The New York Times is ending its coverage of regional theatre, and restaurants and culture in its suburban delivery areas. (Here’s more on that story.) If you’re a theatre in New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island or Connecticut, that’s pretty bad news.

On one of the theatre groups I belong to on Facebook, people were predictably outraged. Sample comments:

“This is shortsighted and totally lacking in regard for the need of the wider community for access to its own cultural scene!!!!!!”

“They seem to be denying their motto’All the news that’s fit to print.’ “

It was these last two that got my goat. So I posted this:

“This is the point at which I ask, ‘How many of us who are shocked and upset have been PAYING to read the New York Times?’ Some, sure — but the numbers are way down. I remember when the LA Times had 1,000,000+ readers in print; now it’s… 250,000? The advertisers started leaving these papers after the subscribers started leaving. I’m now the ONLY LA Times subscriber on my block. On a similar note: How many people here are willing (and PROUD) to write for The Huffington Post, for free, while its founder made millions from it and while its unpaid parasitic repurposing of newspaper content was helping to eat those newspapers alive? Newspapers have had to PAY to cover those stories (unlike the HuffPo). Without our support, they’ve been forced to make tragic cuts.”

So, yes, I was once again on a familiar tear about The Huffington Post, which enriches a select handful of early investors, including Arianna herself, while asking all the writers to contribute for free, and while taking paid newspaper content, aggregating it, and turning it into clickbait.

Today, though, I realized how even more apt my comparison of that organ to a parasite was. Unchecked, parasites kill the host — and then they themselves die. Newspapers in their present form won’t — can’t — survive. But the need for actually reliable news, the sort that comes from having paid news gatherers go out and develop connections and do research and develop and report stories, will continue. It may even become more valuable, as it becomes more scarce, and that means it will cost more. Maybe that will mean that the HuffPo, with a business model built on unpaid writing and filched reporting, would have to pay for its content. Wouldn’t that be a shame?

A few weeks ago, John Oliver delivered a hilarious but tragic takedown of what’s happening to newspapers. This, I promise you, is well worth your 19 minutes.

It’s time for the LA Times, which is part of “Tronc,” to hire a new copy editor. Because that’s not a clock.

Dear friends and readers of this blog:

I’ve received probably hundreds (maybe thousands) of funding requests from people I know, on Facebook, via email, and even in snailmail, to support your charity or your art or your project. I’ve helped when I could. Today, for the first time, I’m asking for your support.

Please send me a dollar.

Here is the address:

Lee Wochner
3305 W. Burbank Blvd.,
Burbank, CA 91505

If you can send more, that would be appreciated too. But please do send at least the dollar.

Thank you.

p.s. If you’d like to use PayPal, here’s the email address: lee AT leewochner.com. Please remember to remove the “at” and replace it with the “at sign.” Thank you again!

Sometimes you wind up writing something perhaps artistic without realizing it. I was emailed a lunch-order request for a meeting I’m attending tomorrow. So here’s what I sent:

I am attending.

Accept this as your warning that there are only 144 shopping days ’til Christmas. You can never start too early — as this photo, taken today AUGUST SECOND in Glendale, CA attests.

Here’s a treat:  two hours of Iggy Pop spinning his favorite David Bowie songs and talking about their shared history.

But act now — you’ve got only 26 days left (and counting down).

(Thanks to Joe Stafford for letting me know about this!)

I have friends looking to buy a house. Here in Los Angeles, that’s a pricey proposition. But why pay $650,000 and up, when you can have this creative starter home for a mere one dollar?

(Not counting towing fees. And no, AAA won’t handle this — it weighs 10,000 pounds.)

It’s spacious — because it was designed to replicate living in space.

And if the zombie apocalypse, or nuclear armageddon, or The Purge comes, I can think of no safer place.

Whaa? Hmph? Oh, sorry. Just recovering from that bachelor party. All I can say — and all I should say — is that a party must be going well if it runs ten-and-a-half hours, until 4:30 a.m., and some remaining participants are sorry to see it end “early.” And I’ll add this:  surprisingly, as everyone agreed, going from beer to whiskey to vodka to tequila does not necessarily lead to a hangover. Who knew? The big takeaway:  my endless gratitude, again, for good friends.

Yesterday (what commenced of it after 11:30 a.m.) the bachelor and I went out to “breakfast,” then I uncharacteristically but understandably lazed around for a while. (Hours.) Then my wife and I and another couple went to see the Pasadena Pops perform a night of Sinatra music at the LA County Arboretum. Every time I hear Sinatra (or a Sinatra tribute), I’m reminded of the time my father went out and bought a cassette tape of Sinatra’s greatest hits and gave it to me to see if he could win me over. In retrospect, I regret how churlish and dismissive I was — the old guy was making a real effort, an effort I now understand all too well as I try to educate two of my own offspring on the endless joy supplied by America’s premier musical act, Pere Ubu.

Today at the gym, whatever channel is playing on the elliptical took a break from “My 600 Pound Life,” which I and everyone else at the gym find extremely motivational. Instead, it was a special episode of “Intervention,” featuring 48-year-old Tammi, who drinks three pints of vodka a day and whose five sisters won’t talk to her, and who, with the complicity of a boyfriend who is equally disgusted with her, sponges off the pension of the boyfriend’s elderly mother, who owns the house and lives with them. I didn’t care much about Tammi, or the fact that her daughter wouldn’t stop by on her way to the prom so that Tammi could see her in her prom dress (no, her kids, who live with their father, don’t really talk to her either), and I have zero sympathy for the grown man subjecting his elderly mother to life with Tammi and the distress and disorder she creates around her, but I sure feel sorry for the old lady. Which made me grateful again for my sister and brother-in-law, and the rest of our family who take such excellent care of my 90-year-old mother in southern New Jersey.

After the gym, I went grocery shopping, trying to make sense of the various implorations being texted to me by my wife and two teens, for special kinds of cereal, or certain laundry scents, or fried chicken, or whatever. My daughter wanted “dumplings,” but then said they aren’t “dumplings,” they’re more like gyoza, but then added that they aren’t, and they might be called “pot stickers,” by which time I was sure I had no idea what she was talking about, and then she said they were in “the freezer section” (never mind that there are three “freezer sections” at our local Ralphs), and then clarified that these dumpling/gyoza/pot stickers are in the freezer section near “the snacks,” which clarified nothing because I couldn’t find frozen snacks and don’t believe they exist, unless pizza is a snack. Finally I found competing bags of heavily processed-seeming Asian-copying (i.e., in no way actually Asian) edible things that, incredibly, had a litany of descriptors on each bag that completely matched with dumpling/gyoza/pot stickers. It seems that even the manufacturers of this “food” can’t decide what it is! I bought both bags of stuff, because even though they were similarly described, they looked completely different, and I didn’t want to get this wrong for my daughter. Want to know why? Because she’s made sure I could see her in every one of her prom dresses, that’s why.

When I got home, I found she’d made a stir fry for dinner (thanks!). Then we settled down for a nice hour of father-daughter time, watching people get terribly mistreated in prison in “The Night Of” on HBO.

If only next weekend holds such charms.

Yesterday, I posted a story wherein I never got paid for creative work — but now the publisher wants to know if they can reprint it and put it behind a paywall.

Here’s a somewhat similar story, but with a big difference. The photographer in this story has just sued Getty Images for licensing out, for considerable fees, images that she had donated to the Library of Congress.  The amount she’s suing for? One billion dollars.

Had I gotten paid, in 1982, my fee would have been $25.

But, as they say, the principle remains the same.

It’s been 30 years since I planned a bachelor party. When my friends and I had that particular night out, it ranked high on the sleaze factor — and let me say once again, I’m glad that social media didn’t exist back then. At least two episodes from that night still make me cringe, and I’ll be keeping them to myself, thank you. (At one point, the groom-to-be memorably turned to me and said, “Is this supposed to turn me on? Because maybe I’m gay.”)

Tonight, five of us are bidding farewell to our good friend Trey Nichols’ bachelorhood. Next Saturday, he’ll be walking down the aisle with an absolutely lovely, cheerful, funny and smart woman who is also a rocket scientist. When we wonder if something takes a rocket scientist to figure out, we ask her. She’s quite a catch.

Two of us at tonight’s festivities were in attendance at that other party 30 years ago. We’re no longer in our early 20s, and I believe the youngest person tonight (my nephew) is 41. My goal in planning this event tonight was to ensure that the bachelor has a great time with good friends, and that it includes just enough borderline or somewhat-over-the-line inappropriate behavior that it qualifies as a bachelor party while still allowing the actual wedding to go forth. I know he’s worried about this (and he should be), but I care about him the way truly close friends do and I’ve done my best to make this X-rated but not, say, “Caligula.”

The next bachelor party I throw will no doubt take place in a rest home and include a screening of  “Cocoon” while doing shots of warm milk.