Mike Daisey’s new monologue piece is 24 hours long. Not 24 minutes, not an hour and 24 minutes, not 2.4 hours — 24 hours. I would like to see that (so long as there are bathroom breaks — for my sake and for his).

Unfortunately, I can’t. It’s in Portland, OR ( that seems easily overcome, with a plane ticket). But, also, I’ve got tickets for a different show, one that is conveniently located closer than Portland, OR. In fact, it’s right here in my town of Burbank, CA. But what is it about September 17th anyway? That’s when Daisey’s piece is, but it’s also when my friends the Burglars of Hamm are putting on their new show for — you guessed it — one night only. Where were these other events before  I landed these other tickets? Or is it that the very act of booking something somehow ensures that other opportunities crop up for that very same date?

By the way, I’m on Mike Daisey’s email list. Here’s what he had to say about why one would want to do a 24-hour-long show. I admire his pluck.

Hello All,

We’ve been quiet this summer, preparing for the largest show of our lives. This is the culmination of years of work, and the fulfillment of an insane dream. ALL THE HOURS IN THE DAY is a 24 hour monologue which I will perform for the first time next month as the finale of the T:BA Festival in Portland.

Answers to a few FAQs: Yes, this is real. No, it is not a stunt. Yes, it really is 24 hours long. No, I am not kidding.

When people learn the show will be a full day in length, they often express shock and incredulity. Some, in the context of an arts festival, experience a feeling of loss…they exclaim, “But how can I watch a twenty-four hour show!” in a surprised tone, almost pleading, a tone that speaks of collecting and owning and coveting. Because we have been trained to possess the art we see.

I saw Star Wars at a movie theater as a child–it was the first indelible mark a work of art made inside me. I can still remember Luke staring out at the double sunset, and when I remember it, I see it now as a prism–I remember seeing it as a child, I remember seeing it again and again on laserdisc, betamax, VHS, late night screenings in college, pirated DVDs, back in the theaters scarred by Lucas’ digital fuckery, in hi-def, via bittorrent. I have just now gone to the net and watched that scene again…it is always at my fingertips. There is a version where the keyboard cat plays Luke off the screen. There is a version where someone has dubbed in terrible dance music. There is every version we can imagine.

What we long for is the version lost to us–the original story, the story that is larger than ourselves. The way a movie stops playing at the theater, and can only be resurrected by retelling until it is finally our own. A story so large that we struggle to contain it, and in that struggle remember that the point of this exercise, this theater, was to create a charged circumstance where we come together to create a community, a ritual that cracks open the boundaries of our life and lets the light in from outside. That sense of wonder. That awe. Two suns turning red against the fall of night.

If you are reading this, I can not know you. But I know you live on this earth, and have spent several thousand days doing so. None of us knows how many days we will have, how the hours are marked for each of us, what that merciless terminator line swinging from day into night holds in its hands. What could one day mean for any of us? What could we learn together if we cracked that door?

Scheherazade told her stories for the same reason we all do–to save her life.

Please join us for what I hope will be a remarkable day.

Be seeing you,

md

* * * 

Happy birthday to one of my favorite comics artists, Robert Crumb, who is 68 today. The New York Times has a great feature that will essentially build you an online newspaper devoted to a particular topic, so if you’d like to learn a whole lot more about R. Crumb all at once, click here. The latest news about Crumb is his recent withdrawal from an art festival in Australia, for fear that he was going to be attacked by crazed feminists.

Re the birthday boy, and specifically a topic addressed in the biography “Crumb,” my good friend Joe Stafford sent this note:

The thing I always think about are those hilarious entry blanks Crumb (or was it his brother?)  used to send to Art Instruction Schools. [Note from Lee: It was both Robert and brother Charles who did this.] Mind you, I’m not making fun of the School, but the entry blanks they sent were dirty, funny; filled in exactly the way anyone with a sense of humor and real artistic talent would [do].

Joe adds, in a PS:

They used to have you draw Tippy….

[And here’s Tippy:]

…but now all you have to draw is this guy:

Well, as they say, everyone has a doppelganger. I think we’ve found Tippy’s. It’s Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Yes, I live in Los Angeles County, and my street in Burbank is a micron from North Hollywood, which is part of the actual City of Los Angeles. So that makes the area somewhat urban.

At the same time,  Burbank is girded by a mountain range. My neighborhood houses opossums and tree rats, but it’s the mountains that give us owls, the occasional vulture, rattlesnakes, coyotes — and mountain lions. Which we’ve been seeing a lot more of recently, as noted in this news story. Where is Kenneth Road, site of a recent mountain lion incident? It’s the road I lived on from 1988 to 1991. Where is Country Club Drive? Not too far from the next placed I lived, from 1991 to 1996. Many times I came home at 2 or 3 in the morning and found a coyote running down the street or even on my front lawn.

Maybe the next time my family and I go hiking up in those mountains we’ll take a… what? What does one carry along in case of a mountain lion attack? What was Snagglepuss afraid of? (Other than Bert Lahr suing him?)

An inspired idea: Peter Dinklage as Modok.

It’s now 109 degrees in Burbank.

I’m betting my wife doesn’t think it’s so nice now.

And I’m betting that dry cleaners will be, ahem, cleaning up. (I know mine is.)

Courtesy of the always-entertaining Chuck McCann:

Twenty-five years ago, when I was a copy editor at the Press of Atlantic City (which long-time residents still call by its original, and should-be, name, The Atlantic City Press), occasionally the text that came onto our editing queue from one of the syndicates would be garbled. Somewhere in my files I’ve got an epic poem, the ur text of which was a feature profile of some gentleman somewhere, called “Old Man.Sat.” As you can see, it was slated for a Saturday edition (hence the “.Sat”) and it was a profile of an old man. Within that text was an agglomeration of mangled diction and mismatched word bits spliced together haphazardly in a way I associated with Brion Gyson and William S. Burroughs. It was rhythmically fantastic and sounded great read aloud, and I believe I got it published somewhere in the late 80’s or early 90’s. (I don’t know who can keep track of these little accomplishments, other than my friend Gerald Locklin, who is an ace documenter of his own work and, even better, someone who has amassed a cohort of adherents eager to document it all for him as well.)

Sometimes you find accidental poetry in spam emails, in which a bot has read someone’s hard drive and sent you a mutant version of text from it. Here’s something I got this morning from some poor soul somewhere whose computer has been hacked (without, I’ll bet, his knowing it). I’m sorry for him, but I quite like this:

Like any deer I the herd.

And intenible sieveI still pour.

Is sure to loseThat seeks.

What I spoke unpitied let me.

Torcher his diurnal ringEre.

Pretty good, right?

I’m still an editor, though, all these years later, and so can’t help helping it a little. Below is my first take at what I hope is an improvement (I do like to think that while I appreciate automated systems generating language for me, my human touch and years of experience can add a little; but maybe I’m wrong), but first, here are my reasons.

I like that first line (and think it should be the title), so I’m repeating it. Something that is “intenible” cannot be grasped, and someone who is an intenible sieve can neither grasp nor hold (but, evidently, can still pour); this person is a phantom, someone unable to hold onto or to be held. Imagine the emotional state, then, the desperation; this is a key to why this is so powerful, especially when matched with being a deer in the herd. Compared to the emotionally fragile subject of this poem — were it a human — Emily Dickinson would be a paragon of strength, a pro wrestler in the cultural arena. I’m breaking the line “Is sure to lose / That seeks.” because the break subtly changes the meaning and increases our sense of the loss, that any striving by this subject is sure to be met with failure. And when something was attempted — when, for example, this person spoke — that act had the effect of “unpitying” him, revealing him in his phantasmic state, bereft and distant but visible. Powerful stuff. In English, a “torcher” is one who gives light with a torch; in French, however, it’s a verb meaning “to wipe.” I think that in this case, we’re looking at the latter meaning:  “wiping  his diurnal ring.” This bespeaks a servitude that is distressing. It’s certainly a phrase that gives me pause. “Ere” means before, but I actually think it’s in the way here.

 Like any deer I the herd.

Like any deer I the herd.

And intenible sieve I still pour.

Is sure to lose

That seeks.

What I spoke unpitied let me.

Torcher his diurnal ring.

So there it is. A poem written, mostly, by a spam bot.

I wonder if I can get it published.

The heat outside during the day today could have seared the shell off a tortoise. I got home tonight at 9 o’clock from an event at Universal City. According to my car’s readout, it was 90 degrees at the hilltop of Universal when I left. I thought, This must be wrong. I put the top down and drove home to Burbank. At home it was 93 degrees out — as verified again by my car, by the readout at the local school, and by the thermostat on my front porch. So here’s the deal:  It actually is 90-plus degrees outside at 9 PM.  I came in gasping from the heat and running for a glass of chilled ice-tea. Here’s what my wife had to say about it all:  “It’s nice outside, isn’t it?”

Steve Jobs just resigned.

As a friend said, “He must be really sick.” Yeah, I guess so.

Now I feel kinda sick.

Barry Mitchell rates Jerry Lewis’ telethon signoffs over the past 45 years. Love this.