You may have heard that nationwide there have been millions of layoffs.

And that California is, once again, projecting a budget deficit. Estimates vary, and the final number will be partly determined by whether or not a slate of propositions pass next month, but the range is estimated as being between $8 billion and $42 billion.

All across the land, public officials and public servants alike — teachers, city managers, librarians, police — are taking salary cuts in an effort to reduce layoffs.

Everyone seems to have heard about this — except the California state Assembly, which is handing out raises.

Someone should really let Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D) and Minority Leader Michael Villines (R) know about this economic downturn. Except I suspect that millions of people are about to. If you’d like to join them in doing that, here’s Karen Bass’ website and here’s Michael Villines’.

My kids have good teachers. One of the best is my son’s high-school English teacher from last year, Sam Kuglen. Mr. Kuglen, as he’s known in these parts, is very smart and passionate, and a man with a discerning eye for talent (even though he had me in to guest lecture on playwriting a couple of times last year). He’s also a credible singer on “Rock Band.”

Sam’s background is in theatre, which as regular readers of this blog know, I feel prepares you for anything. In addition to doing things like writing, directing, acting, singing, and dancing, theatre people hire and fire, do bookkeeping, set up complicated online systems, build sets, paint, sew, fight (mock or real), cater, and on and on. What person do you really want if you’re stuck on a desert island? A theatre technician. They can fashion a raft out of conch shells and seaweed. Trust me on this. Day in, day out, they put up multimedia extravaganzas with chewing gum and clamp lamps.

In typical fashion, Sam has talents even I didn’t know. I knew he was smart. What I didn’t know was that in the 90’s he was actually a big dummy.

Garth Risk Hallberg argues that “Watchmen” isn’t fairly called a graphic novel, unless its film version is called a “paper movie.”

I understand where this preference for the term “graphic novel” came from:  from comics fans tired of suffering the slings and arrows of derision from people who didn’t know what they were talking about and didn’t understand and respect a great American graphic form.  If only these tossaway booklets could be collected into something with a spine and preferably in hardback, perhaps they would merit better treatment. Now we may have the opposite problem:  Drivel getting collected into $150 “omnibus” editions while John Donne goes unnoticed on Amazon.om in the absence of book stores.

I agree with Hallberg that “Watchmen” is a wonderful comic book. And if the term graphic novel is to persist, yes, it’s an exemplar. But a great novel, in a field that includes “Anna Karenina” and “The Great Gatsby?” The idea is comical.

Most mornings of the week, I drive my daughter and younger son to school. During that drive, I’m privy to the inner workings of childhood dynamics. For me, it’s like fieldwork in cultural anthropology. Here’s a verbatim transcript of an exchange between 6-year-old Dietrich and 10-year-old Emma. And no, I don’t know why this was such an important and compelling topic of discussion.

Dietrich:  You know what’s really gross?  Boys that sit down to pee. Girls sit down to pee.

Emma: I know.

Dietrich:  Boys pee standing up. Girls sit down. Girls pee out of their butt.

Emma: No, they don’t.

Dietrich:  Yes they do.

Emma: No, they don’t.

Dietrich: How do you know?

Emma: Because I’m a girl, dumbhead!

Silence ensued.

More on this later as the situation develops.

Four baby pythons escaped the plastic foam box they were being transported in on a Qantas flight. Two subsequent flights were canceled and the plane searched repeatedly, but the snakes still haven’t been found. Maybe one slipped into an old lady’s handbag, and one into the pocket of someone’s trenchcoat, and so forth, and were carried off the plane. After their disappearance created havoc for Qantas.

So much for my friend Richard, who didn’t like the movie version of this story when we saw it together. He said it was “unrealistic.”  I said it was the best movie ever made.

Given the verdict, I’m guessing I won’t be running into Phil Spector again soon.

Here’s another reason it’s never good for any one concern to aggregate too much power. Amazon, bookseller to the world and inventor of print-slayer The Kindle, is censoring the “adult” books by removing their sales rankings. Without defining what “adult” means. And without copping to doing it. And while still selling sex toys online.

Please tell me this is accidental.

Several months ago I was over at 18th Street Arts Center knocking around ideas with my friends there. This year is the center’s 20th anniversary, and clearly a celebration is in order, and preferably one that raises money as well. At one point, one of them volunteered that he knew Sir Ken Robinson, and perhaps Sir Ken would agree to speak at a fundraising dinner.

“You know Sir Ken Robinson?” I sputtered. I’m not given to sputtering, but in this case I did.

Sir Ken Robinson is one of the world’s foremost authorities on creativity and innovation; his principle bailiwick is creativity in education, a field in which his endeavors resulted in a knighthood. (Don’t take my word for it; consult Wikipedia.) Here in the U.S., he is an ardent foe of No Child Left Behind, a pernicious system that has further regimented lower education and has served to hamstring even the best of teachers. And he’s a witty speaker, as demonstrated by this video I posted a year ago this month. Did I want to meet him? You bet.

Then yesterday 18th Street’s executive director (and longtime friend and comrade-in-arms) Jan Williamson was kind enough to call me on my cellphone to tell me that she was seating me next to Sir Ken Robinson at the dinner. Being the first to buy a ticket ($250) was good, but I think sputtering was even more helpful. Never forget:  Enthusiasm always gets you far.

I was also eager to speak with him because  education has been much on my mind lately. I agreed several months ago to serve on the budget  committee for the Burbank Unified School District. As I’m sure you can imagine, this year any recommendations we make are going to be in the form of budget cuts. I didn’t expect this particular community service to be easy or fun, but I felt that I owed something to the system. All three of my kids are in Burbank schools, and they are receiving fine educations. We always hear the negative — about bad public schools — but my experience with my kids is precisely the opposite. The teachers they’ve had and the education they’ve received far outstrips anything I got when I was a kid. Every kid should be so lucky.

Sir Ken was absolutely delightful to dine with last night, and in his remarks after dinner. A Liverpool native who moved to Los Angeles shortly after September 11, 2001, he noted ruefully that until recently his entire time living in the U.S. has been under the Bush Administration, and he was just sure we weren’t really like that. He mocked the idea of testing kids to get into elite preschools (“They’re three years old!”) and the lockstep notion that one has to set a life plan from Day One. He quoted Erma Bombeck, who didn’t start to write until she was in her 50’s. Throughout life, people should be encouraged to go where they’re interested, he said, and that’s where they’ll flourish. It’s always important to encourage creativity.

(Most of us reading this know this. But it always bears reinforcing.)

Over dinner, I shared a story with him.

Last month, it was Back to School night for my two elementary-school children. When I went into my 10-year-old daughter’s science classroom, I did a doubletake. There was some sort of Andy Warhol project all over the room. All different sorts of pictures done in Warhol’s pop-art style. Wasn’t this a science class? Then I noticed that every project looked at first glance like an art project. (The other major theme was comic-book heroes.)

“Isn’t this the science class?” I asked my wife.

“Ask the teacher about how he teaches,” she said.

What I got from the teacher was what I thought was a very smart answer about whole learning, the scientific underpinnings of all these projects, how best to teach analysis and synthesis, and keeping kids interested. “I’m meeting all the state guidelines for science instruction,” he said. “But if I did it the way the state wanted, I’d need 30 sleeping bags.” And sure enough, to my daughter it seems like a great art class, but I see the science she’s learning.

Yesterday when she learned whom I was having dinner with, my wife added the kicker to this story:  the next day, the principal had received complaints from parents that that didn’t look like a science class. I shared this with Sir Ken.

“Yes,” he said. “You see the depth of the problem.”

Oh, if only every movie had zombies and Muppets.

As your Friend, I thought I’d take the time to tell you why solicitations like this aren’t good:

Hey There,
Hope you’re doing wonderfully.  Only a week left before [insert name of show here]. I haven’t heard from you yet and I’d love to see you at the show. There’s a half price preview on [date].

Here’s the thing. I don’t know you. I know we’re Friends, but I don’t know how we became Friends. I just checked my Address Book, and you’re not in it. I looked at your Facebook photo and I don’t recognize you. So it’s little surprise that you haven’t heard from me yet — you aren’t going to. I don’t know you. And I don’t owe you. Deep down, I think you know that, because you addressed me as “Hey There.”

Sending me a message through Facebook? That’s okay. No harm, no foul. We’re Friends, but not every Friend knows everyone else. I’m not on Facebook often, but I’ve got 624 Friends, probably a good 10% of whom elicit a “Who?” from me when I see their picture. You’re one of them. “Who?” But the other “Who?” Friends aren’t berating me for not responding to an invitation I don’t remember getting, to an event I’m being asked to buy a ticket for (even at half price). That’s kinda rude. I know you’d “love to see me at the show” — with my twenty bucks or so — but not everything’s about you. I know it didn’t occur to you, but maybe I wouldn’t love to see the show. You’re just presumptuous.

No, I haven’t heard of you, or your show, and even though we’re Friends we aren’t friends (my real friends don’t need the “f” capitalized; those to whom this applies know who they are). You don’t know it, but your tone is demanding and insincere and insulting.

As a Friend, I thought you should know.

Your Friend

p.s. I am doing wonderfully. Thank you.