OK, so maybe I can’t keep my rehearsals straight. But at least I know what year it is. (Granted, this other guy has a lot going on. But still.)

Last night a friend and I saw Echo & The Bunnymen at House of Blues in Anaheim. It was not a good experience. I don’t think I’ll be seeing Echo & The Bunnymen again, and whether or not I do, I doubt I’ll be seeing them or anyone else at that particular House of Blues.

Ordinarily, I like the House of Blues. Or, at least, other Houses of Blues. I’ve never had a problem with the one in West Hollywood, and last year, I saw the Psychedelic Furs at the one in Atlantic City with my friends Paul and Joe. But seriously, someone needed to call the fire marshal on this one in Anaheim last night. I’ve frequented many small, packed, sweaty clubs in my life — including the Roxy just last month for Big Audio Dynamite — but this was ludicrous. Two floors of absolutely airless rooms stuffed with throngs of people desperate to move somewhere, anywhere, even an inch. Over the course of the evening, I had accidental intimate relations with five people (four of them men, and none of them appealing). Add to this pressurized tin-can atmosphere the utter lack of air conditioning or oxygen. C’mon, House of Blues, you’re banking boatloads of cash — turn on the AC! A heavyset middle-aged guy sutured onto my right flank started texting his wife:  “Awful time. Really. Too old for this. Sweaty. Packed like sardines. No air.” I started to worry about him and wondered why he didn’t leave — but then realized again that there was no way to get out. During one of the set breaks he and his friend took advantage of a clearing in the crowd and inched their way toward the exit.

That third “set break,” by the way, was not actually a set break — it was an extended interregnum courtesy of the band’s singer, Ian McCulloch. While I have always liked the band’s music, and was eager to see them, especially with a friend in tow who is a major fan, I have to say that the vocal work of this Ian McCulloch presents not even passing similarity to his younger self. It’s not just that he can’t sing any more; he can barely talk. (The five cigarettes that he smoked during his vocals didn’t help, I’m sure.) I’m not sure if the soundman was trying to prove a point, or just curious, but a couple of times he dropped the echo from McCulloch’s voice and the results were alarming:  recall Johnny Cash’s sandblasted deathbed final vocals before his deathbed; compared to Ian McCulloch, Cash sounded like Julie Andrews. McCulloch also can’t be bothered to learn his own lyrics. And, mostly, he can’t be bothered to deliver what he and his band promised:  their first two albums, Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here, performed in their entirety. The band sounded great, especially lead guitarist Will Sergeant, but McCulloch put in a dreary first set, and an even worse second set, accidentally repeating one verse, skipping or mumbling lyrics, and, finally, stopping mid-way through the second album. After a long long long pause, the band came back with McCulloch making some apology that no one could understand, and then he phoned in the two hits they would have played as encores (The Killing Moon and Lips Like Sugar) and left. Bad evening for a good band? I don’t think so. Here’s someone else’s review of the show two nights prior at Club Nokia.  Note the criticism of McCulloch’s “singing.”

When it was over, I was just glad to be out of there. There was a surge of people to get to the door, and you could hear gasps of “Oh my God, AIR!” as people hit the cool evening breeze. One person likened the atmosphere inside to “dollar night at a whorehouse.” My friend wavered between anger and regret. I understand; he loves this band, and I don’t. On the way home, we listened to their first two albums. I think from here on out, that should be the preferred method of experiencing Echo & The Bunnymen.

I’m extremely scheduled. It is not my favorite aspect of my life. But when people ask me how I manage to get so much done, I have an answer:  I’m scheduled.

Last week I promised someone that while I was in the area on Saturday, I’d stop by her new coffee bar to sample the coffee. Which I did. Because I put it into my schedule, and my iPhone reminded me.

How do I remember to pick up my 8-year-old from school? It’s in my schedule. (And woe to me — and the kid — if I ever lose the phone. I hope he’ll have enough snacks for overnight.) Haircut? Concert? My wife’s work schedule? Even something as simple as “Get up”? They’re all in my schedule. As I said, I’m not proud of this.

Here’s what’s not in my schedule:  my memory. Because  tonight at five minutes before 7 p.m., there was a ring at my door and I greeted the nice theatre people outside this way:  “I thought we said 7:30.” And yes, I felt pretty crummy the moment I blurted that out. At the very least, I could have said hello first. To make it worse, it was correct in my schedule (and wrong in my brain), because there it was in my schedule that tonight’s rehearsal was set to start at 7 — and it’s Wednesday night’s rehearsal, for a different play of mine, that was scheduled to start at 7:30.

So now I have to put something new in my schedule:  “Remember to read schedule before making ass of yourself.”

Today in my playwriting workshop, someone whose opinion I respect said that he felt that Harold Camping, the Family Radio fraud who predicted the Rapture that didn’t happen, should be prosecuted. “He’s a con man!” this person said. “People suffered because of this!”

And I know that’s true.  But, finally, shouldn’t we ever expect that people, well, think things through? Intelligence should be rewarded, and those rewards should be the incentive for pursuing education and thoughtful, intelligent discourse. Because if we remove those rewards, we’re protecting the stupid people and disincentivizing the learned. And by “stupid,” I don’t mean the incapable; precisely because they’re incapable, those people we should help. But the willfully ignorant should ultimately pay a price for their willful ignorance, shouldn’t they?

I never thought the Rapture was coming today, and neither did you. How much sympathy can we have for those who quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and toured America because they thought these were the last days? And what should  we do with that sympathy — reimburse them somehow?

In this parade of fools, who was the most foolish? The people who will go on working for and following and believing Harold Camping, because while he didn’t get it right today,  they “have not found anything close to the faithfulness of Family Radio.” That’s just stupid.

This time last year I was bemoaning what had been done to the UCLA Live program, beginning with the termination of the theatre programming and culminating in a parting of the ways with its visionary director, David Sefton. Since then, I’ve seen scattered events and haven’t been impressed.

Today I got the new UCLA Live catalog in the mail.
It’s a disheartening document.

There’s not one must-see event.

David Sedaris. Again.

A silent film. Again.

The same mixture of “roots” music and world music, jazz, and classical. Again.

Some dance. Again.

No theatre.

The best series in LA has become the blandest series in LA. Yes, I’d like to see They Must Be Giants. Yes, I’d like to see Joan Didion. But that doesn’t make a series. Those are isolated events — and they’re interesting, not provocative. Not thrilling.

Here’s what we used to get:

The Berliner Ensemble’s “Arturo Ui.”

David Thomas, Pere Ubu and “Disastodrome.”

Socìetas Raffaello Sanzi’s “Genesi:  From the Museum of Sleep.”

Merce Cunningham and UCLA Dance doing some strange collaboration with the ghost of John Cage.

“Shockheaded Peter.”

“The Black Watch.” Which I didn’t even like — but I respected it.

Now we’ve got as little as they can afford, or conceive. Or both.

Really really sad.

UCLA Live’s new executive and artistic director, Kristy Edmunds, starts in the fall, and, as this recent dance review in the LA Times mentions, it’s not a moment too soon. Audiences have abandoned the series, and that includes me.

For a look at how God is managing the 2011 Rapture, click here.

Clearly, most of us have been buying our cellphones at the wrong place. While I don’t think that crack would be right for them, I can foresee the Apple Store’s campaign of bundling your iPhone with psychedelics.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Rapture is coming tomorrow (or, depending upon where you live, it’s starting tonight). I’m already making plans.

First, I’m going to take a friend’s suggestion that we scatter unwanted clothes and shoes arranged in “lifted up” fashion on sidewalks and lawns around town. I urge you to join me in this. With more advance notice, I might have staged this into a worldwide art project. There’s no time for that now, but there’s still time for each of us to participate in our own small way.

Secondly, I’d like to indulge in a little Rapture looting. I missed my opportunity during the LA riots, but not this time. I’d like to outfit a home music studio, and I’m also looking for fishing, boating, and camping equipment. I’d especially like a small powerboat with a trailer and a pickup truck. If you know the addresses of people with these things who are likely to be lifted up during the Rapture, please email them to me privately; I will consider paying small finder’s fees. Within a 25-mile radius of Burbank, CA is preferred, but I’m willing to travel up to 100 miles if the left-behind equipment is in tip-top condition. Thank you.

Just for the record: I don’t care what Arnold Schwarzenegger does with his private parts — that’s his business. It’s the public-policy hypocrisy that’s galling, because that’s our business. For example: vetoing gay marriage because it might somehow ruin the sanctity of his own. (And this from a guy who made his millions in gay-friendly Hollywood, too.) Even worse was the fiscal state he left California in, as detailed here by George Skelton. Please click and read that and then do some basic math:  by cutting the vehicle license fee, which was purely an election move, Schwarzenegger created a budget hold of $4 billion that grew into $6 billion annually. Multiply that by seven years and you get about $35 billion. Now, what was the size of California’s budget hole? About… $35 billion. So what did we get for our $35 billion? Enormous cuts to programs and services (most ruinously to our educational systems, especially the higher-education system that was once the pride of the world). Oh, and enormous ego gratification for the movie star who made it all happen.

Today, I got a contact lens. Not contact lenses, a contact lens.

Overall, my vision is good. I’ve had a very minor prescription for eyeglasses since I was 21, but I don’t wear them the glasses often because I don’t need to. At night or in dimness, things get a little blurry, so I wear them in the theatre, or to drive at night, but that’s about it.

The past few years, though, I’ve been  giving a lot of presentations — speeches or remarks, accompanied, sometimes, by Powerpoint. The glasses have been a pain because I can’t read with them on, and I can’t see the audience in the dim without them. So today I went to my optometrist and he prescribed one — one — contact lens. (So, in other words, I’m paying twice what I should for the little lens carrier.)

My optometrist is a large bearish man of what I take to be Russian extraction, with fingers the size of cudgels. So while I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of my sticking my fingers into my eye, I was less excited about him doing it. But everything went off without a hitch, and he said I proved to be a good subject for contact lenses. (Or lens.) One thing he did note as he swapped out about 500 different lenses until finding the right fit:  how very sensitive my vision is. A little too much adjustment this way and it was fuzzy, that way and it was smaller, the other way and I got a glowing 3D effect that reminded me of how much I hated “Avatar.” I was like the Goldilocks of contact lenses. In the end he got it right, but not before I was reminded again that I do have my own way of looking at things.