Early this evening, just before running down to Moving Arts for the latest set of readings from my playwriting workshop, I finished Julian Barnes’ new novel, The Sense of an Ending. I was deeply struck by the book, which among other things concerns 40 years’ of misunderstandings by our narrator and his immediate circle. Things that happen during school days and immediately afterward are reinterpreted decades later with emotionally devastating results for the protagonist. Much of the book concerns emails back and forth between that protagonist and a former paramour. And tonight, before those readings, I received an email that showed just how deft and resonant the novel is.

The night before, I had gone to a reading by my friend, and also my grad-school professor, David Scott Milton. David’s new novel, Iron City, has just been published by another friend of mine, Christopher Meeks, who is also a former student of David’s.  I took my 9-year-old son Dietrich with me, and bought him a couple of books to keep him occupied and also distracted from what I imagined, judging from David’s previous work, would be a  reading from a novel with lots of sex and violence (an assumption proved right, as the detective in his novel haggles over money with a bar full of prostitutes. Dietrich asked me later what a prostitute is and I told him, “A person who has sex for money,” to which he replied, “Oh, that’s right.” No doubt I had already explained this to him. Or he’d heard it on TV. Or on the playground. Who knows? There’s no sense in saving anything for adulthood any more.) At the reading, I also saw one of my own former grad students. I was surprised to see her, but went up to her and embraced her and said hello. Immediately after the reading I looked for her, but couldn’t find her; evidently she had left right away, and somehow I knew it was because of me. When I got home, I emailed her:

Subject: Nice seeing you tonight.

Nice seeing you tonight, however briefly. I looked for you afterward — wanted to find out what you’ve been up to — but you had left.

And, as I said, tonight, just after finishing the Barnes novel about misunderstandings and misinterpretations, I got this reply:

Hi, Lee,

Thanks for writing this… I felt that you didn’t want to talk to me, and it saddened me.

Always too sensitive… the only good part about that is that I can write.

So she had seen something in me, something in my face, that she read this way. And, to some degree, she was right in seeing what she’d seen, but wrong in the interpretation. Here’s what she had seen cross my face:  Oh no, what’s her name? Yes, I was glad to see her — but I was mentally fishing for her name.  Once I had it, I was even more eager to see her, to prove that of course I remembered her and wanted to speak to her and now had her name, but she had gone. I remember her distinctly, of course, and believe I was her thesis advisor (or was that David?), I remember her plays and many other things, but for a moment I couldn’t remember her first name, and didn’t want to embarrass her or hurt her feelings, and she mistook that for something else, and that misapprehension actually did hurt her feelings.

David is 77. When I was his student, from 1988 to 1990, we would play racquetball; he was a better shot, and had a better serve; the only way I could win was to run him to ground, to wind him, because he was 28 years older than I. Now someone in his 20s could do this to me. After his reading, we talked briefly. I told him that I’d seen X. He said, “I was trying to remember her last name.” I said, “Really? I was trying to remember the first one.”

In Julian Barnes’ book, the protagonist is shaken to discover that not only was he not the person he believed he was early in life, he may not be the person he now believes himself to be. If character is changeable, and if our self-perceptions are wrong, how are we ever to understand each other, if not ourselves?

How do you know when a movement has become a cultural meme? When Superman finds himself stuck in it.

Today, 44 years late, Capitol Records released The Beach Boys’ SMiLE, or at least as close an approximation as we’ll ever receive. As this 5-disc set proves, there will never be a definitive version (and you are free to assemble your own — from the outtakes and alternate versions on these discs; from Brian Wilson’s solo effort at the album several years ago; from “Smiley Smile,” the album released instead, back in 1967, made up of tracks from these sessions; and from various Beach Boys albums in all those intervening years, on which several of the songs, “Surf’s Up” most significantly, appeared.

I’m glad to have this disc, and I’m not alone.  “Surf’s Up,” “Cabin Essence,” “Heroes and Villains” and “Good Vibrations” are brilliant pop music, each thrilling and unique. I’m glad to have the music — and I’m hoping that what’s left of the Beach Boys can leave it at that. There’s a rumored “reunion” tour in the works, as though a tour without the late Carl Wilson, whose beautiful choir boy voice led most of these best songs, would actually be in some sense the Beach Boys.  I’ve barely recovered from the last time I saw just Brian play live (and I’m still trying to forget it); attempting to recreate the Beach Boys without Carl would be adding insult to injury. Instead, I’d rather stay focused on this wonderful new release, and plumbing all enjoyment I’m sure it’s going to deliver me.

It’s Halloween — and the Magic Castle is on fire.

I sure hope they put that out, and quickly!

For 20 years, it’s been one of my favorite haunts.

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do here (and, accordingly, will probably have a lot of posts here over the next few days), but I thought I’d start off with this one.

Last weekend, for reasons I’ll be covering here soon, my wife were taken on a 3-day tour of sections of Arizona, Nevada, and California. My airport of choice is Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport. The airport is near both my house and my office, meaning I can avoid the commute to and fro LAX, and also the endless security line and confusion endemic to LAX. On this particular visit to Bob Hope Airport was different, though, as I was gifted with an older Asian version of Barney Fife who took his job Very Seriously. He double- or triple-scanned the contents of the luggage of seemingly everyone on this junket, pulling things out and running them through again, including my wife’s. In non-clothes items, I had packed precisely what I pack on every trip, that being every trip made through this airport, that being probably four dozen times over the past two years. Sure enough, he grabbed a hold of my suitcase and told me he needed to personally inspect the contents.

Me:  “I’ve fly through this airport all the time with exactly the same contents, no problem.”

Him:  “I say it’s like traffic ticket. You don’t get traffic ticket every time. This time, it like you get traffic ticket.”

Me:  “It’s nothing like a traffic ticket. You get ticketed when you’ve done something wrong, and if not, you fight it. This is the same stuff I always pack, and I checked the TSA website again last night. It’s all okay.”

Now he’s ignoring me and pulling out all the contents of my dopp kit and putting them into an institutional-green plastic tray. What goes into your dopp kit? Personal items. So I’m feeling personally offended. He pulls them all out, rescans my bag, then rescans the tray. No alarms go off, and there are no explosions. He comes back to me, still looking for some point to score.

Him (fingering the various small liquids from my dopp kit — things like shampoo, toothpaste, etc. — as well as a small aerosol can of shaving cream, a small pair of scissors for facial hair, and so forth):  “This all have to fit in bag.”

Me: “It was in the bag.”

Him:  “No. Quart bag.” Now he’s presenting me with a sample plastic quart bag. “You think it all fit in here?”

So now I’m picking up all my spilled contents to show him that they’ll fit into the bag. I’m dropping in the speck-sized hair conditioner, and mouthwash, and so forth. He holds up a cigar lighter that I’ve got that’s the size of half a little finger. “What about this?”

“That’s not a liquid,” I tell him. Now I’m determined to hold up his line. He can wait on me. In fact, the whole trip can wait on me. Let’s delay anyone and everyone, because this is completely unjustified, because I have followed their guidelines. “And before you say anything, those scissors are within guidelines. I know because I checked the website.”

I continue putting things into the bag, and he tries to show me that the mini aerosol can won’t fit in, and I tell him that that’s not a liquid either, and it’s under 4 ounces, and I’m waiting for him to pounce upon my cigar cutter — which as a notch cutter does not even contain a razor blade — when he grows tired of the game and says, “OK, OK, it all fit.” So I say, “Are you sure? I’m happy to go over all of it with you, even though it’s the same stuff I fly with all the time, right out of this airport, even though it’s the same stuff that complies with TSA guidelines.” He waves me on and I repack all my stuff, thinking about his hands having been on my toothbrush now,  and then I watch him detain the 97-year-old man who is also on this junket, a man who probably couldn’t have figured out how to operate an explosive or firearm if you did it for him. I get on the plane and do my best to put it behind me.

The next day, while on the tour, I read this story on my iPhone:  “TSA misses loaded gun in bag at LAX.” My favorite response from TSA to this story:  ” ‘It’s not a TSA issue. Our mandate is to screen baggage for explosives.’ “

So we just about do a scratch-and-sniff on Lee’s cream rinse, but a loaded gun on a plane? Of no concern to the Transportation SECURITY Administration.

I feel much safer now.

In which Michael Winslow (the once and always Officer Sound Effects from the “Police Academy” movies) almost singlehandedly replicates Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” complete with rip-roaring guitar solo, solely with his mouth.

Doug Hackney, who alerted me to this, asked in an email, “Can you explain this?” To which I replied:

“Yes. Here is the explanation: He is phenomenal. Phenomenal meaning ‘of or pertaining to phenomena.’ See: burning bush; modern rain of frogs; and other inexplicable vagaries. Thanks for sending this. It’s always good to be reminded that jaw-dropping accomplishments and seeming impossibilities walk alongside us every day.”

(Even with all this, though, I wouldn’t want to see any more “Police Academy” movies.)

Just in time for Halloween: something definitely fright-inducing because it’s all too real.

Today’s Internet sensation is a Facebook app called “Take This Lollipop.” Go to Facebook and search for it and you’ll find it. But think twice before you click on it. The app accesses   your data from your Facebook profile and then builds it into a video of a grimy, seemingly psychotic man, who in the video then peruses  your photos, loads up a Google map that shows your address, and then drives to  your house with a photo of you taped to his dashboard, evidently intent on doing you harm. It’s a terrifying vision of just how accessible many of the details of your life are, due to social media sharing (and an unfounded sense of trust).  It’s not fully clear yet who is behind this or why (although, as Forbes archly notes, it’s surely not Facebook).

Here’s an example:

The last time I saw something that looked like this, it was the “X-Files” spinoff “Millennium,” with Lance Henriksen. But that was entirely fictional.

Seattle superhero Phoenix Jones has  been unmasked as Benjamin John Francis Fodor — which I think will make it easier for women to track him down and beat him with a shoe, as in the video below. Once his identity became public, did Captain America ever have to deal with this?

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The people at Google were kind enough to note Gumby creator Art Clokey’s 90th birthday with today’s Google doodle. (The video below shows how it runs.) Here’s a brief overview of the creation of this Google doodle and of Gumby. Gumby has brought me lots of enjoyment over the years, right up to this day, so I appreciate Google’s recognition of Mr. Clokey.