service and connections have improved, so I thought I’d check again.

The pundits were right:  Now the trip will take only 2 hours 40 minutes. To go 16 miles.

Moreover, based upon the transit authority’s calculations, while driving will cost me $8, public transit will cost me $5. So I’ll save three bucks, for an investment of two extra hours of my time.

And here some people can’t figure out why more people don’t ride the bus.

On Friday night I saw “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Ahmanson Theatre with a couple of playwright friends. I’ve often heard this play referred to as a “descent into Hell” — and that pretty much sums up my feelings about this production, which over the course of three acts slid from mediocrity into the pit.

Mind you, I love this play. The script remains an inspiration. But I didn’t love much of what I saw in the production.

What’s wrong with it? Well, as Terence noted drily when George (Bill Irwin) is trying to strangle his wife (Kathleen Turner) in the second act, “I don’t think this violence should be comic.” Indeed not. Act Two is called, by the playwright, “Walpurgisnacht,” which conjures a night of revels, debauchery, decadence, and abandon — a combination of a pagan rite and an unfortunate run-in with the devil (as in Faust). Here what we had was a performance that alternated between strangely muted and bizarrely affected. The last time I saw such physical action so badly executed was 13 years ago when it took an elderly Jason Robards about nine months of stage time to get ready to take a fall that we all saw coming. Similarly, when George is pulled away and knocked over by his younger rival, the fall taken by Irwin, an aging clown I greatly admire, was purely comedic. Rather than a tragic look into the ugly compromises infecting a long-term marriage, what we got was a comic look of judgment on people who ought to no better — something straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Baby Party.”

At the curtain call, after she has slipped from the Ottoman in a patently false manner in the end of Act Three, Kathleen Turner wiped away tears as though overcome by the loss of her phantasmagoric child. I don’t know what she found so moving, and can only wish I had shared in some of it.

Why has this all gone so wrong? How can the actress playing Honey be this bad? (I can only hope that drinking alcohol does indeed contribute to memory loss, because I need to do something to scrub her screeching voice from my brain.) Michael’s theory was that the actors have been doing this show too long. I tried to be generous and chalk it up to a bad — very bad — evening. The reviews on the L.A. production have been mixed, and the word-of-mouth from everyone I know who has seen it has been generally negative. I wish I could disagree. But surely no one could imagine it would be this bad, so utterly devoid of shock and upset, so completely off-track as the play goes on and the jokes die away.

Who’s afraid of Virgina Woolf? On Friday night, absolutely no one.

The Academy Awards are later this afternoon. How do I know? Because much of Hollywood is impenetrable — barricaded from traffic — and has been for days and I’ve stayed well clear. If I’m not having much fun driving around when it isn’t blockaded, imagine what it would have been like the past week.
Here’s something you don’t hear much in these parts:  I don’t care about the Oscars. I don’t go to Oscar parties, and I don’t watch the telecast. It eludes me why I should care. If I were attending, or knew someone nominated, or had worked on one of these projects, or was employed in some way by one of these studios or creative teams… sure. But otherwise I don’t know why I should care or, God forbid, devote three-and-a-half hours to watching it.

But won’t I miss the “highlights”? What if “An Inconvenient Truth” wins (a near-certainty) and Al Gore gets up and says something clever and notable? Well, then I’m sure it’ll wind up on Youtube in about 18 seconds. And I’ll get to see it, while saving three-and-a-half hours in the bargain.

I don’t have anything against The Academy Awards — and I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch it — I just have to note that in Los Angeles when I tell people I don’t care and don’t watch it they look at me like I’m a terrorist.

I’ve always felt the same way about professional sports. Mind you, I always liked playing basketball or baseball or football; I just couldn’t imagine sitting around the television watching other people watch it. Or, worse, going to a stadium with thousands of other people and sitting around to watch it. My father felt the same way, which might be why I don’t have the game-watching gene — and neither do our kids. A couple of weeks ago my 15-year-old and I were wondering whether or not the Superbowl had already happened; we weren’t sure if it was on that day or not (turned out it wasn’t). I’m still not sure exactly when it was, although I do remember in passing from the news that it’s now over and I couldn’t tell you who won.

And that’s pretty much going to be my recollection with the Oscars in a few days’ time.

Who won last year? I have no idea.

I’ve never been impressed with Conan O’Brien — didn’t think he was clever, let alone funny — and so I haven’t watched his show in probably 10 years or more. Based on this clip, he’s gotten much better, because this bit with a sex-obsessed “professor of bread” is hilarious.

I find this video absolutely gripping. Where I grew up (out in the woods), I had numerous encounters somewhat like this one. Watch this clip all the way to the end — about 4 minutes — and then tell me two things:

1. Is this real? (Or fiction, as with, say, a guerrilla marketing campaign of some sort.)
2. How do you feel about the actions of the guy in the BMW at the end?

Maybe We Deserve to Be Ripped Off By Bush’s Billionaires

While America obsessed about Brittany’s shaved head, Bush offered a budget that offers $32.7 billion in tax cuts to the Wal-Mart family alone, while cutting $28 billion from Medicaid.

“Now, after she shaved her head in a bizarre episode that culminates a months-long saga of controversial behavior, it’s the question being asked by her fans, her foes and the general public: What was she thinking?”– Bald and Broken: Inside Britney’s Shaved Head, Sheila Marikar, ABC.com, Feb. 19

What was she thinking? How about nothing? How about who gives a shit? How’s that for an answer, Sheila Marikar of ABC news, you pinhead?

Click here for the rest.

For the record, I’m not in favor of higher taxes. I’m in favor of fair taxes. And I’m all for cutting government waste. If the government is taking my money away from my family, I want to know that it’s being invested in a greater good for the community that, supposedly, we all share. I like investing in things like roads and bridges, schools, police, firefighters, hospitals, a strong national defense, meat inspectors, prosecutors, defense attorneys, civic plazas and such. I don’t want my taxes funding bridges to nowhere, third-party war contractors who bilk the treasury and endanger our troops, or “museums” such as the Coca Cola museum that should be funded by the owners of the trademark. (And that’s just for starters.)

I feel similarly about my media. I don’t mind a little coverage about Britney Spears’ latest hair-scapade, but I don’t want it at the expense of news.

So today Hillary and Obama got into it, through their surrogates. Billionaire David Geffen was once a FOB(AH) (Friend of Bill and Hillary), but no more. He held a fundraiser for Obama and said some unkind things about the Clintons. The Clinton camp shot back at Obama that this amounted to “going negative,” which Obama had sworn off, and therefore Obama (who hadn’t said anything) should apologize and — my favorite part — return the money raised. Obama’s flak returned fire that the Clintons didn’t seem to mind Mr. Geffen when he was writing checks to them and camping out in the Lincoln bedroom.

To me this all seemed very familiar. In fact, I hear a variation of this exchange just about every morning, between my 4-year-old and his 8-year-old sister. It’s usually about who poked whom first, who did or didn’t say a bad word and then who did or didn’t respond, whose turn it was to pick a TV show and so on.

This sort of back and forth isn’t confined strictly to my kids or the Democratic contenders who have been designated by the media as “the frontrunners” — whatever that means at this stage, given that the first caucus is a year from now. This morning the quote unquote vice-president was slinging hash on John McCain; McCain yesterday called the veep’s good friend Donald Rumsfeld “the worst secretary of defense in history.” Cheney’s response was a good one: that just recently McCain had said some unpleasant things about Cheney himself, and then rushed over to apologize — and perhaps he would be rushing over to apologize again. (My heartbroken feelings about Mr. McCain’s long slow slide from respect were expressed poetically here.)

All of this fills me with a sort of sadness. I’m not naive; I do understand the motivations of all involved — Hillary to show she ain’t takin’ no guff, Obama to show he’s tuff enuff, McCain to distance himself from the wrack of Iraq, Cheney to suffer no fools, and the media to somehow justify more than two years’ of expense accounts for covering these little snits. But that doesn’t make any of it taste any better.

To put it in perspective:

• 1/6 of the people on this planet can’t get a drink of clean water.
• Many double-income households (sometimes with two parents working more than five jobs) can’t afford a mortgage (especially in places like greater Los Angeles).
• The Middle East seems more unstable every day — especially, in some ways, Saudi Arabia, which is funding terrorism in an effort to appease its internal radical element — and that’s where most of our energy comes from.
• For most of us, traffic is impenetrable.
• Meanwhile whole sections of middle America are dying out, major industries having pulled up stakes,

and on and on.

And against all that, the major stories of the past two days were: Clinton and Obama’s meaningless dustup, and Britney Spears’ self-induced head shaving.

I realize I risk sounding like a relic, but I’m waiting for a candidate who will seriously address real issues. Even if it means standing up for something. And even if it risks the media not reporting it because it isn’t entertaining.