Ten years ago today, my alarm clock radio awoke me to a report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. My immediate thought was, “Oh, come on. Please. Not falling for that.” Because, given the alarmed tenor of the broadcast, I assumed that this was the latest attempt to duplicate Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” fake radio broadcast. It wasn’t until I tried to get on the internet and every news site I tried was overloaded with traffic and utterly inaccessible that I decided that something big must be up, and so switched on the television, and saw what everyone else everywhere saw:  orchestrated pandemonium and the sight of one of the towers on fire, with a large smoking black grease stain on one side.

That sight reminded me of the failed attack some years previously to the base of the trade center, and I already had a sinking feeling. I called each of my employees at home and told them to stay home. I also called my nephew and told him that I thought he should come spend the day with us, just in case, and did the same with a close friend. They both came over. My wife and I performed a quick mental checklist of our provisions, again, just in case. No one was sure what was going on or what was going to happen. I found myself thinking about nuclear weapons for the first time since the Carter Administration, when tensions between the Soviets and the U.S. had been at a periodic height.

At some point in all this, a plane hit the second tower, and at some point after that, first the first tower, and then the second, fell into atomized dust.

My nephew came over and we took my kids to the park a few blocks from my house. His cellphone rang, and it was my brother with the news that the original pilot of that second plane had been Victor, my brother’s friend since high school, his best friend, in some ways his only friend. My nephew was struck by the experience of hearing his very level-headed, competent, well-put-together father completely broken down over the phone. Nobody knew what to say. I certainly didn’t.

We also didn’t know what to expect. Were we at war? Who was the enemy? What was next? This was obviously some small coordinated attack, but what would follow it, from them or from us? Like everyone else, I made a mad dash for the supermarket and bought oversized dispensers of water and canned goods and batteries.

A couple of nights later, we got the first  inkling of what the American mood would become, as our pleasant, peaceful suburban neighborhood was transformed into a third-world backwater with cars and pickup trucks adorned with jingoistic bumper stickers and signs about Arabs and Muslims and ragheads driving up and down in the night flying  flags and honking horns, their drivers hooting and  hollering through open windows. My wife was at work. My friend and I kept the kids inside and talked about the Wallace Shawn play “The Designated Mourner,” which concerns a junta taking over a society too much like our own.

It’s been said that what became known as “9-11” changed everything. Well, as the phrase “the butterfly effect” reminds us, everything changes everything. But 9-11 certainly changed everything for me. It’s my rage at the illegitimate Bush Administration’s completely wrong response that drove me more deeply into politics and ultimately led me to the several political roles I’ve held since then. But even more importantly there’s this:

One morning the month after the attacks, all the power went down here in Burbank. I found a battery-powered radio (and if you asked me now where to find a battery-powered radio in this house, I couldn’t tell you) and turned it on to hear an alert informing me that authorities were investigating the source of the outage, but that under no condition should parents go pick up their children, repeat, parents should leave their children in their schools. I turned to my wife and said, “I’m going to go get our kids.” I imagined a traffic snarl as every other parent tried to drive to their school to pick up their own children, so I decided to walk. Before I left, though, another broadcast came on saying that it turned out a car had hit a power box, that this emphatically was not a terrorist attack, and that power would be restored — and then, rather soon, power was restored. Our kids were safe and we were safe, at least for this one day, we had somehow survived again, against the backdrop of constant thoughts that surely Los Angeles would be next to be attacked, and my wife and I collapsed into each other with relief, and, it turned out, made another child right then.

So, yes, I have a September 11 baby. He’s now 9.

I share all this today in an effort to document the moment, 10 years ago, when we all wondered if everything was coming to an end. In some ways, we are still in that moment. In retrospect, the 90’s were a paradise, especially in the United States. I remember my brother, the same brother who just a few years later was to lose his friend to fiends who slit his throat and took over his plane and flew it into a building, telling me that overall things in the country looked good. It was true, and I’m glad he said that, so I could lodge that memory. Since then, we’ve fought at least one and probably two and maybe three wars that we didn’t need to (Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan); our economy has collapsed or nearly collapsed several times; and we’ve entered an era where every single move by our political leadership seems made and judged through the spectrum of political gain or loss, rather than improvement to the common good. Nine-eleven definitively capped off the period of good feeling from the previous decade. Since then, every day has been filled with lingering dread, with only the most recent peer over the cliff engendered by the utterly contrived crisis of the debt-ceiling increase.

What’s to come? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. The pendulum of history does swing, but Americans seem unsure if it’s going to swing back for us, or if it is, when. Nine-eleven was more than an occasion when two jets were flown into two buildings. It was an assault on the exposed belly of America, and we’ve been bleeding from it ever since.

Here’s a fun stunt:  Neil LaBute and Theresa Rebeck will write plays next week in a webcast event, based on prompts provided by the LA Times. Vote here for your pick of prompts. For the record, I’m drumming up support for this one: “Kristin enrolls in a figure studies class, then realizes that she knows the nude model, Ron, from church.” I’m eager to see what former Mormon LaBute and feminist Rebeck come up with on that one.

Almost 25 years ago, I saw The Cure in concert at the Philadelphia Spectrum and a friend and I remarked upon the enormity of leader singer Robert Smith’s sneakers. They were impressive indeed. I don’t know that these are as big or as impressive, but I do know that I want them.

San Diego is the home of the famed Comic-Con International. That comics and cartoons influence is evidently far-reaching, because last night someone dressed up as Gumby attempted to rob a 7-Eleven (as this video shows). No, he doesn’t appear to have had a gun (but I couldn’t resist the pun), but the costume wasn’t the only thing comic about it: Reports are that he made off with only 27¢, which he dropped. I guess in the attempted getaway, he was afraid of being too pokey. San Diego Crime Stoppers is offering a $1000 award for any information, and I am now formulating in my head what the APB sounded like: “Suspect is a green halfwit, wide-eyed with a vacant smile. Do not approach with caution — caution is unnecessary.”

Who is it? It may be Barack Obama. (It’s certainly seeming that way….) This brings to mind the quote from Harry Truman:

“If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.” Address at the National Convention Banquet of the Americans for Democratic Action, 17 May 1952

On Facebook, I just saw an ad that read:  “Free Barack Obama Sticker!” And I honest-to-God thought it should be read like “Free Nelson Mandela” from back in the day (as opposed to “free sticker”). The former meaning — “set him free” — I would have ordered.

(To the tune of “Gotta Share!”)

A friend sent this to me.
Said this is for you, Lee.
I told him it was fun
Not a home run
But worth seeing up here.

It means a lot that he shared
Shows that he cared
That he dared
To break out of the mold…
Of the old…

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?)