On Sunday the Great Plains Theatre Conference wrapped up with a gala honoring Pulitzer prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, as well as Dr. Joanne McDowell, the former president of Omaha’s Metropolitan Community College, who created the conference five years ago. This was her 30th year of producing important playwright-oriented theatre conferences, so the recognition was deserved. Also in attendance were the business luminaries of Omaha, the board and administration of the college, plenty of theatre people, and me. This is a dress-up affair, where people come in evening wear and sample the incredible cuisine courtesy of the resident culinary academy.

On the way in, the conference photographer was taking portrait shots  of workshop leaders, panelists, and special guests. While I’m waiting, I’m approached by one of the playwrights, a middle-aged man I’ve gotten to know just a little bit at this conference the past three years. While we’re talking, he asks if I’d like to have a copy of his book. I said I would, and he goes out to his car to get one. He brings it in and inscribes it to me and hands it over and then I saw the title:  “Woman’s Orgasm:  A Guide to Sexual Satisfaction.” Then I remember hearing that he’s a doctor with a practice in sexology. I take the book and walk in.

As I circulate the room, chatting with people, drinking drinks, tasting canapes, I start to realize that people are noticing that I’m carrying around a book entitled “Woman’s Orgasm.” When I sit at my table  near the dais and within arms’ reach of the main luminaries and funders, I place the book onto the table. It’s got to go somewhere while I eat. So there, in the center of the table, is the book. A few people ask if they can look at it. They crack it open, read the inscription, then look at me and put it back. Finally I open the book and read it and here’s what it says in my personalized copy of “Woman’s Orgasm:  A Guide to Sexual Satisfaction”:  “Lee, Thank you for all your support. Ben.”  Whereupon I start to take credit for all the research findings reported in the book.

This video says pretty much everything I have to say about “Lost,” except this: If it hadn’t been something I watched regularly with my daughter, I would have bailed early in Season 3. What an aggravating show.

Other unanswered questions:

Why did Lee stay up ’til 8:30 a.m.? Does he regret it now? (No. So there’s one answer.) Will he able to sleep tonight? Is he ever able to sleep on any night? Is it better to plan in advance or take life as it comes? Is anything else thinking about this right now?

A few days ago I set out to write a tribute to my friend and former student, playwright EM Lewis. Along the way, the piece also turned into a rumination about being a playwright, and being a playwright in Los Angeles. Here’s the piece.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’m in Omaha at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, where I’ve seen many old friends and made some new ones. I’ve also been making new Friends — Friends with a capital “F” being the designation one gives when it’s someone you know, or will know, primarily through Facebook.  Lately I’ve noticed a new dynamic:  Friending snobbery. I note it when two strong egos clash over who Friended whom (and, therefore, was seemingly the weaker person in the engagement). Several months ago my son claimed I had Friended him. I had not. I pointedly had not. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be reading his wall. But when I received a Friend request from him, I figured he was permitting that relationship, so I confirmed him. He still claims he didn’t do this. Twice since then I’ve come into contact with well-known people who had Friended me, and I’ve mentioned our Facebook Friendship and they’ve immediately clarified that they didn’t Friend me — I must have Friended them. And they didn’t. Really. Before they made an issue of it, it didn’t matter; now it seems to establish some sort of bragging rights. So I’m considering unFriending them. I also sense that this is going to turn into a short play of mine in the near future.

Final note on this topic:  If you’re on Facebook, please join this page:  Yes for State Parks.  This initiative will generate nearly $500 million to preserve California’s state parks. Full disclosure:  I am working on this initiative. And no, I don’t generally support initiatives, because I’m hoping for overall state constitutional reform. But as my family and I have seen first-hand, California’s historic state parks are in a desperate state of disrepair — last year nearly 150 of them were shut down part-time or suffered service reductions; for the two years prior, they all almost got shut down due to our ongoing budget crisis — and honestly, I’ve lost faith in elected officials to solve this any time soon. For an $18 registration fee on every California license plate, we can directly fund the parks, protecting and preserving trees and water and animals and keeping it all open and available to the public. So I hope you’ll join me in Friending the parks.

Every year now, comics fans who attend the Comic-Con in San Diego complain that it’s too crowded. But what would it be like if someone threw a comic-book convention at a big convention center and no one came? This video, shot this weekend at the Pasadena Rock ‘n’ Comic Convention, answers that question.

I’m wondering once again why I do things like what I’m about to confess in just a moment. But some backstory first.

I’m in Omaha, Nebraska for the Great Plains Theatre Conference. This is the third year that I’ve been booked in for this conference, where I lead a couple of workshops, and serve as a panelist giving feedback on new plays throughout the week. It’s a great gig, run by kind, talented, generous people, on an absolutely beautiful campus, where I spend lots of time smoking cigars and writing and drinking and where I get treated in a fashion I could easily grow accustomed to. Last year I left here with two plays. This year I would be happy to make major headway on my new full-length play.

So tomorrow is the first of the workshops I’m leading. It’s called “Starting at the Start” (or, as it’s listed in the program, “Starting with the Start,” which to me is a somewhat different thing. But anyway.). Usually I go over all my material in advance. Days, if not weeks, in advance. There are books I read from, and chapbooks, and writing exercises I like to employ, and visual aids — the whole works, in a very low-tech format. In the past two weeks I don’t think I had a minute anywhere to review any of that. Just before leaving town, I did lay hands on the pendaflex folder holding all the assorted precious paperwork from last year’s conference; a quick review satisfied me that some (if not most, or all) of the stuff I’d need was in there. So I put it into my suitcase.

I was supposed to arrive last night around 11 p.m. Instead, for no fair reason ever given, United canceled my connecting flight and I and many many other people were stranded in Denver half the night. I finally got here and into my room at 3 a.m. Then I stayed up ’til dawn playing Civilization 4 Warlords on my laptop because believe me, I was in the mood to plunder and sack someone else’s city. All day, since then, I’ve fretted about this workshop tomorrow. I’ve thought about it constantly, and meant to sit down and get ready for it, and tried to crack open the pendaflex folder and see what’s in there and get started… and I just haven’t. Instead, I read every single wall post ever made by anyone I know on Facebook. I walked to Popeye’s and bought myself a spicy wing sampler and biscuit. I went next door for a beer. I borrowed a car from the college to drive over to Target to buy myself new luggage. I came back and went back next door for another beer and had a great time swapping bad-production stories with Constance Congdon. Then I came back over here and read what had newly been posted on Facebook. Then I fired up Civilization 4 Warlords again and attacked the Mali empire, taking two cities away before they begged for peace. Then I went back on Facebook. Then, finally, with the clock past 10 p.m. and the constant awareness that this workshop is in the morning now thrumming and slamming in my head the way the deafening clanging machinery did in the engine room of my father’s automatic carwash, I cracked open the pendaflex file.

Whereupon I found, right on top, all my notes from precisely the same workshop last year.

Relieved, I grabbed a cigar and decided to head next door for a beer. But first, I thought I’d post this. Because I’m left to wonder just why I couldn’t bring myself to look in there at any time over the past 24 hours — or even sooner. I guess it was just the fear that it wasn’t in there. But even then, I figured I’d just wing it. I’ve been teaching playwriting in one form or another for 20 years; I like to think that in that time I’ve developed some ideas of how to make use of 90 minutes with a roomful of playwrights. Maybe my reptile brain figured that looking in the pendaflex folder equated somehow with “work” and I just wanted a day of no work. Who knows?

I just know it would’ve been a lot simpler to have looked in there earlier.

As I said the other day, they just come to me.

But if you’re really really really stuck for a script idea, this little tool will take care of it for you for free. Here’s what it suggested that I write next:

• A bug-eyed monster and a couple of child-like steelworkers find themselves trapped in a shopping mall.

Except I think I’ve already seen that one. Instead I guess I’ll be writing this one:

• Six bounty hunters form a rock band in a corn field.

But wasn’t that a John Cougar Mellencamp video?

This capture is from the home page of the LA Times. True or false: It becomes harder to accept the veracity of what’s printed in the newspaper when its editors and writers can’t distinguish between a contraction and a possessive.

In which a penguin chased by a pod of killer whales outsmarts all of them.

(Which doesn’t explain how this guy keeps getting away.)

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a planet-eating star. There it is above, as a poor little planet tries desperately to zigzag out of its way. (I am hoping, by the way, that the new iPhone will feature photo resolution on this scale.)

Given that many of us place little faith in the new Doctor (Who), no one’s sure what to do about this. It’s only 600 million light years away, meaning that it will get here long before BP figures out how to cap their oil spill.

Wal-Mart just cut the cost on the current model by half. The 3GS with a 16 gig hard drive will run you — wait for it — $97. I bought the 3G (before the “S,” so it was slower) with 16 gig hard drive 18 months ago for… was it $300? $600? Who can remember any more?