Tomorrow night at 7:30 I’m doing a reading downtown as part of the USC Master of Professional Writing program reading series. The reading is in a bar, so in the fine tradition of Charles Bukowski and any number of Irish poets, I have high hopes for this. The bar’s website (the URL of which is unfortunately wrong on the flyer, by the way — it’s actually www.themountainbar.com) promises “bleeding walls,” which is something I last saw in a Takashi Miike movie. I think if they were to bleed while I was reading, I would find that distracting. Anyway, please join us for this. Previous student readings have been fantastic, and hey, drinks are available. The address is 475 Gin Ling Way, and no, I have no idea where that is either, but that’s why we have mapping technology.

My friend EM Lewis’ terrific new play, “Song of Extinction” is currently running at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre’s Inside the Ford venue in a production by Moving Arts. Ellen (that’s what some of us call her) is a gifted playwright and I’m proud to say this play was written in my workshop. The production is populated with theatre friends I’ve worked with for many years, every one of them fiercely talented — so I’m going to take the risk of vouching for this sight unseen. But hey, why don’t you be the judge? This Sunday at 5, I’ll be moderating a post-show discussion with the playwright, and the producer (another longtime theatre ally, Kim Glann), is offering a 20% discount to readers of this blog; just enter the promotion code SONG when you click here to RSVP. And students with ID are $12, so yes, USC student, this means YOU should come join us. Ellen is a graduate of that program of ours.

Earlier this year I wrote a short play called “About the Deep Woods Killer.” If you think it was about the Deep Woods Killer, you would be wrong — it was more about his now-grown son and the emotional wreckage he’s inherited, and it was perhaps even more about a young woman he meets who is strangely drawn to troubled men. (And, indeed, the full-length version I’m now working on is called “Troubled Men.”) The story is very loosely based upon the Green River Killer, whose story I came across on MSNBC in my hotel room in April. The Green River Killer lured women down by the river and killed them. This went on for 20 years. Estimates of his rampage vary.

I changed the setting from river to woods because while I know something about rivers, I grew up in the woods. To me, the river is metaphoric for journey (think “Huckleberry Finn”), while the woods are metaphoric for the subconscious, and how deep you can go. (Here’s an old logic puzzle:  “How far can a dog run into the woods?” “Halfway. After that, he’s running out.”) In my play, nobody’s getting out — but they do go deeper. Hence the woods.

A minute ago I was Stumbling around the internet and found the image below. Stumble promises to find things on the Web that you’re interested in but which you didn’t know about. In this case, I experienced a frisson when I saw the image. I know someone did it for a lark — it’s posted on some “humor” page — but given my play, I read it differently.

Forty-three years ago this month, a friend of mine got his first writing credit. It was in a comic-book, and it was the weirdest (and possibly best) comic book ever: a sophisticated absurdist comic called “Herbie.” Herbie was a fat little boy who was viewed as worthless by his father, but who was capable of seemingly anything, including flight, magic, communicating with animals, traveling in time, serving as lady’s man to Cleopatra, and dryly solving the world’s problems while slowly sucking a lollipop. Given the theme and the audience it spoke to, I’m surprised this comic was ever canceled.

For the September, 1965 issue, the winners were announced of a contest to plot the latest adventure of Herbie. One of the prizes went to a guy named Marv Wolfman, who later created Blade the Vampire Hunter, most of the New Teen Titans, and many of Superman’s more memorable supporting characters of the past 30 years, who created the newly definitive Lex Luthor (not so much an inventor of easily smashed giant robots, but rather a supremely immoral corporate raider who later becomes president), and who at one time was editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. Marv Wolfman is the guy who came in second. The guy who came in first was my friend Rich Roesberg.

Here is Scott! Shaw’s remembrance of Herbie, and that winning story.

I think my friend Larry Nemecek’s name is fine. It’s his blog that needs a new name.

Larry is acknowledged as the world’s foremost expert on “Star Trek.” (Note to my modest friend Larry: “Who acknowledges you as that? Me. So there.” Me, plus all the people who put his book “The Star Trek Companion” on the New York Times bestseller list, plus all the readers over the years of his other books and magazines, including “Star Trek Communicator.”)

Larry is smarter than I’ll ever be about “Star Trek.” Perhaps too smart: He’s named his new blog about all things Trek “Check the Circuit.”

Huh?

Oh, yeah. Larry informs me that that is the very first line of dialogue ever spoken on “Star Trek.” (It’s in the background in the first scene of “The Cage” and is spoken by Mr. Spock.) Of course.

Like me, you might think this reference too arcane for a) anyone under 45, and b) anyone who also has other interests in life. Both of which would disqualify 99.9999% of the people I expect to be seeing the new “Star Trek” movie when it comes out. Or, as I like to think of them, new people who might become interested in my good friend Larry’s blog.

So I entreat you: Help me come up with a new name for Larry’s blog.

Ideally, it should reference “Star Trek.” (Which, sorry Larr, “Check the Circuit” doesn’t quite do.) Larry is widely known in his field, and he deserves a great blog name. Anything less and he should just pick one of the two blog names I suggested:

• “LarryNemecek.com”
• “Fred.”

Here’s my friend and colleague Shelly Lowenkopf on the top 10 political novels.

In the future, this book might show up on a revised list, one that includes fantasy.

I’m very happy with how my one-act play, “About the Deep Woods Killer,” has turned out in the 2008 Moving Arts Premiere One-Act Festival. It’s a tribute to the cast, to everyone involved in the production, and especially to the director, Mark Kinsey Stephenson. Mark really understands the undercurrents in the play and has worked with the actors to express them. If you’ve never had a bad or mediocre production (and I have), you can’t fully understand how invaluable it is to have a director who understands your play and, in Mark’s case, your overall body of work — and who also has the talents to bring that vision to the stage. I’m grateful. Mark and I have been doing theatre together for 15 years; he’s directed my plays before, has acted in my plays, and I’ve directed him several times, as well as producing plays he’s been in. We’re a good match. If I’m lucky we’ll be doing theatre together for another 15 years, and beyond.

In the same festival, I think Terence Anthony’s play “Tangled” is a standout (and is a play I’m going to blog about later today or this weekend, when I have a chance), and I’m quite taken with “Compression of a Casualty,” which marries an Ionesco-esque device with  contemporary CNN coverage of the death of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, to great effect and, to my immense thrill, into an indictment of the timid and celebrity-obsessed mainstream media. I’m glad we’re doing that play, and I’m delighted to see the inestimably talented Michael Shutt prove, yet again, that he’s among the most versatile theatre artists I know.

The festival runs three more weeks. Here’s more info, including ticket information.

Y’all.
Youse.
You-uns.
You guys.
All of you.

These are just some of the regionalisms that Americans use to substitute for the lack of a different plural form of “you” in English. My favorite is the one employed in my mother’s hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania:  “Yins.” Yes, Virginia, there are many thousands of people in the Pittsburgh area who say “yins” when they’re addressing a group of people. My theory is that “yins” is a further contraction of “you-uns.”

Even though in my own speaking voice I use just “you guys” and “all of you,” I love every one of these locutions. For playwrights, they’re useful baubles to adorn characters with. But until yesterday I had forgotten one, and shame on me. Spending the day in Philadelphia, and seeing the Bill Irwin show “The Happiness Lecture” – developed with an ensemble of Philadelphia theatre artists – reacquainted me with one of the best plural-you forms in the country. Here it is, and no, I’m not making this up, and please keep your mind out of the gutter:

Yizz.

Remember this post the other day, in which the lovely and incredibly helpful Shanda Clark, project coordinator for the Great Plains Theatre Conference, drives me to a television taping I’m unaware will star myself? In that post, I also mentioned that she picked me just after I’d gotten a promising report on my little boy, who had been briefly hospitalized with a truly upsetting autoimmune deficiency. I shared a little about that with her in the brief car ride.

The next morning when I opened the door, there was a package sitting there in the hallway on the floor. A white gift box tied with an attractive red ribbon bore a card from Shanda and the message, “Hi Lee, Just thinking of your family… and thought your boy would enjoy this when you arrive home. Shanda.” And inside were a rubber dinosaur, some playdoh, and a children’s art kit. I shared something about my son in passing, and she responded in this way for a little boy she’s never met, and for his father who, mere days before, had been a complete stranger. I was moved by this heartfelt gesture.

When I’ve been brought into retreats and conferences like this in the past and been well-treated, I’ve half-joked that “they treated me the way everyone should have to treat me.” This conference has gone one better: They’ve treated everyone the way we should all treat each other. The graciousness shown here has been nothing short of astounding. (Which, tomorrow when I’m not rushing off for final-evening cigars and drinks, will take me to the subject of playwright Doug Wright, perhaps the most gracious highly accomplished person anyone will ever meet.)

Marshall W. Mason is one of the esteemed guests here at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. He’s a legendary director and, indeed, directed the first show I ever bought a ticket to, in 1980:  Lanford Wilson’s “Fifth of July,” starring Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, and Swoozie Kurtz.

While he’s here, Marshall has been directing a snippet from a Doug Wright play as part of a tribute that was performed last night. Tonight, we’re all going to see “I Am My Own Wife,” a remounting of a production that ran here recently, brought back especially for the conference. The director of that production, a local whose name is Kevin and who seems like a very nice man, is noticeably caught up in the anxiety of remounting a small-town small-theatre production for the benefit of the visiting Pulitzer- and Tony-Award-winning author. Marshall, who shows every sign of being the kindest director I’ve ever met, has been nothing short of warm and supportive.

One of Kevin’s concerns has been about the theatre, a beautifully appointed mid-sized house with a colonnade supporting a balcony trimmed in warm wood. The theatre is undeniably attractive, but those stone columns add an echo to the acoustics. So Kevin had requested that thick black stage drapes be used to dampen the echo and support the actors. He had requested this in a friendly but firm fashion for several days, but nothing had come of it. Then, yesterday, Marshall had his tech runthrough for his segment of the tribute to Doug Wright, and now the black curtain was up. At dinner, he was eager to share this with Kevin and allay his fears about the acoustics.

So the execrable Robert Caisley and I are having dinner at our end of the table with Marshall when he politely excuses himself. “They’ve put up the black drapes and I must go tell Kevin,” he says. “He’ll be relieved.” He runs over to a table near us and leans in to someone he mistakes in the dimness for Kevin, someone who turns out to be Doug Wright’s partner David, in other words, someone who has no idea of the desire for dark sound-muffling curtains. Marshall leans over the table excitedly.

“Good news!” he proclaims. “They’ve hung the blacks!”

Much explaining of that gleeful statement ensued.

Courtesy of VisualThesaurus.com, and no, I couldn’t believe it either when it arrived in my in box: “Playwright.”

Good Wrighting Word of the Day

Playwright

Of the half dozen English words ending in -wright in use today, playwright is the only one in which the creative act is writing, and the latest coinage (17th century) of them all. The -wright part is from very old English and denotes a maker of something, as in shipwright.

I’m betting the contemptible Robert Caisley already knew all this.