My sister’s house is on the left, my brother’s house is on the right, and in the far distance there’s someone else’s light. Be patient.

Two Fridays ago, I suddenly and mysteriously threw my back out, really with no warning and with no apparent cause, so I didn’t go to the gym that night as planned.

This backache persisted, again inexplicably, so I didn’t go on Saturday or on Sunday, or the days following, and then as it drew close to my trip to Ohio to see Pere Ubu in what’s essentially the vast back yard of my friend the synthesizer player, I didn’t want to risk some recurrence or furtherance of the mysterious back outage, so I didn’t go then. (More about this trip, and my getting to meet a fascinating writer friend in person, soon.)

I assure you, honestly, none of this was procrastination — zero; zip — because I actually like going to the gym. I do. I go every other day. By happenstance, my sister texted me this morning to say that her hands ache from painful carpal tunnel and she knows I have some condition (I’ve had genetic, painful, early onset arthritis for about 10 years now, mostly in my hands and neck; thanks, Mom). “I remember you having a problem,” my sister texted, evidently not remembering in detail the exchange earlier this year when I was visiting her in New Jersey and we were playing pinochle and she looked at my fingers when I was dealing the cards and audibly gasped and said, “Oh, Lee! Look at your fingers!!!!”  in a clear indication that I have visible arthritis and its effects, and as though I haven’t been looking at my fingers every day of my life but especially a lot more lately. Now she asked, via text, “What did you do for treatment?” And I replied, “I go to the gym, which reduces systemic inflammation.” And I do. I go for that reason, and because going helps the confoundedly insomniac me sleep better, and because the competitive me likes increasing his weights and his routines and pushing himself.

Tonight, with that glorious trip to Ohio safely in the rear-view mirror, and feeling completely blocked while trying to write something, I went to the gym.

I like my gym.

I like the attractive young people who greet me at the desk without ever look askance at me because I’m no longer in their age group.

I like the easy camaraderie and courtesy offered by fellow workers-out. They’ll offer to let you “work in,” or they’ll politely ask if you’re almost done, or they’ll step aside if they’re blocking your locker.

I like the hours. The gym is called “24 Hour Fitness.” Guess when it’s open. Works for me.

I like its availability. There are 400 locations throughout California and across most well-populated areas of the country — which leaves out where I grew up, of course, where I had to join another gym to use when I visit, but I’ve been able to visit outposts of 24 Hour Fitness up and down California and in Omaha, NE and New York City. My membership works at all of them. It’s handy!

I like the offering:  sauna; jacuzzi; free weights; machines; cardio; showers; lockers. Basketball courts, yes, but I don’t use those, just as I don’t do Zumba or spinning or any other group activity. I do enough group activities in the rest of my life — when I’m at the gym, I’m there for me, solo.

What I don’t like about the one I go to — and this is the only thing I don’t like — is the soap. Or, better, the lack thereof.

After my workout and the steam room, I always shower. I want to, and believe me, if you were around, you’d want me to as well. I’m kind of old-fashioned in this regard:  I like to use soap when I shower. To do that, there would have to be liquid soap in the showers. Now, there are definitely liquid-soap dispensers, but too frequently they’re empty. All the soap has been used, one can infer, and the dispensers have not been refilled. And I don’t mean in just one shower — I mean in every shower.

I have complained about this.

Politely.

Repeatedly.

Sometimes not politely.

I have even taken to interrupting their sales tours, when a manager is walking around a prospect who has no idea that this is a friendly and well-outfitted gym that is customarily out of soap, and saying to that manager in direct proximate earshot to the prospective member, “There’s no soap in the showers. Again.”

For a long time, this accomplished nothing.

Then:  a miracle happened. Several months ago, I arrived to find that, now, every shower had been equipped with two soap dispensers. (Or, at least, the men’s showers had. I can’t vouch for anything that happens in the women’s showers. Although I’d like to be able to.) Mind you, this didn’t strike me as the best solution — I would have just had someone go around on a regular check-up basis throughout the day and night, say once every two hours, and refill the single dispensers — but I was glad to accept their solution. It seemed idiotically bureaucratic, but hey, now we’d have twice as much soap!

And that seemed to work well. There was always soap.

For a while.

I say that because tonight after my workout and the steam room I discovered — you’ve seen this coming — that, throughout the men’s shower complex of eight showers, each with its own shower door, every one of those dual soap dispensers was empty. And this wasn’t the first time. In a way, the problem of empty soap dispensers is now twice as big.

What I was thinking while pulling apart all of the dispensers and trying to squeeze out just enough soap to be able to use was this:  Yes, I could go on Yelp!, and other social-media platforms, and I could really raise a stink. (Which is what will indeed happen if I never get any soap.) I could write a letter to corporate. I’m certainly not going to complain to managers again; that’s pointless. Even though it seems stupid because, after all, they’re theoretically offering it, I guess I could bring my own soap and then find a way to deduct that cost from what I’m paying them every month.

Or maybe this is the best solution, one guaranteed to get some sort of a result:  After getting into the shower and then finding no soap, I could walk naked to the front desk and ask for some.

That ought to have a cleansing effect.

It’s been 12 years since I’ve been in the friendly state (that would be Ohio, because it says “hi” in the middle), but I’ll be there tomorrow through Sunday. The reason I’m going makes the place seem even friendlier.

About a month ago, I got a strange invitation on Facebook. It was to some event called “Down by the River… We Had a Party!” and it seemed to be… I wasn’t sure what… some sort of outdoor event in a rural area about an hour west of Cleveland… but what it was was uncertain.

And then I got a direct message from the man who had invited me to this event, a gentleman named Robert Wheeler whom I’ve gotten to know better in recent years.  His message read: “I don’t expect you to make it, but I didn’t expect you to fly to london either….”

That’s when I realized that Robert, who plays synthesizer and theremin for the band Pere Ubu, was inviting me to a private concert with the band at his farm.

Jeez!

Yes, I did fly to London a few months ago to see this band. And, yes, I flew to Chicago about six months before that to, again, see this band (and my son, sure — but also to take that son to the concert!).

And, yes, I saw the band in LA less than a year before that, and in San Diego the night after the LA concert, and I’ve seen them… I don’t know… a dozen times before that, stretching back to 1989 I believe. I’ve seen them at the Roxy on the Sunset strip, and at a bit of a low point for them at a little guitar shop in West LA, and anchoring an entire weekend at UCLA. I’ve seen them many times, and I sure hope to see them many times more, because they are the best and smartest band anywhere around. (I could go on about why that’s true — trust me, I could go on about why that’s true — but not right now. But believe me, their music is open-minded, wide-ranging, heartfelt, noisy and consistently astonishing. And in 40 years of it, there is not one bit of treacle in it anywhere.)

So I have seen the band in all these locales over all these years… but I’ve never seen them at an invitation-only event at the farm of one of the band members.

But I will on Saturday!

This is a lucky time to be alive.

In response to this post about the service Lovejoy, which provides quasi-facsimiles of historical letters as a monthly subscription, I got this nice email from its proprietor, Michael Sitver:

Lee,

I read your article on Letterjoy. I want to clarify a few things:

1. Most of our plans are way less than $17/mo. Most are $13-14/mo.

2. Many of our letters either aren’t available online or are hard to find online. We work hard to find unique letters from all around the country. For example, I spent 4 hours the other day in the National Postal Museum searching through their archives for a story (and letters) that would meet our criteria. Only 7% of their archives is available online.

3. Our goal isn’t just to send you mail. Our goal is to recreate the experience of receiving important letters, and to provide context, so you experience not only the content of the letter, but the context in which it was received. We restore handwriting and letterhead to a format that’s authentic, but readable.

Regardless, thanks for writing about Letterjoy.

The Internet gave rise to lots of new kinds of services, including lots that I just don’t understand. Here’s one of them.

For about $17 a month, this service called Letterjoy will send you a weekly reproduction of a historically notable letter, mailed directly to your house, and using, as their website notes, a real stamp.

Are people this desperate for mail that now they would look forward to one-way communications with people who are long dead? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the mail — but that’s because for almost my entire life, right up to now, people have been mailing me checks or comic books through it. And, yes, sometimes letters. And, in an earlier age, acceptance (or rejection) letters. But this was correspondence from living people, people I could correspond with should I choose.

The other mystifying thing about this is… aren’t these letters available somewhere on the Internet? These aren’t the real letters, or even copies of them — instead, as the site notes, “Many letters from within the last 150 years are typed on our Smith-Corona typewriter. Others are hand-written by our designers, then enhanced with advanced graphic software.” So if, say, George Patton hand-scrawled his letters on the insides of cereal boxes, you’d never know it, and instead you’d get something typed on a Smith-Corona and then, I suppose, Xeroxed. If Letterjoy can find Patton’s letters and use them, you probably can too, somewhere on the Internet.

Here’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Here’s Bill Gates’ open letter to hobbyists.

Here’s a 14-year-old Fidel Castro’s letter to Frank Roosevelt.

Here’s Adolf Hitler’s first letter about Jewry (and wouldn’t you like to receive this in the mail next month?).

This is only after a 30-second cursory search of the great World Wide Web.

So, if you can find letters you’re looking for, and if we now have a thing where you can get instantaneous communication, and if this service doesn’t even send you reproductions of the actual letters in question… I really don’t understand.

Is it just for the elderly and extremely, chronically, lonely?

Otherwise, this idea should be Returned To Sender.

Yes, I want to see Public Image, Ltd. in November at the Fonda Theater with a friend of mine. Johnny Rotten is probably the last “get” for me — a music hero I haven’t seen who I’d like to see. The tickets are $50.

But NO, I don’t want to pay $16 for a “convenience fee.” That’s thirty-two percent of the ticket fee!

A few years ago, I read four extremely dull books on pricing, because I was curious about the subject and wanted to see what I could learn. I learned a lot. One of the things I learned about, for example, was anchor pricing. Once you know how to recognize it, you’ll see it frequently on menus and in other places. Here’s how it works:  In a clearly visible area of the menu, you place something outlandishly priced, like the frutti di mare at $200 a plate. You’ll think, “That’s crazy!” and not order that — but now that your eye has been drawn to the crazy price, the nearby lobster, at $69, looks like a deal. You’ve been anchored at $200, so now $69 is reasonable. Watch for that dynamic and you’ll start to see it everywhere.

These dull books were chock full of useful and enlightening information, but the major thing I learned is something that, in retrospect, looks obvious. All good pricing relies on fairness. If you believe you’re getting taken, you won’t buy. If you are spending a lot, you expect a lot:  either higher quality, or faster delivery, or better service, or scarcity of availability. I remember a story many years ago about the producer Joe Papp, and why in his Broadway production of “Angels in America” actors had to ride in already seated, and why in a previous production of something of his people had to have little working cars on the set, and so forth. (In LA, the actors simply carried in their chairs and sat.) Papp said the production always had to look like the high price was justified. Of course. Or people would resent it otherwise. You have to believe  you’re getting something in fair return for what you’re paying, or you feel ripped off.

Adding 32% (!!!) as a “convenience fee” when I know damned well that there is nowhere near a $16 cost in providing that ticket, there being no physical artifact and the electronic system to deliver that electronic artifact — the e-ticket — having been perfected and paid for years and years ago now, is unfair. I’m not paying it.

So, instead, I’ve asked my friend to drive into Hollywood and buy the tickets at the box office for us.

Seems fair, right?

It isn’t exactly a revelation that the Trump disintegration — er, “administration” —  doesn’t know how government works (or, should work). But here’s the latest evidence:

1. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that eliminating mileage rules on new cars would effectively reduce the ownership costs of a new vehicle by $2,340, or $468 a year over five years. Even if it’s true that this represents a cost saving, the job of the EPA is to protect the environment, not manage household budgets.  Or, at least, the job of the EPA used to be to protect the environment. (And the EPA, we should note, was started under executive order by a Republican president.)
2. The Trump disintegration is also now saying that it should be the job of the ACLU to find those parents that the administration forcibly separated from children and then deported. Why a cadre of lawyers who work to protect our civil rights should do this — or even how — is anyone’s guess.

Given that this government isn’t doing its appropriate work as a government, it makes you wonder what they are doing.

We’ve started a thing at my company where every quarter we throw a party and somebody on our team of 12 shares a talent or interest that he or she is particularly passionate  about and then we play some fun office games. Today was the first one of these. We ordered in some pretty fantastic barbecue and one of the guys brought his snare drum and his practice pad and showed us how he learned to play drums, and then he screened a music video from his long-ago band that he toured the U.S. with. The music, in the style of that 90s rockabilly revival, was terrific, and so was the video, and we were suitably impressed. Like, bowled over.

Then out came the office games. The woman who coordinated all this drew answers from a bucket to the questions of “What was your first job?” and “What is something we don’t know about you?” and then everyone had to guess who each of these answers was from. My first job, for the record, was taking classified ads for the Atlantic City Press, starting at age 14. (That was my first job. My first income was when I started selling comic books through the mail, at age 11.) Something no one knew about me, and that I’m baldly going to confess here, is that I was once in a dance piece called “The Unicorn” in college, a humiliating experience I submitted to as a last-minute replacement for someone who dropped out, displaying a “talent” I promised myself I’d never repeat. Hey, at least I volunteered for that humiliation, right? Being a good sport and all.

Anyway, we also tied ourselves into a human knot that we had to untangle, which brought to mind uncomfortable thoughts about “The Human Centipede,” and we had lots of laughs. But before that, we played a game where everyone had a sheet of paper taped to his back and we were all supposed to write one or two words of what we thought about this person. Then, when everyone had finished writing on everyone else’s back, we were to pull off the sheets and read what had been said about each of us. Some people were “awesome,” “talented,” “reliable,” and so forth. Because I once used the word “bloviating” in our office about someone who had gone on at length in a meeting and four of the guys hustled to look it up, they’ve now adopted that as their favorite word in the English language — and so, of course, someone wrote “bloviating” on one of those guys’ backs. Which got a laugh.

When I turned around my sheet, here’s what it said:

• Funny
• Smart!
• Observant
• Charismatic
• Caring
• Positive vibes!
• Insightful
• Amazing!
• Dynamic

Now, granted, I don’t think anyone was tempted to write, say, “shithead,” because it wouldn’t be too hard to quickly look around and see who had what color of marker. It was nice to see funny — whereas many people throughout my life would have said “irritating” — and, yes, I guess I’m smart (!) and observant, which has also created trouble for me most of my life.

But… dynamic?

I couldn’t have been happier to see “dynamic.”

Because lately, at age 56, I’m not sure I’m always presenting as so dynamic. I’d like to, that’s for sure. And I think I was dynamic — and maybe charismatic! — 20 years ago. But in 2018? Well, it’s nice to see that someone — and no, I don’t know who — thinks so.

Toward the end of the day, when I went downstairs for some coffee, I heard some of the staff still remarking over these insights from others. I volunteered how thrilled and somewhat puzzled I was to see “dynamic.”

Then I added, “But it’s kinda like the Dynamic Duo — Batman and Robin? — so maybe that’s not so great.”

One of the other guys shot back, “I guess it depends on which one you’d be.”

Right.

This year the San Diego Comic-Con, which I returned from early Monday morning, seemed better planned than ever:  Although the event was as sold-out as ever, with an estimated 150,000 people packing the convention center and environs, there was a remarkable easing of the crush that has been squeezing all the attendees. How do you accomplish getting just as many people, but alleviating the sort of throngs we’re used to seeing in big-budget zombie flicks? You start by moving to RFID badges and requiring that attendees scan in, and out, of every passageway — thus eliminating all the counterfeit badges that, evidently, had been turning up. You move more and more events into adjacent locales, such as the Hyatt and the Marriott and the downtown library, thereby splitting up the horde. Finally, you work with the city to get the main thoroughfare closed to vehicles, and you restrict the main sidewalk to people with badges, thereby creating easier and more orderly passage for everyone who is there for the convention.

All tolled, it’s truly impressive how well-managed and well-organized this event is.

Because it was so much better organized, I was able to get into every panel and event I wanted to attend. In the past 10 years, it’s more of a crapshoot:  How early should I line up to see if I can get in? (Thereby missing other potential panels because I was in line early for something else.) This year? No problem. The result is that I went to more panels than ever, learned a lot, and had an all-around terrific time sampling from the wide variety of very well-programmed offerings.

I might want to go into detail here about some of those offerings later, but in the meantime, given my recent post here about the recently deceased Harlan Ellison, I thought I’d say that I went to his hastily organized tribute at the convention. I do not mean to poke fun when I note that the moderator spent much of his time choking back tears over Harlan’s demise (while noting that Harlan “hated crying” and would strenuously object were he there), and then devoted the first 23 minutes to an extremely mopey video from Neil Gaiman on the subject of how much Harlan’s writing meant to him. I am less of a fan, and didn’t enjoy my encounters with Harlan Ellison, so, as they say, your mileage may vary. Before arriving, I had been tempted to go to the mic during the inevitable Q and A and point out that Harlan spent a lot of time deriding fans (a visit to YouTube will help you verify this), fans being precisely the sort of people who were now attending this little tribute panel. But when I found out that his widow was seated in the front row, I thought better of it. She put up with him for 30 years; why add to her misery now?

What I will do, though, is link to three recent posts about Harlan Ellison on Mark Evanier’s blog.

Here’s the first one, in which Harlan insinuates himself front and center into someone else’s lifetime achievement award.  It seems like Mark thinks this is cute; I think it’s self-centered and childish.

Here’s the second one, in which Harlan runs around naked in front of other people because he believes he’s written the best sentence ever.

Here’s the third one, in which Harlan blows up a simple misunderstanding into an incident in which he’s physically threatening to beat someone, and urging the crowd to assist him. In this one, Mark, like some others, decides he’s had enough and keeps his distance thereafter.

I have a friend who suspects that Harlan Ellison was manic-depressive. That’s easy to say and impossible to prove. What it does seem fair to say is that he was a drama queen, and sometimes that was fun, and lots of times it wasn’t.

In Boston on Friday, a woman got her leg caught in the gap between the platform and the train. People heard her scream.  A scrum of people ran over to help her, leaning against the train to push it away so they could lift her up.

The gash in her leg resulting from this incident cut five inches in, down to the bone.

What did she keep begging people? “Please don’t call an ambulance!” Because she couldn’t afford it.

For most people in America, that is the state of health care. Better to lose a leg than be bankrupted by care and treatment.