As I’ve written here before, digital technology and the internet allow me to do pretty much everything I wanted to do when I was kid but couldn’t because I didn’t have access to people or tools, and couldn’t afford it. But now I’ve got potentially full access — everyone does — through the internet. It’s allowed me to make some very interesting connections — to the founder of Cosmic Encounter (a game I bought at a science fiction convention when I was 14, and which the next generation of Wochners now plays as well), who once commented on this blog; to writers like Christopher Priest and Mike Daisey (who’ve also commented here); and to people whose work I admire and follow, like David Thomas of Pere Ubu. My latest interesting connection:  I just got an email from a PhD candidate in Egypt who is doing her dissertation on American drama;  she found my website and blog and wanted to know my thoughts about playwriting. I’ve made theatre friends in England and Iceland and Turkey and even New Jersey through the internet. It’s a thrill to add Egypt.

I was saddened but not surprised to learn of the death of playwright Lanford Wilson. I knew through Marshall Mason that Wilson had been failing. Wilson was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, a founder of one of our most important theatres (Circle Rep), and a writer noted around the world — but somehow, his death didn’t make the home page of the Los Angeles Times website. A sad statement indeed.

The first play ever that I bought a ticket for was Wilson’s “Fifth of July,” in 1980 (directed by Marshall). It continues to serve as an inspiration — I’ve bought hundreds and hundreds of theatre tickets since then. In an odd way, though, that wasn’t my introduction to Lanford Wilson’s work; in 1975, Norman Lear adapted a sitcom from Wilson’s play “Hot L Baltimore.” The show concerned prostitutes, a gay couple, an illegal immigrant, and every other sort of inner-city urban entanglement in a cheap hotel, a milieu utterly foreign to my backwoods semi-suburban middle-class youth. The show came with a mature-audiences warning at the beginning, which guaranteed that my 13-year-old self was going to watch it.

The playwright leaves us on the eve of opening night of two revivals of his work:  Steppenwolf is preparing to open “Hot L Baltimore” in Chicago, and “Burn This” is running right now at the Mark Taper Forum here in Los Angeles. A friend invited me for April 1st; I can’t make that date, but I’ll see it another night while it’s here. If you’re not in Chicago or LA, don’t fret; Lanford Wilson’s plays are always playing somewhere, and they always will.

I don’t care about the other ones at all.

Enough about artificial intelligence. Ever since that computer beat the geniuses on “Jeopardy,” we’ve heard enough about that. We know that it’s on its way, if it’s not already here. I’d rather talk about alien intelligence.

Here’s what I know about alien intelligence. Judging from both “Battle: Los Angeles,” which I saw recently, and a recent interview with Sammy Hagar, these aliens are not very smart. Interesting, yes, but clueless too.

Take “Battle: Los Angeles.” If I were an alien, Santa Monica would not be a primary target. I know, I know, I’m using sea water to power all my big death machines and drones and such. Santa Monica was never going to put up much resistance to begin with, and is notably short on armaments; it’s not like Texas. However, those squirrelly little back alleys and beach houses make it hard to ferret out the last of the human resistance — which, sure enough, they find out to their lasting sorrow in the movie. Also, in most cases it’s better to co-opt some local support if possible. So I say:  Why not invade Sacramento instead? Immediately, the majority of the population will cheer.  Also, if you’re going to invade the entire planet Earth, and you’ve got tech that allowed you to get here from, well, wherever, and global air defenses provide no real resistance, then you’ve got it all conquered easily — unless you connect all your drones via one big localized mothership thing that you’ve somehow managed to bury in our ground. Because absolutely, some never-say-die, something-to-prove Marine is going to singlehandedly suss that out, locate it, blow it up, and spread the word. And then your entire global invasion is off. Next time:  disperse your control over vast networks, with backups. That’s what we do with computers (it’s called cloud computing). Free advice.  I also want to take the opportunity to thank you for blowing up the 10 freeway; now we can build something that actually allows cars to move.

I suspect I know where these aliens got some of their unfortunate ideas:  from Sammy Hagar. It turns out that when they wanted to learn more about our planet, Sammy’s was the human brain they turned to. Granted, there are a few things Sammy knows:  how to replace David Lee Roth, and how vast the universe is. Quoth Sammy:  “You know how big the universe is? It’s freakin’ huge!” This is useful information. That first tidbit might have been what compelled the aliens to drill deeper into his brain to, as Sammy says, “See what this guy knows.” But while I can imagine their interest in the legendary Van Halen “sex tents,” it’s obvious that Sammy doesn’t provide the best insights for purposes of military strategy. That would be Will Smith, who always beats the aliens.

Nice to see. Very considerate.

Last month, The New Yorker ran a profile of Guillermo del Toro, director of “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the “Hellboy” films. I read that piece, and recently got a distressed email from my friend Rich Roesberg back in New Jersey that he’d meant to pick up that issue of The New Yorker but now had missed it. I promised to send it to him — but then figured it was probably available online for free. And, indeed, here it is.

I was going to recommend to Rich that he get a subscription to The New Yorker, because it’s a great magazine and it doesn’t cost that much. But hey, free costs even less. Which, again, illuminates the reason that newspapers and periodicals are dying —  their economic model — and why the United States Postal Service that formerly delivered so much mail of this sort, plus first class, is so deeply in the red. (And, some speculate, will go bankrupt.)

Forget the Sinister Six. For Spider-Man, the real challenge is outliving the damage this musical is doing to his reputation. Courtesy of Ward Sutton and the Village Voice, here’s his cartoon perspective on how the show went wrong.

Last Saturday, my friend Larry and I went to Silent Movie for an evening of the month-long John Cassavetes film fest. (The Silent Movie Theatre is still called Silent Movie, but it’s programmed by a group called The Cinefamily. They run Silents on Wednesdays and occasional other nights, and special programming the rest of the time.) I’m not a great fan of John Cassavetes’ work, but I was willing to see “Husbands,” starring Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara, if it afforded me the opportunity to see Gazzara live in person for a Q&A beforehand. I’ve always enjoyed Gazzara’s work, especially in “Buffalo ’66” and “Tales of Ordinary Madness.”

I was glad to have bought tickets in advance, because the event was sold out. Waiting in line in front of me was Danger Mouse, this generation’s answer to Brian Eno. My feeling is this:  You know you’re at a cool event when Danger Mouse is there too. And sitting next to me in the house was an actor from”Fringe” (who lit up when I told him, after I heard him bring up the Jersey Devil, that the creature was my distant cousin). One of the delights of living in Los Angeles is such memorable unexpected encounters.

Ben Gazzara was  terrific. I would say his advancing years have freed him to say anything, but I suspect he never censored himself much anyway. At age 80, his gruff macho persona is intact. When asked about shooting “Tales of Ordinary Madness,” which was derived from Charles Bukowski’s writing, he said Bukowski was “a pussy. The whole movie, I’m drinking Thunderbird, and he shows up with French wine.” He also impatiently waved off any number of the poor interviewer’s questions, making sour faces over the titles of various projects he clearly did just for the money and didn’t want to discuss. At other times, he just roared “No, no, you got it wrong.” The crowd loved him, but Gazzara also knows how to work a crowd, and how to get a laugh. After more than an hour, he said, “Awright, that’s enough,” and got up to go. Another example of good timing.

Unfortunately, what followed this was the movie. I’ve tried to like these Cassavetes films that have so many film-school acolytes, but I’m always left thinking they must think they have to like them, and therefore decide to like them, because there isn’t much in them to recommend them. My old playwriting teacher David Scott Milton (who, coincidentally, wrote a one-man show on Broadway that earned Ben Gazzara a Tony Award) knew the Cassavetes crowd and said he felt the problem with the films was editing — they needed some. I agree with that. I also think they would benefit from stories. “Husbands” is two hours and 11 minutes of Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara gassing around — first in New York, then in London. Sometimes they stumble onto something amusing, but nothing builds, and for much of the movie we wait while they search for inspiration. One extended near-rape scene in a London hotel is indicative of the problem:  Cassavetes’ character has picked up a blonde and they’re tussling around on the bed; it’s unclear whether she’s enjoying it or not — it seems mostly not — and the actress, unsure what she’s playing, winds up playing nothing, swinging between tears and laughter, playfulness and panic. Like the rest of the movie, there’s nothing we can make of it. Finally, and not one minute too soon, the movie ends with Cassavetes and Falk returning home, Gazzara’s character having decided to abandon his family to stay in London. I think it would’ve been good to see the scene where he struggles over that decision, or at least informs his friends of it. Instead, we find out when the two men get out of a taxi, without him, and discuss it. It’s always nice to miss the conflict.

I’ve seen most of the movies John Cassavetes wrote and directed, and really, only one is worth seeing: “Gloria.” Yes, Gena Rowlands plays the hell out of that role. But, importantly, there’s a story:  Rowlands plays the former mistress of a mobster, who now must shield an orphaned little boy from the mob that wants to kill him because of what he knows. It’s got one great scene after another, made great by the high stakes. Nobody has any time to gas around.  “Husbands” is all gas. Further proof that Danger Mouse is a genius:  He left before the movie started. Wish I had thought of that.

When I noticed an actual half-empty shelf in our refrigerator at home, I briefly considered running to the supermarket. But then I thought:  This is a perfect opportunity to empty the larder, so to speak, because my wife and children are out of town for a week. So rather than rotely replace what’s missing, I figured I could find out what’s buried at the bottom of the refrigerator, its freezer, the freezer in the garage, the pantry shelves, and the kitchen cabinets. In other words, I’m going to eat my way through our stores without replenishment.

Progress so far:

Day One.

Breakfast consists of coffee, half of a leftover steak, one of five remaining slices of sourdough bread, and one egg (leaving me with five). Thank God there’s plenty of coffee for the week.

Later, I come home from leading my Saturday playwriting workshop  and have a bit of leftover rib meat, and a bowl of cantaloupe already cut up by someone (my wife?) and left semi-forgotten in the refrigerator. Already, I can see more shelf space.

My friend Larry comes over at 6:30 and we go to see Ben Gazzara speak at a John Cassavettes retrospective. (More about that later.) Many many hours later,  post-midnight, when the show is finally over, Larry suggests we go out for a drink. I leap on the idea:  “Hey, let’s go drink at my house. It’s free!” “Free” because it’s already been paid for. We get back to my place and I start mixing gimlets. I also dig out some snacks:  cracked-pepper Triscuits that I didn’t know we had, some sliced peppery salami that I didn’t know we had, and an assortment of cheeses from the Hotel Amarano, where I hosted a reception five days earlier. Larry dutifully eats his share of all that stuff. A couple of shakers later, I’ve emptied the big Rose’s lime juice bottle and the big vodka bottle and now I’m making drinks using the little lime juice bottle and the little vodka bottles that drunks carry around in their pockets for emergencies. (I have them for an utterly different reason, I assure you.) I now start making a list of the groceries we will eventually have to buy — say, on Sunday, after my family returns; the list contains one item:  “Vodka.” I also start smoking a very big cigar in our living room, but because my wife doesn’t read this blog, I’m secure in knowing that she’ll never know. The dog looks at me askance. Larry leaves at five minutes of four in the morning, the booze now exhausted, and the topic of a “Star Trek” convention gone wrong exhausted for the moment. I go upstairs and read a bit and discover that I’ve got only two half-beefsticks left. Uh oh.

Day Two.

I get up and start coffee brewing. I crack an egg into a frying pan and reach for another — but I drop that egg onto the floor. Now I have only three eggs left for the week. I’m starting to feel like the father in “The Road,” who scavenges around the loft of a barn searching in vain for something, anything, to eat, briefly considering trying to mash down some hay. He would probably pick up that egg and fry it. But I throw it away. I also have the last bit of rib meat from last week, plus the last of the blueberries and the last of the blackberries, and another piece of the sourdough bread. I add berries and eggs onto that shopping list alongside vodka. I never really noticed these racks in the refrigerator before, but now they stand out like the spine of a fish stripped of its flesh.

For lunch — which might more appropriately be called dinner, given when I’m having it — I decide to try my luck in the kitchen cabinet. I find a can of lentil soup, crack that open, and eat half of it. I also pull two fillets of white fish out of the garage freezer to defrost for later.

Over dinner, while watching the thoroughly ludicrous and uninvolving NBC show “The Event,” I eat what else I’ve scavenged from around the house:  four tiny red potatoes I found in a bag by the fruit bowl (?) and then boiled, and the two fillets, cooked in a lemon butter caper sauce that I make and am quite fond of, the lemon plucked from my tree and the capers plucked from a little bottle I found on the wrong shelf. I top the entree off with a bowl of pineapple drawn from a thick rectangular storage container I found tucked in a deep corner of the refrigerator. We’ve still got a bottle of cheap-ass white wine in the refrigerator (Golden Gate Chardonnay, a full 74 cents a bottle cheaper than Two-Buck Chuck, so take that, Trader Joe’s), so I knock off a glass or two of that. For far too long, the intelligence of the American public has been berated, and I know this now for a fact, because I am watching “The Event” in the knowledge that statistically no one else is watching this show, and I take some comfort in that; that is, until discovering that they’re watching “The Celebrity Apprentice.” I catch one minute of that, in which Meat Loaf evidently has given bad driving directions to Jose Conseco and Gary Busey and now they’re lost somewhere in New York. Gary Busey makes buggy faces at the camera — he’s now too old and historically too besotted to do much physical damage.

More in the days to come, about what I’ve found to eat in my house, and if and when I’ve eaten in.

And I polished off the can of Smokehouse Blue Diamond Almonds while writing this.

Last night, while I was out seeing something else (which I’ll be writing about later today), “Julie Taymor” was trying to salvage her reputation. This clip shows the predicament she’s in — for now.