Every year, my good friend Trey Nichols and I go to Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween extravaganza, “Knott’s Scary Farm.” Assuming we land on a date that works for our complicated schedules — we’ve exchanged numerous emails on this subject — this will be our 11th straight year attending. (And here are a couple of photos from last year. The picture on the bottom remains a favorite — even ghouls need to know when they’re scheduled to work.)

I think Knott’s Scary Farm is a fine tradition. It makes the two of us giddy with delight. Giddy — and sometimes scared out of our bejeesus. We love the mazes, we love the rides, and we especially love the 3D killer klowns, who are genuinely terrifying and kreepy. Every year, we leave at 5, grab something to eat, and then proceed to do every conceivable thing at the park until closing it down at around 2 a.m.
All of this is why I’m so saddened to hear of an incident that happened tonight at Knott’s:  one of the roller coasters failed to make the incline, and slammed back into the one behind it. Here’s the story. I hope that no one was seriously injured, and that park officials find and fix the problem quickly. I’m confident they will. I’ve been going to this park for 20 years, and this is the first incident I’ve heard of. The park is impeccably well-managed and well-maintained. The roller-coaster malfunction is frightening, but it shouldn’t scare anyone away.

Today while in line at a business conference to speak with a reporter, I was privy to the tribulations of the two young men behind me in their dealings with their employee Stu. Here’s what I learned:

• Stu has lost his enthusiasm and answers their questions in a dull monotone
• Stu is due in at 8, but sometimes shows up at 11
• Stu is starting his own startup and has been caught working on it at work

When they realized I’d overheard all this, they asked what I’d do. I told them: “After firing Stu? Celebrate.”

While I realize that responding to the charge that President Obama is “a socialist” is akin to answering the question “When did you stop beating your wife?” I thought I’d offer some evidence to the contrary, in hopes of contributing slightly to the end of the slander. So here goes:

If he were a Socialist, he would be working to nationalize more industry, and he certainly wouldn’t be working on  selling the government’s stakes in AIG, Citigroup, GM, and others.

You’re welcome. Maybe now we can move on to responding to other issues, such as the question of who is buried in Grant’s tomb.

For the past four days, I was at a business conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Here’s some of what has happened during this trip:

• I took a shuttle from Dulles airport to the hotel. Who sat next to me on the shuttle? A reporter from a magazine. So I pitched her.
• At the conference, two women recognized me. We had seen each other at another conference in March. It turned out that my company uses the business they were representing. So they gave me an iPad.
• I wound up in three different online videos representing my company, all put together by exhibitors. Most attendees didn’t get into one.
• I got interviewed twice more for the magazine.
• In a sea of 1000 people at a cocktail reception, I wound up standing right next to the reporter from the shuttle again.
• On Friday morning I was in the elevator on the ballroom floor (second floor) when a woman got on and rode up in the elevator with me. She asked me where the ballrooms were. I told her she just left the ballroom floor and now she’ll have to go back down. She gets off at the next floor. At six o’clock I head down to the seafood restaurant in the atrium to eat a quick dinner before going to see a play. I sit down — and that woman is seated at the table next to mine. In a hotel and conference center with thousands of people, there she is again. She and her husband and I start to talk. They are there for a different conference than I am. It turns out that her son is a playwright. I am a playwright. At the end of dinner, they decide to pay for my check. I try to beg off, but they insist. “You’ve been so helpful,” they say, and I honestly have no idea what they’re talking about.
• After the play, before she leaves, a woman who had overheard me talking turns to me and says, “Hey, California. We didn’t meet, but you’re really cute.” I think this last happened in… 1995.
• I go to the cast party with two of my friends. I meet an older gentleman and we start to talk. He tells me about a woman he knew, and as he gets about two sentences into the story something about it makes me stop him to say, “I know her. Peggy Miley, right?” And he looks at me astonished. The two of us have never met, and this gentleman has nothing to do with the theatre — he’s just at this party tonight — and we seemingly have nothing else in common, except we both know this woman. “How do you know her?” he says. I answer:  “She was in my workshop.” My workshop has only nine people at a time in it, and openings are rare. And this was in Alexandria, Virginia, and my workshop is in LA.
• The next night I’m buying a cigar at the hotel steakhouse. The young man who stocks the humidor is very knowledgeable and proud of his work and I tell him I’m impressed. I select a cigar and pay for it and then ruminate aloud of whether I should buy one for my friend who’s going to join me later that night. He goes back to the humidor and gives me a cigar, free, in case my friend needs one.
• I’m heading from Maryland on the interstate up to New Jersey to spend a night with my family when I start to think back to Roy Rogers fast-food restaurants, and how I liked them. It turns out there’s one left — and there’s a sign for it directly in front of me. So of course we stop there and eat.
• As we near my mother’s house, I start to think what a shame it will be that my brother Michael won’t be there. If he were there, then all my siblings and I and our mother would be together. We pull up — and I see his car out front. It turns out that Lufthansa has lost his luggage, so he’s had to stay here overnight.

I could go on, because I feel that there was even more. Somehow I ran into a spate of kismet or something; strange, coincidental, good things kept happening. With some advance notice, I would have headed for the nearest casino.

My next car won’t be this one — but you can get it.

Thanks to Paul Crist for letting me know about this.

Here’s one of the featured books in the window of the bookstore at Los Angeles International Airport. Nice to know we’re peddling this to the world. The most chilling aspect is the top line. It’s hard to believe that the people who buy this book can read. But maybe it’s purely ornamental. “Look what we have on our coffee table:  The TRUTH.” Because, you know, I’m sure that the recognized leader of the free world, the head of the world’s most powerful nation, a man who came from extremely humble origins and rose to the highest station achievable, is eagerly working in secret to advance someone else’s agenda. Yes, that’s how egoless someone who is that driven must be.

When a gnat flies into your wine and you immediately drink it down, thinking, “Mm. Protein.” Which I just did.

Yesterday, my son was home from college for all of about five hours. At around hour three, his 8-year-old  brother said, “Hey, Lex, aren’t you supposed to leave? ‘Cause you suck up all our food. No offense.” He then added that, “You can say anything if you add ‘No offense.’ “

Seems true!

Southern California is in the beginnings of an historic heat wave. Today it was 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles. In Burbank it wasn’t much cooler — especially after one of the air conditioning compressors powering my office chose today to go on the fritz. When the indoor temp hit an honest-to-God 97 degrees and I started to feel weak in the knees I announced, “We’re all going to Yogurtland!” And so the six of us in the office at the moment trooped down to get frozen yogurt and cool off. The frozen yogurt helped, but here’s the irony:  It turned out that Yogurtland’s a.c. wasn’t working either. Before my no-fat frozen blueberry coolant had its desired effect on my insides, I was melting along with it. We finally returned to the office and found the a.c. restored and struggling to bring the temperature below 87.

My kids and I just returned from our nightly bicycle ride with the dog. (We ride bikes; she runs alongside. She still hasn’t learned how to pedal.) We passed my daughter’s school and read the temperature on the big sign outside:  96. At 8 o’clock in the evening. On the ride back I kept wondering why my bare foot kept getting splashed with water. Where was it coming from? Finally I figured it out:  The wetness striking me was drops of saliva being flung from my dog’s panting tongue.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Colorado Springs, where the temperature is predicted to be a comparatively balmy 88 degrees. Thursday through Sunday I’ll be in Baltimore, DC, and Virginia, and then I’ll be in southern New Jersey for about 24 hours ’til Monday. I’ve been to all of those East Coast destinations before, and they strike me collectively as exemplars of the maxim that “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Today I definitely felt there’s something to be said for “it’s the heat.” But I’ll save my final judgment until my return next Tuesday.

What if the Tea Party takes over more than just the Republican Party? The Boston Globe shows us what would happen if they took over the comics as well.