Today I finished reading two especially timely articles in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

In one, a former financial insider explains why Wall Street never learns its lesson, and will always shuttle between boom and bust on about a 30-year cycle. The essential thrust is that inevitably regulations fall away because we succumb to our own greed.

In the other, the man who oversees $200 billion of China’s $2 trillion in dollar holdings lends some sage advice to those who need him most: us. It boils down to “learn that you aren’t special and you can’t continue to live this way,” and “be nice to us, because you need to be nice to us.”

I thought about these two pieces while driving home tonight from the liquor store. I would think that most Americans reading these pieces would need to stop at the liquor store.

Here’s what was awaiting me when I got home: four different “you’re pre-approved!” offers from credit-card companies. Two were for Visa cards attached to airlines, one was from American Express, and one was from Discover. The beginning interest rates ran from 9.99% to 14.99%. All four cards were adjustable-rate. Behind all these cards, in one way or another, was bailout money that we recently borrowed from the future with money printed today. I shredded all four applications.

But not before wondering if I couldn’t accept these cards and charge them up, default on the payments, use the money to buy some historically low stocks, have the government bail me out, and then stick the Chinese with the bill.

Q: What’s the difference between Rod Blagojevich and Caroline Kennedy?

A: He wanted to sell a Senate seat and she wants to buy one.

My friend Adam Chester is a very funny and talented man. If you saw “What’s My Line – Live on Stage” last year, you’ll remember him as the one-man band who always had the right song to cue guests on or off, and as the singer-songwriter behind such memorable tunes as the Counterintuity jingle, which I promise — promise! — we’re going to post one of these days. Adam is a gifted musician and lyricist and songwriter and singer and you don’t have to take my word for it, because Elton John and others have noticed all this as well.

Adam is gifted. But as they say, behind every gifted Jewish man, there’s his Jewish mother. And now that I’ve learned a little more about his mom, it’s no wonder Adam has turned out so well. Adam is smart, but his mother is a sage. As you can learn by reading his blog, which is over here, over the course of 27 years, Adam’s mother has written him some 600 letters advising him on the do’s and don’ts of surviving the hell that is adulthood in the big city. To wit: be careful of intruders, get new tires, beware of killer bees, and don’t eat sushi.

For me, you’re going to want to watch the video below and then click over to YouTube to comment. And you are going to want to do this, trust me.

But first, let me just add this: This wonderful video provides a fascinating look into how the other half lives. Because this is utterly counter to how my stern German Lutheran mother raised us. Example: If you were going to cry, you were told to “Go cry on the steps.” And the steps were outside. What might life have been like with Adam’s mom? And if I had saved all those letters, my mother would have said, “Why?” This video opens an entire new realm of experience to me!

I never meant to imply that when it rains around here it can’t be serious. Remember my friend I was going to have dinner with last night? (Now rescheduled for next week.) He emailed me this update:

We were right to call Seal Beach off last night. I heard on the news that
Sunset Beach was flooded, with PCH closed down. That’s only a mile south of
Seal Beach. And there were plenty of accidents on the freeways.

Hope for better weather on Dec. 23.

So see, the rain can be a serious matter. I just don’t think it is all the time.

(And by the way, it’s raining again now. Given the hyperbole of local reporters, I’m expecting forecasts that the coast will shear off into the ocean, helping Las Vegas recoup its real estate values by transforming it into beach front property.)

When it comes to the weather, Los Angelenos are profoundly schizophrenic. Most of us, it seems, come from elsewhere, a situation that undergirds our viewpoint, giving rise to four recurring comments:

1. “There’s no weather here.” (Said proudly over the phone to people elsewhere suffering snow and ice.) There are many variations of this — the most popular being “Really?” It’s 72 here.”
2.  “There’s no weather here.” (Said sadly as one rhapsodizes over romanticized snowbound adventures like snow days off school, building snowmen, coming up from subway stations to discover your neighborhood blanketed with snow, and so forth.)
3. “I wish it would rain. We need the rain.” (Said semiannually, when the hillsides are on fire.)
4. “Oh, God. It’s raining.” (Said every time it rains — like last night.)

Yes, it rained last night. Actually, it started the night before and rained almost continually for 24 hours. Typically, Angelenos greeted the news that there was water falling from the sky like it was the apocalypse. Surely we’d already had the rain of frogs and just hadn’t noticed.  I grew up in plenty of rain, and that was rain that at times of the year actually froze and clustered around trees like a deadly exoskeleton snapping branches, splitting trunks, and felling power lines, so the LA version holds little terror for me. Around here it seems different.

Yesterday morning at 8:59 when I was trying to regain some lost hours of sleep from the night before, my cellphone rang. I let it go to voicemail, but when I checked it later found it was an esteemed friend and colleague I’d planned to have dinner with that night in Seal Beach, 35 miles away. His message:  “It’s raining. I’m not sure you can make it.” I looked out the window:  While I didn’t see the rainy version of, say, “The Day After Tomorrow,” I could see that it was indeed raining. Two hours later he called again to say that it was still raining, although more lightly. Again, this was inarguable. Still no plague of locusts, though. I watched the weather, too, and after consulting with my business partner decided to call my friend back and reschedule. Not precisely because of the rain, but because of what that rain would do psychologically to everyone on the 5 freeway southbound. I envisioned miles and miles of cars crawling along in fear. The 45-minute drive would surely take two hours.

Before I left the house in the morning, my wife confided that she was worried about our son driving in the rain. It’s natural for a mother to worry — in fact, beware of mothers who don’t worry, even secretly — and her worry created in me one that hadn’t been there just one moment before, but then I thought about his solidly made car with four new tires and the unlikelihood of a truly terrible collision and decided that this wasn’t rational worry. So I put it out of mind.

Whenever I was in the car yesterday the radio stations were filled with panic about the rain. What is this massive precipitation in the sky that is falling on us? What have we done to deserve this? “Wherever you are, you should stay there!” a local public radio host said breathlessly. I wondered if this was radioactive rain sent by the Soviets of 20 years ago.

When it’s too hot, we implore the heavens for rain; when it rains we are the people of Pompeii desperately seeking shelter. Lord knows what would happen if we ever had snow. The effect of all this freefloating anxiety is predictable. Angelenos, who skew toward the neurotic already, fret about the weather even when there isn’t any.

Today I did something I haven’t done in at more than 15 years: I signed up for someone else’s playwriting workshop. This one-day affair was run by a very good friend and former student who confessed to me the other night that she was a little unsettled when she found out I’d signed up for it. (And I had thought she’d be hurt if I didn’t. Which shows why we shouldn’t make assumptions.) I assured her that I just wanted to be “anonymous playwright #7.” “I signed up for your workshop,” I told her, “because I already know what I think and I already know how I write plays, and I’m actually pretty tired of me, so I’d like to be putty in someone else’s hands.”

Which I was, and which I was glad to be. This workshop turned out to be just what I needed to do today:  unwind artistically, using someone else’s methods. It reminded me of fly fishing the first time under the tutelage of my friend the skilled master. And, as you’ll see, I got something else out of this workshop, something I hadn’t expected.

The workshop started in typical fashion for most things: waiting for the people who are late. Which always annoys me. Perhaps in 2009, I’m going to be consistently late so that people can wait for me. I was determined to be as unannoyed as possible by anything all day, so I checked email while pretending to be blase about waiting. (And the last person didn’t arrive until 10:52 — almost a full hour late. Glad we didn’t wait for her.) We got going by introducing ourselves and why we were here. Everyone had their own reasons, none of them far from mine: to change the workout routine. When it came to me, I volunteered that I was writing three plays at the same time and that I think they’re coming along well enough, but that I wanted to do something different for the day to get out of my head.

After a brief intro, we got the first writing prompt, which was: “Write an action. A single action: changing a lightbulb, changing a tire. Step one, step two, step three, step four.” “Plays are about action,” the workshop leader said (and I agree — good ones are, at least). Here was mine:

Starting my car:

Pick up my keys with my right hand. Put them into my pocket for some reason even though I’m going to fish them back out within a minute. (That reason being that I’m still afraid I’m going to drop them down a storm drain as I did once in 1984.) Find the car. If it is parked inside a parking garage, this is easier than ever because for five years and two cars in a row now I’ve made a point of buying a red car, having once lost a common grey-blue colored car in a parking structure in Pittsburgh for no fewer than two hours. Press the button on the key remote to unlock the car. Open the door, clutching those keys tightly so that, again, I don’t drop them onto the street or otherwise lose them. Throw my jacket onto the passenger seat. Get in. Close the door. Insert the key into the ignition. Hear music or the news as it comes on and if George W. Bush is on the news, immediately switch to a CD. Turn the key. Look in the rearview mirror. Look in the side mirror. Put the car into drive. Drive. Think about how much I love this car while driving.

(Just after I finished reading this aloud, that last late-arriving person arrived. Fifty-two minutes late, as I said, and now she had missed hearing what we’d read as well. “I’m so sorry,” she said, seeming not very sorry at all and, in fact, sounding rather casual, as though this were her routine. The way she said “So sorry” sounded like “Sue Sorry.” Later in the day we had a disagreement about what an unreliable narrator is (because, I think, she doesn’t understand the term), and I couldn’t help thinking that she exemplified one: saying she’s sorry when she isn’t.)

In any event, this little piece of unconscious writing clarified for me why I do that odd key thing: picking up the keys, putting them in my pocket, then removing them from the pocket less than a minute later when I’m near the car rather than simply carrying in my hand all along. I knew why I had the red car — to find it and because I like the color red and I like it on that car — but I hadn’t realized I’d internalized the 25-year-old lesson of how not to drop your keys down a storm drain. It’s unfortunate to be reminded just how self-programmed you are.

The next three prompts were drawn randomly over the course of the day from an envelope that the workshop leader had brought. We were to write a scene for each. The first prompt I drew said: “One of the characters is naked.” That stopped me for a few seconds, in which I conjured then rejected these three ideas:

1. My former roommate Gary’s story about a boy they used to call “Puddin’ Pop” who lived across the street and who would run naked into the woods; I couldn’t see what to do with that
2. someone who has been vomited all over and gotten locked into a bathroom while changing; again, it didn’t seem alive with possibility to me, and additionally drew forth in my head an image of Jim Carrey, a surefire creativity killer for me
3. a couple having had sex and the one partner refusing to hand back the clothing of the other; this seemed too close to play I already wrote some time last decade.

And then I had it — something I liked that I could run with. It was a story I’d read long ago about two famous men, one that has lived with me ever since. And so I had great fun writing that scene for about 10 minutes.

We were then told to write a scene while thinking about “compression of time,” i.e., a ticking clock — an imminent deadline that drives the action. I drew the prompt “one of them has a gun.” As soon as I saw it, I realized it could work with the scene I’d already written. So I just kept writing that scene, but now introduced a gun, which took me to a very fun place.

Now we were told to write a monologue. I immediately had a monologue in mind for one of my characters, in which he could pass judgment on the other man to us, without fully realizing his own declining situation. (Which would again provide an opportunity to display unreliable narration.) I drew my last writing prompt, which was “father and daughter” and I remembered that the other character had had a daughter, and so now each of them would have a monologue.

By now, having completely tossed out the instruction to write separate scenes, I realized I was writing a play that I would indeed be writing to completion, I said to the workshop leader, “Damn you. I came here with three plays I’m writing. Now I’m writing four.”

Every one-day writing workshop should work like this.

A couple of days ago, a military jet crashed from the sky into a suburban house in San Diego, killing a woman, her two baby daughters, and her mother, while the pilot ejected to safety. Yesterday, the tearful widower, a South Korean emigree, held a news conference to ask people not to blame the pilot for this accident. “I pray for him not to suffer for this action,” he said. “I know he’s one of our treasures for our country.”

This story intrigues me for several reasons.

It interests me because it sounds eerily close to the inciting action of any number of Paul Auster novels. In these novels, the protagonist, a man who is usually in his 30’s or 40’s, suffers a disastrous personal loss — a reversal of fortune or, often, the sudden death of his wife, sometimes with children — that is often coupled with unexpected financial fortune. (As Dong Yun Yoon will no doubt see.) The man, having lost everything important but gaining financial security, then sets off to find the new him and his place in the universe. This is the essential plot of “The Music of Chance,” “The Book of Illusions,” “Oracle Night,” “The Brooklyn Follies,” and, for all I know, next year’s scheduled release, “Invisible.”

It interests me, of course, in the way that roadside accidents interest all of us, as we express concern while slowing down to catch every detail, glad that it didn’t happen to us.

It interests me mostly because I can’t remember when recently I’ve seen this sort of grace, the sort that in the face of a loss of this magnitude doesn’t resort to casting about for blame. It takes strength of character not to wish the pilot dead too.

Or is it cultural? That’s my wife’s theory. She says that because this man grew up in a different culture, his first thought isn’t to lawyer up, but to accept the precarious nature of life and to lend forgiveness. But if that’s so, what’s that say about us? That somehow we’ve become a people who inherently feel wronged, that we are somehow deserving of compensation even when there’s no clear fault?

If that’s the case, there’s little mystery where the financial collapse came from. Yes, some people ginned the system and made off with millions (or billions, now heading into trillions). But to do that, they needed the abetment of everyone else, who felt they were entitled to far more than they could afford. And now all of us collectively are paying for that.

This afternoon I was telling one of our children that my wife and I do our best to raise him and his siblings to be strong and to be ethical. We think these things are linked.

Later while walking back from a backyard birthday party I got to thinking about those ties between strength and ethics, and for some reason the following questions popped into my head. As you’ll see, I think that those we would consider among the strongest and most ethical are self-sabotaging (somewhat in the vein of the Greek gods). It’s a shame Freud didn’t live to examine this more closely.

Perhaps you have non-clinical answers to these questions:

1. What is the benefit of an invisible plane, when everyone can see you inside it? Moreover, since you can fly (or “ride air currents”), why do you need it? Are you just presenting a target to evil superscientists who would try to shoot you down? If you have the technology to make an invisible plane, why don’t you employ the same technology to make yourself invisible?

2. If you’re the Flash and can run around the Earth seven times in one second, why turtle around with a motorcycle? Especially since the moment you get onto the motorcycle, you’ve effectively robbed yourself of all your special abilities. Is this the sign of a condition similar to the one that leads some people to get a healthy limb amputated so they can feel more hindered?

3. If you’re Spider-Man, why do you need a Spider Buggy, especially one that isn’t large enough to carry anything but yourself, doesn’t have any weaponry or armor, and that can’t get into places in the city that you can? And where would you park it in Manhattan? And how long would it last there, given that it’s always going to be unlocked and is clearly identified as yours? Are you self-defeating — and given how often you’ve gone up solo against the Sinister Six without once asking for any help from the Human Torch or any of your buddies in the Avengers, I would have to think so — or are you really just this stupid?

Whatever theories might explain this aberrant behavior, clearly, super powers are not a sign of personal strength.

I love actors.

But this video reminds me why I never wanted to be one.