Michael Hiltzik on why California — and its Republican governor — should stop looking to the feds for a bailout.

Favorite line:

In a letter to the state’s congressional delegation last week seeking a $6.9-billion federal handout, the governor said “California lawmakers have done nearly everything that can be done to address this historic fiscal crisis.” This is true, if you define “nearly everything that can be done” as “almost nothing.”

We’ve had years of “almost nothing” now, and there’s plenty of blame to spread around for that. My hope is that California’s budget is now so thoroughly broken that the next class of elected leaders will be forced to fix it. Perhaps they could start by rebuilding the car tax that Arnold Schwarzenegger  demolished — which took $6 billion annually out of the state treasury, which is a big part of what knocked the budget out of balance. And a little reform of the prison-industrial complex would help too.

Barack Obama was summoned for jury duty, but has notified the court back in Chicago that he won’t be able to make it.

Mark Evanier applies common sense to defending Jay Leno. I’m one of those who don’t find Leno funny, but I don’t understand this backlash against him either. It’s not like he’s denying millions of people health insurance or something.

The LA Times’ Scott Timberg provides a basic overview of Philip K. Dick’s final years, which Dick spent living in Orange County when it was in its late Reagan period.

This piece makes mention of the forthcoming film adaptation of one of Dick’s finest novels, “Radio Free Albemuth.” I’m always torn when it comes to filmed versions of novels I love.  As a playwright, I love what actors and directors bring to words — the good actors and directors, anyway. But film is a different medium; a novel doesn’t need anyone but the writer. So, in general, I stay away. That didn’t prevent me from seeing the filmed version of “The Road” (more about that later), and I’m still itching to see that film version of “Anna Karenina,” because Alfred Molina seems as though he’d be so perfectly cast as Levin. Of course, once I heard that Molina was playing Levin, I haven’t been able to think of Levin in any other form — and that’s part of the problem.

This story also mentions Dick’s “realist” novels. For many years, I eagerly awaited their posthumous publication; then, unfortunately, they started to get published. “Confessions of a Crap Artist,” which was published in Dick’s lifetime, is an ingenious and completely captivating postmodern story told from three different points of view; ultimately, the entire story may be a lie (or fiction) told by the self-professed “crap artist” of the title. It’s a book that should stand alongside far better known literary American novels of the 20th century.  “Mary and the Giant” has the benefit of an explosive story — a young white girl takes up with a large African-American singer and then an elderly shopkeeper — but is utterly lacking thematic unity; its ending leaves you wondering what it was all about. “Voices from the Street,” written in 1952 and finally published in 2007, makes for less engaging reading than the Chinese phone book. Characters natter on endlessly about nothing. I tried twice to read it and got only halfway. Here’s a review from “In Milton Lumky Territory” that might speak for most of the non-science-fiction books Dick wrote:

Like many of Dick’s main characters in his realistic novels, Bruce and Susan decide they need to move to start again—but missing from most of these novels is what happens to the characters after they have moved. Similarly, the tone of In Milton Lumky Territory is not very adroit; as in his science fiction novels, the story can feel sparse and padded with unneeded adjectives. There is little of the wild conjecture that one finds in Dick’s more popular books; rather than oppressive and violent governments of the future, there are toxic personalities to avoid.

That sounds about right:  Nothing happens in these books.  And no, not much happens in Philip Roth’s latest book either, but it happens far more interestingly because the internal life of the protagonist is so deeply plumbed.

These negatives about the realist novels  aside (and, again, one of them is excellent), I’m confident that Philip K. Dick’s legend and influence will grow even higher. Edgar Allan Poe was a far worse writer, one given to lugubrious prose in his fiction and overstressed cadences in his poetry, but we remember him for inventing the detective story and the gothic horror tale. Dick has made no less an impact in his paranoid but telling vision of an overcommercialized culture controled by the colation of government, business, and celebrity. This vision is best expressed as a whole in three books — “Ubik,” “Radio Free Albemuth,” and “Confessions of a Crap Artist”– and they remain recommended.

I’ve never been a Conan O’Brien fan. I watched the debacle of his beginning 17 years ago on “Late Night” and just didn’t get it. Even when I checked in a few times in the years since, I didn’t get it. And honestly, it didn’t seem like there was much to get. I also watched an episode or two after he took over “The Tonight Show” and didn’t find much there either. Especially in a time when one can get sharp humor on a regular basis from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Conan didn’t seem that sharp. Moreover, he was trending in the wrong direction (for me, at least) — heading toward the middle now that he was sitting in the old Johnny/Jay seat.

The past two weeks have been different. Mighty different. His anger has helped create some of the finest, funniest television I’ve ever seen.

The other night in a royal screw-you to NBC, he mounted the most expensive comedy sketch ever — cost: $1.5 million, on NBC’s dime. Here it is, if you want to see it (while it lasts; NBC already yanked the bit from their webcast, fearing the royalties they’d owe to the Rolling Stones for use of the original recording of “Satisfaction,” which O’Brien also used to drive up the cost).

This enormous eff-you to the network that was broadcasting the show was shocking. The giddiness, anger, and anxiety surrounding the entire episode was exhilarating. Even Adam Sandler somehow was funny. It left me wondering if I’ve missed other things on this show the past seven months, and then I thought….

Probably not. It’s the liberating anger that made Conan O’Brien and his show funny for two weeks. It couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have gone on much longer.

Next month, the show returns to Jay Leno. Like everyone else in Burbank, I’ve seen Jay around town countless times. He seems like a good guy. On Saturdays there’s a book shop he hangs around at regularly, he always lends his image or his time to good causes, he drops in at auto shows and parades and talks about motorcycles and cars, and he treats everyone around like he’s just another citizen of Burbank. And if I were NBC and one third of my affiliates were going to bolt because the ratings with Conan were half what they were with Jay, I would’ve gotten on the phone with Jay too. And, like most of America, I’ll tune in that first night or two when Jay returns to see what happens. After that, though, I won’t be watching, and no, I wasn’t watching before, either. But those two weeks were delicious.

You may recall that Jerry Brown keeps emailing me and asking me for money even though he’s not running for anything. (Like, say, governor of California.) This has been going on since June of last year. Here’s his first email to me, here’s where he took out exploratory papers, and here’s where he wished me a Happy Thanksgiving. Which I appreciated. My kids didn’t care, and my wife was asleep, but I was humbled and grateful. So I emailed him to return the warm wishes and to ask if he was actually, y’know, running for something — a fair question, given the fundraising — and if so to maybe actually start doing it, because it’s embarrassing having (then) three Republicans announced and no Democrats.

Two months later, he’s emailed back with an answer.

Now, please. Don’t think of this as slow. Yes, the pony express was faster, especially when it was only Sacramento to Burbank. And yes, if at one time it took only 80 days to go around the world, why should this take so long in 2010? But here’s what I would say:  There was that Thanksgiving holiday, and then Christmas, and then New Year’s, and then Martin Luther King Day, and there were lots of Sundays in there, and Jerry has been very busy responding to people wondering why he’s raising money and not actually running. So busy, in fact — that he didn’t answer me personally. He had someone named Lila respond. Here’s what she said:

Hi Lee,
Thanks for your email.  While Jerry is considering a potential run for
Governor, he is not a declared candidate.  He has said that he will
make a decision on the Governor’s race by the filing deadline in
March, until that time he is focused on his job as Attorney General.
Regards
Lila

But this doesn’t seem like much of an answer to me. So I thought I’d try again:

Lila,

Thank you for the response.

I will be supporting whoever the Democratic nominee is, assuming there will be one.

In the meantime, why is Jerry raising money if he’s not running for something? That doesn’t sound like focusing on his job as Attorney General. It sounds like he’s being coy or something. Please explain.

Thank you.

(By the way, the reason I  said “I will be supporting whoever the Democratic nominee is” is because the two Republican candidates are this person (who in very un-Jerry-like fashion declared her candidacy a year ago ) and this person. At one point, a fiscally conservative and socially progressive Republican, Tom Campbell was in the running, but now he’s running for Senate.)

I’ll let you know what Jerry (or Lila) say. I expect an answer around Easter. After the holiday, of course.

I knew I liked the internet. I didn’t realize how empty and purposeless I would feel without it. Those long hours, spent here at home at night with no way to get online and truly interact with potentially the entire world, passed as glacially as the middle ninety minutes of “Avatar,” and felt even farther removed from reality.

But that’s all behind me now, because my home internet has been restored. I had the guys we use at my company come patch it all up at home, and here I am, somewhat magically reattached to invisible communications passing through the ether. (AKA wifi.)

The technician’s diagnosis:  The storm blew out my router. And when I say “storm,” please think “monsoon.”  The rain we’ve been getting is rain the way that Hell is kinda warm. The  accompanying winds have been umbrella-inverting. Today I looked out my window and saw a woman riding a bicycle in mid-air, my dog in her basket. Today, lightning hit two planes here in Burbank; the theory is that a surge yesterday took out my router.

Now that I have connectivity again at home — and connectivity through a keyboard, not tapping one digit at a time on my iPhone, which obviously discourages writing involved blog posts — I will be getting to that little review of “Under the Dome,” I promise you. I just know I can’t do it it tonight, and probably not tomorrow either. (I am utterly slammed.) In the meantime, here’s my advice:  Just don’t read the book, and certainly don’t buy it. Don’t even be tempted to read it for free.  In return, I promise to tell you why not to do this, and for an added bonus I’ll toss in a post in the coming day or two or three about why I thoroughly hated “Avatar” and hope you did too. (And no, I’m not a hater:  Remember, “Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans” gets my highest recommendation.)

See you soon.

This video (a spec commercial starring my good friend Mark Chaet) clarifies why I needed to get a BMW.

We interupt this regularly scheduled blog to announce that our Internet is down today for MLK day.

(Either that, or what’s being billed locally as “The Storm of the Century” has knocked out our Internet and satellite.)

We are able to bring you this advisory courtesy of WordPress for iPhone. Please join us tomorrow for the return of regularly scheduled programming, including our special presentation of “Under the Dome: Just Don’t Go There.”

There are two kinds of bad books:  the badly conceived and the badly written.

The former can be insidious, inciting war, genocide, civil unrest, poverty, and more. The past century is a catalog of such writing.

Bad writing can be symptomatic of bad thinking, but usually no one dies as a result. That said, though, the novel I just finished reading almost killed me. I have read countless books in my life, including many bad books and very many badly written books. But I’m thinking that the book I just finished is the worst written book I’ve ever read. And it’s by one of the most popular authors in history:  Stephen King.

More soon about the awful time I spent Under the Dome. I have flagged many pages and I will have much to say about them.