Every day, the news we scan is filled with misery, blight, blinkered thinking, and the petty but punishing misbehavior of the narrow-minded. (Whether they are running for President or not.)

So I thought I’d share this story that I came across tonight, of a woman who in the 1980s and 1990s personally cared for hundreds of dying AIDS patients  who’d been abandoned by their families. They had no one else — but they had her. She tended to them as best she could; in the most maudlin farewell party imaginable (but a necessary one) she filled out their death certificates with them because otherwise she’d have no family information on them; she personally interred their remains in her family’s cemetery plot; she did all of this with no recompense; and she kept their information in a Book of the Dead she began because no one else cared.

And no, this wasn’t in San Francisco or New York City. This was in Arkansas. Which adds bravery to the list of her characteristics, as others frequently pointed and stared.

Why does this story seem special? Because it’s the sort that’s rarely reported. I once knew someone who, unpaid and at personal cost, cared for someone she barely knew who had no family and who was dying, slowly, from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I also remember a friend who left a well-paying job as a Fortune 500 corporate attorney so that she could offer free or almost-free legal services to the indigent immigrant community of Los Angeles. There are others I could add. I’m sure you have stories like this as well. They just don’t make the news very often.

That doesn’t make this woman’s accomplishment — the tremendous gift she gave to these hundreds of abandoned and painfully dying men — any less significant.

It’s just to say that she isn’t alone, and we all need to hear more stories like this one, about The Woman Who Cared.

Yes, I watched the debate last night. Then dug in for an enjoyable evening of reading comments on Facebook and Twitter. Yee haw.

This morning, a friend of mine posted this on FB:

“Believe me, when I say I am the LAST person to defend Trump, but to everyone that is focusing their energy on mocking him for saying ‘Bigly,’ go back and listen again (if you can stomach it). I could be wrong, but I think he’s saying ‘Big League.’ ”

I’m not going to defend “bigly” — which is not in Webster’s New World Dictionary or Webster’s New World College Dictionary, which I consider the sources for proving (or disproving) such matters; however, I should note that “big lie” is in there, and perhaps that’s what Trump was fishing for. Of course.

But, going to the heart of the matter while parsing the language, I still don’t think my too-generous friend is on firm ground.

• Because I think the LAST person to defend Trump would be one of those ex-wives.
• Next-to-last would be all those vendors he screwed.
• Then it would be all the employees and all the lenders shafted in his six bankruptcies.
• Then it would be his GOP rivals who didn’t cave.
• Then Bill, then Hillary, then Chelsea.

(I’m sure I’m forgetting others.)

Comparatively, and with all due respect, by the time it gets to my friend, he’s practically a supporter.

“Walls are for hiding behind. Americans don’t hide.” So says my friend the writer and performer and patriot Ernest Kearney. Check it out here.

Last night I had a splendid time as an attendee at a rooftop business event in Hollywood where we got to discuss arts and entertainment (theatre, the movies, music and more) while savoring the catering and drinking drinks and watching the sun come down on the Hollywood sign. It was  truly an evening that reminded me, a backwoods transplant, of why I’m so grateful to Los Angeles.

I also had the good fortune to win the prize drawing, held just for showing up, and in addition to winning tickets to a musical, a $50 gift card to Sprouts supermarket and a $25 gift card to the Grub restaurant in Hollywood, I got a whole boatload of goodies from Paramount, including a poster for what’s probably the worst major motion picture I’ve ever seen (“Noah,” in which Noah fights CGI rock monsters, and later has a knife fight with a rival tribal leader inside the ark; I read the book that this movie was based on, and I don’t recall those scenes being in the book), seven DVDs, and the full complement of giveaways dispensed at Comic-Con this past July for the premiere of “Star Trek: Beyond”: a bundle of Blu Rays from the “JJ-verse,” a commemorative premiere t-shirt, pin, hat, and lanyard, and also the director’s cut of “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan,” which includes the deservedly famous line (I’ll try to emulate Ricardo Montalban’s delivery here) “Kork! From the heart of dark-nesssss, I SPIT at theeeee!” All of these “Star Trek” things are now in my possession, putting me momentarily on an equal par with this universe’s foremost “Star Trek” expert, Larry Nemecek. (That is, until I put them on eBay.)

One of the people I spent a lot of time talking to is a very smart, passionate theatre guy whose record and whose commitment to the form speak for themselves. We discussed the recent stupidity of the actors’ union (for which, I predict, all of the Los Angeles stage actors in that union will be quitting it), and gentrification, and theatre attendance, and, of course, because this is Los Angeles, parking. We had a great talk and lots of laughs.

Through it all, I found myself trying not to stare at one long stray black hair descending from his left nostril. As we talked, it wagged back and forth. When he smiled, it rode up a notch. When he exhaled, it fluttered in the wind. Sometimes, it just stood up and saluted me. All of this was unbeknownst to its bearer, but for me it provided a distracting subtext. There was no polite way to point it out, but a nagging voice in my head wanted to tweeze it or cut it or ask him to stuff it back up into his nose. Earlier in the day at another event (I go to a lot of events), a female friend had gently unfolded a flap on the right lapel of my jacket. When a beautiful woman grooms you, no one resists. (At least, I don’t.) But no man wants some guy at a cocktail event to grab hold of the hair in your nose, or even to bring it up.

I talked to some other people at the event, including politicos I’d already met, and theatre people I hadn’t seen in a while, and then made my excuses and went downstairs and retrieved my car from the valet, dropped the top, and drove home through Hollywood to perfect temperatures. A nice ending to a nice event. I got home and excitedly unpacked my treasures for my kids, showing them the DVDs and the tchotchkes and openly discussing which of the friends I’d seen “Noah” with to “gift” that poster to. I watched an episode of “American Horror Story” with my daughter, then went upstairs to brush my teeth before bed. I got out the tooth brush and the toothpaste, applied the latter onto the former, looked up into the mirror — and saw for the first time an incredibly long, black, rat tail of a hair hanging down from inside my right nostril. It looked as long as a finger and nearly as thick. It had been there the entire night.

Much to my own surprise, last Friday night I went to see The Monkees again, this time on their 50th anniversary tour. Four years ago, I had publicly pledged not to see them again — you can read about that odd evening here — but the moment it was announced that Mike Nesmith would be playing with them, for the only time on this tour and for the last time ever, my friend Richard and I, the same Richard who went with me four years ago, decided to buy tickets.

And y’know what? They were terrific.

This was very much in the spirit of The Beach Boys’ 50th Anniversary Tour, in which the remaining living Beach Boys (Brian, Mike, Al, and I guess we’re still counting Bruce) put on an incredible four-hour show for which my friend Trey and I had 4th row center seats, in an experience not only worth the trip to Dallas, but also one that remains seared in my memory bank of positive experiences. That night, the Beach Boys were generous of spirit, played and sang together, and Brian Wilson even seemed to know where he was at times.

Whereas, in 2012, the Monkees seemed like strangers who’d arrived on the same stage by accident, this time the three principals seemed like they could be (or could have been) in the same band. They harmonized; they played together; they deferred to each other. At some point, it dawned on Mike Nesmith that he was actually having a good time. A smile spread across his face and he relaxed into the music. He played probably half of the evening’s songs with them, including a stint of six songs in a row during the second set that culminated in a solo performance of a song they’d once recorded that he’d envisioned in a different way. In his capable hands, “Circle Sky” was a blazing centerpiece, as it should have been. Most importantly to me, he played and sang “Me and Magdalena,” from their new album, which is one of the most achingly beautiful and haunting songs I’ve ever heard. The combination of the song, the timber of his voice, and the pangs of his 12-string Gretsch, transports me. All together, they played 32 songs, and then they were done.

Except they aren’t. Kind of. The tour now goes on, without Nesmith, which left Richard and me puzzling over what that non-Nesmith experience must be like. Diminished, for sure. (Evidently, on the rest of the tour Micky Dolenz sings “Circle Sky” and he is joined by Peter Tork for “Me and Magdalena.” I will go to my grave happy not to hear that.) I ventured to Richard that the contribution of Nesmith’s sound grounds what would otherwise be a flyweight pop contraption; Richard went perhaps further and said that he lends them credibility. I think that’s true. Dolenz can sing, but somehow there’s an authority to Mike Nesmith’s vocals, his songwriting, and his guitar playing, that lends credence to the whole enterprise. Without any intended slight to the band’s powerhouse songwriters such as Carole King or Neil Diamond, without Nesmith, the Monkees are like Herman’s Hermits, with more hits. I wonder if people catching the rest of the tour will even suspect what they missed.

You will be unsurprised when I tell you that today I received in the mail an invoice from Sirius XM satellite radio for $60 for my subscription “renewal,” which I canceled in August.

I ripped it in half and threw it into the recycling.

I guess I can now look forward to my next conversation with them.

(I wonder how many people just pay the bill.)

To most of the playwrights of my generation, Edward Albee was not just a great writer, but also a heroic figure.

Heroic because he famously didn’t care what critics thought. Perhaps this was the blessing of receiving mixed reviews from the start.

Heroic because he didn’t cater to audiences. As someone raised without love, he never expected it. That freed his writing.

Heroic because he was a relentless defender of civil liberties, for artists and others, going so far in his late 70’s as to appear outside in a blizzard to protest an injustice.

Heroic because he spent so much of his own money and his precious time supporting emerging playwrights, with his foundation and writers’ retreat, and in personally supporting playwriting conferences such as the Great Plains Theatre Conference with his time and his presence.

Heroic because he never knuckled under, never softened his beliefs, never caviled, and, as Jon Robin Baitz said, was more than willing to write a play wherein a man falls in love with a goat, and to do that as an old man: “A young man’s play written by an old lion,” Baitz said. This, to be sure, is unusual.

To say that Albee was an inspiration to many, many hundreds or thousands of us, is a vast understatement. Even if you never got to meet him, as many (most?) of us did, he still touched you through his work as a writer, or his work as a supporter of writers.

When I say he was a “supporter,” that doesn’t mean he was easy. Quite the opposite: He was notoriously prickly. He was prickly the one time I met him, and he was notoriously prickly to reporters, interpreters of his work, critics, audiences, close friends, and probably everyone else at some time or other.

In an odd way, I benefited 10 years ago from his prickliness. Albee had had a falling out with the Great Plains Theatre Conference; evidently, they’d asked him if he could please possibly be a little nicer in his feedback to the young playwrights, and he took umbrage, and quit the conference just a few weeks prior to its start. People close to the conference were asked for suggestions about teachers of playwriting, playwrights, or workshop leaders, who might be able to fill in for Albee for the week and give feedback, but be a little more, um, upbeat. The actor-director girlfriend of someone in my playwriting workshop who was and is an extremely talented playwright and who had been at the conference and who had visited my workshop suggested me — and I got booked. So, oddly, I got to fill Edward Albee’s role for a week.

As if.

But, subbing for Edward Albee, I got to hobnob with Marshall Mason and Doug Wright. (High honors. Marshall and directed the first play I ever bought a ticket for, when I was a teenager: Christopher Reeve appearing in Lanford Wilson’s “Fifth of July” in New York.) I also got treated to steak dinners courtesy of Omaha Steaks (one of the sponsors of the conference; including a private reception where Marshall took pains to ensure that I wasn’t going to skewer playwrights as Albee had done), got to appear on local television, and was generally treated the way one would hope always to be treated. And, deliciously, I got to render input on some terrific new plays, including the thrilling play “Devil Sedan” by Kenley Smith, who has since become a friend, and to do it in the manner I practice to this day: to be helpful, and constructive, and goal-oriented for the play, rather than to be the guy who drops an anvil on someone’s head from the sixth story. I saw that other approach in graduate school, and since then, but I’ve yet to see anyone benefit from it.

If Albee wasn’t always kind or thoughtful in some situations, he nevertheless remains a lodestone. Very occasionally, when I might ask myself if I’m “really” going to do “that” or say “that” or set up “that” situation in a play, I think of Albee, the man who wrote the play about someone compelled to throw over his entire life for the love of a goat. And then I say, “Fuck it” and do it. And, always always always, that’s the right choice.

Thank you, sir. For the plays and for the example.

Three days ago, I was wondering just how long it would be before Sirius XM contacted me with a new offer. Well, we have our answer: three days.

They just emailed me this great new offer: an “all access” subscription for just $199 a year. (Never mind that under the previous deal, I paid $20 for three months.)

Now I can have even more Sirius to not listen to, and at three times the price.

Bottle of water at Burbank airport: $2.99.

Bottle of same kind of water at Denver airport: $1.30.

???

Sandwich, said bottle of water, plus chips, at Burbank airport: $20.90.

Two bottles of water, plus chocolate bar with almonds, plus corn chips, at Denver airport: $6 plus change.

(Because you can’t bring a bottle of water into the airport, it is ipso factor commonplace to purchase bottles of water at the airport.)

Cost of wifi, good for the entire day on Southwest, but working only intermittently and not robust enough to support streaming, but nevertheless allowing me to post this from somewhere high above the middle of the country: $8.

Cost of common courtesy among passengers: absolutely nothing, but also intermittent.

A few months ago, in a moment of weakness, I subscribed to Sirius XM satellite radio.

I was sitting in my back yard purposely doing nothing in the middle of a week day because for the past week or so I hadn’t been able to succeed at anything. Oh, sure, I could put my shoes on and even tie the laces, but that was about it. The situation brought to mind a story I’d read about a guy who had started a business and put his everything into it, working his fingers down to the nub, but nothing was coming of it and the future wasn’t looking any brighter, so he took the day to sit in the park and feed the pigeons, but as soon as he sat down on a bench with bird seed in hand, his cellphone rang and he closed a six-figure deal. Or something like that. My situation was nowhere near that — I wasn’t losing, I just wasn’t winning — but I figured I’d test the Zen logic of this story (whatever logic this story may have had) by sitting in my back yard and just having a cigar.

Sure enough, my cellphone rang.

But it wasn’t a six-figure deal of any sort. It was a twenty-dollar deal, with me doing the paying. To Sirius. A nice man with an Indian accent was excitedly offering me the deal of a lifetime — three months of Sirius XM satellite radio, reactivated in my car, for just twenty dollars. I heard him out, and I thought, sure, let’s make this guy’s day and say yes. He’s probably making a hundred of these calls a day, and mostly getting hangups, and it’s only twenty bucks, and hey, I’ll get Sirius XM satellite radio again, and it’s not like I’m doing anything else at the moment, so Hell yes, let’s just say yes. The man nearly shit his pants when I said yes, leaving me wondering if I were the only sale he’d ever made, or just the first. His voice notched up several octaves in glee. For fear that they’d endlessly renew my subscription without letting me know, I wouldn’t give him my credit-card information, but I said if they’d send me a bill, I’d pay it, which I did a few days later.

Then, for the next three months, I listened to almost nothing on Sirius XM satellite radio.

Even as I drove up and down the state in a series of trips down to Orange County or San Diego and back up through Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, I listened to almost none of it. Occasionally, I’d give it a try, but the political shows were dominated by people I didn’t want to listen to, and no matter what music station I tried, I preferred the music I already had on my iPhone, which my car channeled effortlessly via Bluetooth. Add to that the New Yorker fiction podcast, and other podcasts, and Sirius proved seriously unneeded.

Two weeks ago, the reminder that I had put in my calendar to cancel Sirius popped up, so I opened the email I’d saved for this express purpose and clicked on the link to my account. To no one’s surprise, I discovered that one is not able to cancel Sirius XM from their website. I know why not, and so do you: because they’re going to have someone in customer service try to talk me out of canceling. I called the number provided, and that someone turned out to be named Tammy.

“Hi, Tammy,” I said after she introduced herself, “I’m calling to cancel my subscription to Sirius.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said smoothly. “May I ask why?”

“I’m not listening to it.”

“Oh, you’re not listening to it? Oh… uh… oh….” I could practically hear her scrolling down the list of responses she could choose from. Evidently, no one ever says they’re not listening to it. “Oh, that’s a shame. Not listening to it…. Not listening to it….” She kept repeating this as she scrolled.

“No,” I said, trying to goose this along, “I’m not listening to it. So I’d like to cancel.”

“Oh, well, we’re sorry to hear that. You’re just not listening to it, or…?”

“Nope. I’m not listening to it.” I couldn’t figure out how to advance the conversation, and clearly neither could she. This must be what a first date is like through Tinder when both parties show up, instantly see no future together, but are too polite to make an immediate break for it.

Just then, Tammy found a new idea. “Well, I would like to tell you about our desktop satellite radio. With the desktop satellite radio, you can listen to Sirius anywhere, you don’t have to be in your car.”

“But I’m already not listening to Sirius anywhere. Having another place to not listen to it doesn’t seem helpful. I just want to cancel.”

“We have a special promotional rate–”

“Tammy, you seem like a nice person. And I realize it’s your job to talk me out of it. But I just want to cancel. Can you please just cancel my subscription?”

“May I tell you a little about our special deal?”

I was now watching the timer on my desktop phone. I had things to do, and staying polite with Tammy was no longer one of them. “May I tell you a little about my business, and how it works?” And so that’s what I started to do — to talk to her about what I do for a living, which I wanted to get back to right then.

Now her tone grew frosty. But she pressed on. I guess she was going on about various reasons that I should continue my Sirius XM subscription, and various promotional offers, and how in the best of all possible worlds I’d stay with the service, but I don’t know for sure because I had stopped listening. Instead, I was editing some documents on my desk. Before you think me a heel, bear in mind that I was now several minutes into a conversation I didn’t want but couldn’t seem to get out of.

“So what do you think?” she finally asked.

“About what?”

“About that offer?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I stopped listening. I started editing some documents on my desk.”

After a beat, she said, “You have three days left on your subscription. Do you want it canceled as of today, or in three days?”

“Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not listening to it.”

And then she canceled the account. I guess she’d finally heard me.

A few days ago, I got an exciting renewal offer in the mail from Sirius XM. I recycled it immediately. I’m sure an Indian man will be calling me soon.