Two stories about how to tarnish your image:

#1.

This afternoon I took my three kids down to South Coast Plaza for an event marking the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. The newspaper promised “a Lunar Rover and Apollo 10 space suit along with a Sojourner Mars Rover will be on exhibit.” Well… maybe. Neither the suit nor the Mars Rover looked like they had ever seen action, and they were conspicuously unguarded on a raised platform behind velvet ropes. (As we approached, one man had already stepped over the stanchion to have his picture taken with the items. I doubt Smithsonian-level relics would be left so untended.) And the Lunar Rover looked like a replica — big plastic tires with no wear on them, and the body of the vehicle emblazoned ever in an odious manner with the logo of Omega, the sponsor. Quelle dommage. This was our only scheduling opportunity to note a signal anniversary, a giant step that makind made and should have kept making further and further out, and this is how we spent it:  at a mall, looking at ads for a watch slapped all over a fake lunar vehicle. It was a sad reminder of how far we’ve gone in 40 years — in reverse. I now think less of Omega, less of South Coast Plaza for false advertisement, and certainly less for the nation as a whole for letting our space program sink into the tarn.

#2.

While there, I decided to visit the Montblanc store. I was out of ink cartridges for my fountain pens, and when my younger son and I visited the Montblanc store in Glendale on Friday we discovered that it had closed, in what I thought was another sign of the economic recession. The four of us located the Montblanc store in South Coast Plaza. I told the sales clerk, a man probably in his late 20’s, that I needed some ink cartridges for my fountain pens, and bought a box (ten packs of six). I took the opportunity to bring up the closure of the Montblanc store at the Glendale Glendale Galleria.

Clerk:  “That store was actually doing well. The company closed it because they didn’t want to serve a lower class of customer.”

Me:  “I bought three fountain pens there, an injector, two ink wells, and lots of cartridges. I’m sorry people like me weren’t classy enough.”

Now, mind you, that’s about $1500 in pens and supplies. The clerk did his best at backpedaling, blaming the closure now on the mysterious ways of corporate owners in Germany unmotivated by strong sales to obviously valued clients like me. But by then I was looking to go some place where the lower class are more welcome.

And by the way, what precisely would be wrong with looking at an attractive young woman? (Other than getting yourself compared to more foolish members of your profession.)

Given what’s been going on with the tail end of this political season — with Nevada’s Senator John Ensign and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admitting to chasing tail — I understand the eagerness of people like Matt Drudge to find and transmit what appears to be an image of President Obama admiring a 17-year-old’s back side. Like so:

But now watch the full video — in, not out, of context — and you’ll see that Obama was helping a woman on the steps. Helping, not having. Will there be a retraction coming from Drudge or the New York Post? No. Will this ridiculous image show up in some campaign, or provide lore for the right-wing fringe? (“Sure, the mainstream media come down on the GOP for sexual impropriety, but they didn’t do anything when it was their president.”) You bet.

So here’s DC Comics’ bold new idea:  a return to Sunday newspaper-style comics.

It’s called “Wednesday Comics,” and the uncleverness of that title presages the bad idea behind all this:  recapturing an era that reached its peak 50 years ago or more. Yes, every Wednesday for 12 weeks, DC is putting out a folded newspaper-print section of comics.  Note to DC:  There have been a few developments in the years since newspaper adventure strips were big. We call them television, and video games, and the internet. While you may find some geezer somewhere willing to wait an entire week to get one more page of story, you won’t find a large clan of people clamoring for a return to slow. My kids sneered at your first Wednesday Comics release today — “Why would anybody want that?” asked my 11-year-old daughter the avid comic-book reader — and I pointedly did not plunk down $3.99 for a series of one-page stories that will conclude months from now as we enter the holiday season. I can barely stay off my iPhone for 15 minutes and you think I’m going to spend 12 weeks crawling through a comic book one page at a time?

Meanwhile, I got my weekly email newsletter from your rivals at Marvel today. They always focus on comics that you can now read online for a small subscription fee (a model that works well; I have friends who are subscribers and who love it). You do that with that internet thing you may have heard of. Do you have anyone under the age of Methusaleh working for you? If you do, I have to think they’ve been huffing too much funnybook ink, because the idea of launching weekly one-page comics strips at the precise moment when comics strips and their host newspapers are dying is, well, dopey.

I’m sorry for your lame packaging model, because the contents look great. Paul Pope doing “Adam Strange,” “Hawkman” by Kyle Baker, “Sgt. Rock” illustrated by Joe Kubert, and especially “Metamorpho,” by the inspired pairing of Neil Gaiman with artist Michael Allred. But when I read the list of the artists and writers involved, I just got more annoyed. Why not print these as eight 24-page comics, with two stories in each? I have little doubt that around the end of the year you’ll repackage these comicitos into a hardback or two, and for a price that’s competitive with spending $48 to get all this in a format and timeframe I just don’t want. In the meantime, I would remind the comics shops that get stuck with these that newsprint is recyclable.

I thought we had finally reached the peak of the Michael Jackson hagiography when Motown founder Berry Gordy called Michael Jackson “the greatest entertainer who ever lived.”

But that was too soon. Because later Al Sharpton claimed that Barack Obama (somehow) got elected because of Michael Jackson. Which threw the Jackson legacy into an even greater hyperbolic orbit.

But that was nothing compared to this:  I then heard a man interviewed on the radio who said, “Some day people will look back and wish they could have known what it was like to be alive at the same time as Michael Jackson.” Kind of like… Jesus. Or the Buddha.

This shouldn’t need saying, but here goes:  Michael Jackson was a talented singer, and songwriter, and dancer. That’s it; no more. He was also someone with an unnatural interest in children and a freakish desire for more and more radical plastic surgery designed to erase any trace of his facial heritage. And both elements — the career success, the personal carnival — form the Janus-like face of his celebrity.

Our culture’s current fascination with him is similar to the morbid interest many of us held for Howard Hughes in the 1970’s. After Hughes’ death, I remember reading every article I could find for more information about the reclusive behavior, the unclipped fingernails and toenails, the carefully stored and labeled rows of mason jars of urine. For a big Halloween party of that period, I went as Howard Hughes, taking care to paint broken hypodermic needles onto my arms and to carry a box of Kleenex around so I could dust every surface.

Whatever Michael Jackson’s musical triumphs, he looms large in our collective subconscious because we cannot stop wondering just what is wrong with someone with that much talent and money.

I just got this email from a Friend:

Subject: Hi! Sorry!  I just realized I don't think I sent this to you.  Silliness.

Hi, forgive me; but now I feel I have to better explain. Conor said, the other day,
he wanted a fan page; that'd help him then to update, since fb was working for him.
Then he called himself introverted. (Ha ha, as in as if!) And, I was feeling silly
having sent friends to him because he hadn't said a word there; I'd wanted to send
others; so he could get aquainted w/ my old friends ..., but couldn't since he
hadn't said anything. Then, he finally said: avocado & tomatoes, & Stephanie typed
in something like onions & lemons? And some woman I don't know typed "Cilantro,
llimes, and other secret ingreds..." I didn't talk to him later that night, slept on
my massage table, as I love to; & he was at work when I woke & my heart was
pounding, in something other than happiness, for some reason. I deleted the
suggested friends, knowing the password ~ he asked if I'd update his status for
him... And, I'd only suggested to a few as there's a limit on the suggest thing; he
might relate to ones I'd yet to send even better? Then I thought to set up the fan
page he spoke of; & only in doing that, did it begin to make any sense to me. Yet, I
think he'd like to have stayed friends w/ any of you too. And he's obviously shy in
some way; so do take the initiative if you like. (This woman that typed the
inappropriate, suggestive comment, that he deleted; Conor hasn't ever met. She'd
applied for a job w/ him sometime ago & then found him him on fb.) I just absolutely
did not mean to in any way offend any of you, especially those of you that have met
Conor.! He's happy to have a fan page; but he might enjoy regular fb too still. And
thank you for becoming a fan of his if you did!
And, she's still his friend, the 1 he hasn't ever met, Ann T., that wrote that
comment that struck me strange! It wasn't jealousy either.

I feel bad I disconnected like though.

No, this doesn’t make any sense to me either.

I don’t even recognize this Facebook “Friend.” (But I suspect she was in a play of mine in 1993. Which would mean that 16 years ago was the last time I spoke with her.)

I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about in this email, or why it would matter in any way. But given the way she seems so worked up about something so trivial, I’m content to continue our 16-years-and-counting of non-communication.

One night last week I took my wife to see my play “All Dressed Up But Going Nowhere,” which was presented as part of The Car Plays. The play concerned a husband and wife broken down in their car, awaiting AAA and reliving arguments past and present. This was probably the first time in 10 years or more that Valorie didn’t like one of my plays. “It wasn’t funny,” she said. On the way home, she added that it wasn’t funny because “I say those things!” Which elicited in my memory the response my writing professor gave me in college when I asked how his wife felt about his nakedly confessional poems:  “She knows how much I fictionalize.” (Later, they divorced.)

Last night we had my son’s (second) 18th birthday party. The time came for cake, and Valorie asked me what kind I wanted. I saw two kinds laid out:  chocolate and carrot. Here was our exchange:

Lee: I’d like chocolate.

Valorie: You’re kidding me.

Lee: What? No. Chocolate.

Valorie: I made this carrot cake from scratch.

Lee: I don’t care for carrot cake.

Valorie: I made it from scratch.

Lee: Sorry, I just don’t like carrot cake.

Valorie: I even made the icing from scratch. I can’t believe you.

Lee: Okay, I’ll have the carrot cake.

Valorie: You can have the chocolate, you know.

Lee: Uh… now I don’t know what to do. What’s the right answer?

I looked down on the plate she handed me and there was her solution:  two slivers of cake, one carrot and one chocolate. Diplomatically, I ate them both. Then she asked me, “How was the carrot cake?”

Lee: Amazing. Incredible. Never have I had cake like that!

Valorie:  I know this is going to wind up in a play some day.

She may be right. Luckily, she knows how much I fictionalize.

The Fourth of July isn’t until tomorrow, but today it feels like it’s Christmas that came early:  Sarah Palin is resigning her governorship. Why? No one knows — least of all, it seems, her. She says she “knows when it’s time to go,” and I’m sure that everyone who actually voted for her knows when that time is too:  when her term is over. Resigning early tells us there’s something up, even if we don’t know what it is yet. I’m sure that right now all my theatre friends in Alaska are cheering and buying rounds of drinks.

Man, that election last fall is the gift that keeps on giving.

Stephen Colbert reminds us how past words of GOP Congressmen come back to haunt them.

My taxes are complicated:  kids, mortgage, Schedule C income from writing, business income from my business, employment income from teaching, and any number of separate forms and deductions. All of it straight-up, but none of it qualifying as simple. Earlier this year I paid the full amount of what my accountant estimated I owed the state of California for 2008. Yesterday he came to me with a revision, based upon what’s going to be the final filing, and the good news is that the state now owes me a refund.

The bad news is that the state now has no money and who knows if I’ll ever get that refund. Starting today, my fair state started issuing I.O.U.’s. (Mostly to people in wheelchairs, judging from the news coverage.) No, there’s no forecast on when they’ll be repaid, or if there’ll be any interest. What if we all adopted this system? I go to fill up my car and hand the gas-station owner an I.O.U., redeemable… oh… when I get around to it. What if, after that, he decides that he needs someone to write him up a good sign explaining why he can’t accept I.O.U.’s, and we agree that I’ll let him redeem the I.O.U. in exchange for me writing that sign? Then we have a barter system — which I’m starting to think is where California is heading in its financial management.

Hey, by the way, if you’d like to take a crack at balancing the state budget (which would allow paying off those I.O.U.’s, and would wind up meaning more money in my checking account, thank you), here’s a fun interactive Deficit Meter on the L.A. Times site. Let me save you some time:  No matter what you do, you can’t follow the state GOP’s playbook of no-new-taxes and still balance it. At least, not without enormous I.O.U.’s to everyone in the future, wheelchair or not.