This video is well worth your five minutes.

Remember how I was saying that every day is a lesson in what I don’t know? Today’s lesson would be about octopi.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for alerting me to this.

The last week of May at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, Nebraska I’m doing two things I like to do: teaching and judging. I like to teach, and I like to judge. (The latter, at least when it comes to the comportment of elected officials, the relative merits of something artistic, and the personal habits of people who are breezily late and/or ill-mannered.) The conference begins May 24th, and if you’d like to join us, you should click here. If you’d just like to see what I’m teaching, click here. (I’ll be teaching two days, and serving as a panelist throughout the week. And also, if past writing or theatre conferences are any indication, hanging out at pool halls and clubs ’til closing.)

When, late last year, they sent me a very nice email asking me if I would do this, once I ascertained that this in no way conflicted with the San Diego Comic Con (which is in July), I agreed, then set about rearranging my schedule so I could do so. (Among other things, I’m teaching a new class this summer at USC. More about that in a future post.) I also thought: Hey, maybe I’ll drive. As we all know, I love driving that Mustang convertible. I could see wide open stretches of America with the top down. I did that in 2004 stumping in Arizona for John Kerry (he lost). And also, I would have my car. So I looked again at my schedule, both personal and professional, then went to Google maps where I always go now because Mapquest has made it a habit of giving me the longest, slowest, most aggravating, and most often wrong route, and then I discovered something I did not know: Omaha, Nebraska is 1554 miles away. In my mind, it was two states over. No, it’s four states over — in the middle of the country. Who knew? I won’t have enough time to drive there and back, and the nice people at the conference are providing a plane ticket. And so, the plains conference became the plane conference.

I take all this time to relate this story because for me every day is an adventure in discovering what I don’t know, including, to paraphrase Socrates, what I don’t know that I don’t know. I’m eager to visit Nebraska because it’s one of the few states I haven’t been to, but until that fateful day when I looked at the map online, I never had a fixed idea where it is. Now I know it’s next to Iowa. That state I can fix on because it’s next to Illinois, and I’ve been there plenty of times. But Nebraska? I know Springsteen did an album I never wanted to listen to about it. I know that 20 years ago a guy I grew up with who was then a sometimes-dangerous drop-dead drunk once took off for there on some strange odyssey he never allowed himself to discuss again. And… that’s it. I know nothing else about Nebraska. But I’m looking forward to finding out more.

Just now I was on Slate.com reading John Dickerson’s piece on why Obama swept the Potomac Primary — my own hunch being, “People prefer him” — but then a banner ad caught my eye. It was for Office 2008 for Mac. Hm, I thought:  productivity upgrades for the Mac. What are they?

Then I clicked. You can do so too, if you’re curious yourself.

What I got was an endless, uncute, and meaningless cartoon in the Thurber style, accompanied by a light bop bass line. A cartoon van pulls up, a stick figure guy is jugging three balls, letters roll back and forth… I still can’t figure out what it’s about. But it went on and on. I finally ditched the site figuring that improvements like this I didn’t need. Note to Microsoft:  People in general don’t wait this long on the internet to learn things, especially people who are seeking increases in productivity!

In what is shaping up as a rough year for heroes of my comic-book youth, “Howard the Duck” creator and “Man-Thing” scribe Steve Gerber has died. Gerber wrote the strangest comic-books of his time, ones where cigar-smoking ducks dispensed wisdom and cows were struck by vampirism and Satan’s son was somehow a rebellious hero, and on and on. Thirty years later I still can’t understand what “Omega the Unknown” was really about, but it stuck with me. (And I still have all eight — only eight! — issues.) Mr. Gerber was very kind to me when I interviewed him for my badly mimeographed fanzine circa 1975, and his comics are proving to be kind to my two younger children, who are currently reading their way through his run in “Defenders,” a comic that once featured a supervillain team that included a woman with a red ball for a head and a gorilla with the balding head of an accountant. His work will live on.

Andrew Sullivan, pulling for Obama, notes a Clintonian lack of self-sacrifice in the opposing camp.

In June of 2001 at a conference in Philadelphia I heard New York Times columnist Tom Friedman complain about what he called the “evernet.” Friedman said that increasingly we’re all in a condition of being ever-connected by cellphone and internet, a state that doesn’t allow for thoughtfulness, and that he personally was doing what he could to unplug by checking email relatively infrequently and by not… owning… a cellphone. I found the latter claim incredible, and he said so did most people who would call the Times insisting on having that cellphone number, only to have Mr. Friedman’s assistant say, “He doesn’t have a cellphone.”

These past four days I’ve thought a lot about what Friedman said, because I switched off my cellphone and email for four days (and counting) and left town. I had already been out of town for three days on business, and had been shall we say “robustly scheduled” for the four or five weeks prior. Now what I wanted was to talk to no one (except to say something like, “Yes, I’ll have another”) and I wanted to do nothing according to schedule. I didn’t even want to know what time it was. I wanted to be able to order room service if the mood struck me. And I wanted to be able to get everything I might want in one location. With those parameters in mind, I went to Las Vegas. While there, I checked no email, answered no cellphone calls, observed no appointments save one (which I’ll get to), and, incidentally, ordered no room service.

It felt strange. And wonderful.

One morning I ate “breakfast” (it was 11:30 a.m.) at the oyster bar. Breakfast consisted of New England clam chowder, six freshly arrived Bluepoint oysters, and a whiskey and soda. The day before at 6 p.m. I had had “lunch” there: steamed mussels, six assorted oysters, and two whiskeys with soda. On some day during my stay I ordered a meal that one would actually associate with breakfast — eggs, sausages, potatoes, orange juice — at 3 a.m. I don’t know what day that was.

I did some writing while I was there, just because I felt like it. It turned into a completed short story, written in one sitting. I still write plays that way, but I don’t think I’ve written a short story that way in 10 years.

And at some point Friday I decided that I was going to see the Cirque du Soleil show and Beatles tribute, “Love.” Once I bought the ticket, that was the one appointment I had to keep. When my wife and I went to Las Vegas in December I took her to see “Ka.” I had wanted to see “Love,” but it was dark that week. “Ka” had its moments, but its specious advocacy of primitivism over advanced civilization annoyed me in its naivete. (More about that soon, probably. I still have my notes.) “Love,” on the other hand was, well, awesome. In the literal sense. Everyone in the house felt awed by the performance, by the staged interpretations of the music, by the physical accomplishment and the ingenuity of the staging and most of all, afresh, by the music itself, no matter how rejiggered. Said mash-up did nothing to improve the original music, but by nature of the new context it did everything to remind one of its inherent originality. At one point, the entire audience is submerged, so to speak, down below with the Yellow Submarine. That feat alone showed the work of genius. I made a mental list of everyone I would like to bring back to see the show.

So, I had four days off. (I’m officially back checking email and the link tomorrow at noon.) It’s certainly not a lot of time. But in an over-connected and over-scheduled evernet time in my life, it was a welcome respite, the sort of thing done more easily before three kids with schedules all their own, and a hodgepodge of personal and professional obligations, all of them important to me. In the week before I left, while I was considering where to go, at one point I mentally had my passport in my hand. With a few more days I might have gone that route; Costa Rica looks beautiful and remote in those photos on the internet.

Well, not really. But I am out of town and I’ve turned off the cellphone and I’m not checking email. If I had more time, I really would have gone fishin’ — at one point, I visualized my passport in hand and checked out going to Mexico or further south of the border, but I don’t have time. (Too many pressing obligations — writing-oriented and otherwise — next week. Plus there are those pesky classes I teach.) So instead I took off for Las Vegas, where so far I’m doing nothing but reading, watching angry talking heads on Fox News, and dining at the hotel oyster bar. For me, this equates with relaxation.

I would have gone to a favorite spot for brief getaways:  a remote strip of beach near one of our state’s fine, fine prisons. Last time I went there I sat out by the surf for eight hours smoking cigars and drinking drinks and writing and during the course of that day never saw another person. After five weeks without a day off and lots of talking and writing in there, you can imagine the attraction this deserted beach option held. But it’s been cold lately and I wanted to go as hassle-free as possible, and the idea of round-the-clock room service called to me. (Not that I’ve called it, yet.)

I just now came back up to the room from the latest trip to the oyster bar. Most enjoyable moment so far: watching a Japanese couple photograph their food as it arrived. She ordered a rib-eye steak and he photographed it. I’m not mocking them — my friend Stefan did the same thing when he went to Japan — but it was a reminder that one’s rote experience is often novel to others.

Okay, that’s it. I have to go back to reading about “The Third Reich in Power,” because I’m once again interested in the insidious ways evil people assert themselves.  Then I might actually go, I dunno, walk around or something.

You may recall the trying circumstances behind attempting to book a room last year for the San Diego Comic Con. I wrote about that here. And this year, our group who go every year expected it, rightly, to be even worse. (Which at the same time was difficult to imagine.)

I’m out of town on business and just got back to my room and checked email and there’s the message I was expecting but dreading: for the first time, my group of compadres who go to the San Diego Comic Con every year failed to get us a room.

Here was the first message in the series, from good friend Paul (who last year succeeded in getting us one of these precious few con-rate rooms). Bear in mind, there are about 125,000 attendees at this convention, most of them needing a room — and I believe last year there were 9600 rooms initially allocated to this convention. That didn’t make the defeat sting any less for Paul, who entitled this message “Miserable Failure”:

I am sad to report that I failed to get a room reservation through the Comic-Con today. I was able to get to the point of confirmation and then the reservations system gave me an error message. When I retried to book the system froze for minutes on end. I did call the number listed for Travel Planners if there was a problem in reserving a room. The only thing they could do was put me on a wait list for the Sheraton Suites.

I tried my best but was thwarted by the computers at Travel Planners.

Miserably your,

Paul

I like the intentionality of “Miserably your, … Paul.” Because I don’t think that’s a typo: I think that in this case he is indeed, miserably our Paul. I can picture his shoulders slumping in defeat. Paul and fellow Con roommate Trey each volunteered for this mission, and I know that each wanted to end the story with himself as Galahad on a charger.

Here was Trey’s response posted to the seven of us:

I had no better luck on the phone. I gave up by 10:30. As long as we still have Sheraton Suites (right?), the higher room rate divided by the bunch of us is better than sleeping out in the cold or squeezing into a room at The M (though smoking cigars on the roof with Lee was pretty fun); I believe you have landed us the best available option, and for that I’m grateful. BTW: you sound like a supervillain on the order of Galactus on your speakerphone. With a slight Jersey accent.

From this speakerphone reference, I can only assume that these two were in constant communication as they tried to coordinate a room-reservation strategy, even as they saw that strategy go the way of, say, Rudy Giuliani’s recent strategy. By now, while I was still downstairs on my feet lecturing about something or other at this USC off-site function, heartfelt condolences were pouring in to Paul and Trey. As so many of us do sometimes, Larry wanted to blame the system:

Paul, amid the Super Tuesday hoohaw, I was wondering how you were faring. Ugh.
This can’t keep going like this–they have to retool the system somewhere.

Larry

Subtext:  It’s out of your hands, Paul. You did your best. And, it turns out, Paul had long ago initiated a backup plan:

I did reserve a room at the Sheraton Suites at the best available rate. It is higher than the Con rate, but it is better than any other option.

As for Trey’s option of sleeping out in the cold, I seem to remember San Diego was pretty damn hot the last two years.

Paul

Which elicited a cheer from Terence:

Great work, Paul!

And if one of us has to work the corner so we can afford the higher rate, so be it (I’m thinking Trey would make us the most cash. Lee a close second).

— Pimp-Daddy Terence

I don’t know why I would earn less than Trey, but this is an honor I’m willing to cede.

So:  We have a room, but it’s not a “Con” room at the convention rate. It’s not the fact of the extra expenditure that troubles me. I don’t need any more things in my life, but I’m always willing to spend on experience. This annual excursion of seven good friends is money well-spent. What stings is the sense of being excluded in this way from something I’ve been included in for 20 years. There are the special, lucky few who got a room at Con rate — and we weren’t among them. We don’t need the Con rate; we just want it. (And, as others noted, we’re lucky to have gotten a room at all.) At this moment, I’m relating to the sentiment one often hears from those who have championed their niche hobby, but who now feel that their peculiar area of pop subculture , one they inhabited long before almost anyone took notice, has, like the San Diego Comic Con, now started to feel too pop-ular.

Mike Gravel is still in the race.

I remember in 1980 when George Bush the First won some early contest and said he had “big mo” (for “momentum.”) This was uttered shortly before Ronald Reagan cleared the rest of the map, erasing any trace of Bush’s big mo.

I relate that as a preface to my reading of our current situation: At least from this office in greater Los Angeles, Obama seems to have the big mo. I don’t think there was much excitement about Hillary Clinton to begin with — this observation is colored not only by my tracking of media reports, but also my personal experience as a state party delegate — but now there’s even less. People don’t like her, and let’s not forget:  Yes, elections are a popularity contest. Some don’t like her positions, some don’t like her judgment (that would be me), and some just don’t like her (that would be many people across the spectrum). Her alternative, Barack Obama, seems better positioned in every way:  people aren’t attacking his ideas, he’s seen as having shown better judgment (by people including me), and people in general seem to like him (including Republicans).

Not just that, he’s running a better campaign now. No matter how well-funded each Democratic candidate is (and their funding is at historic levels), neither can do penetration advertising buys in all those markets this Tuesday. So the trick is to capture the media every day with one story. If you’ve been checking in since Thursday’s debate, the candidate doing that has been Obama. He’s got all the news locked up again today, the angle being his tour with Teddy Kennedy and the seeming excited thrills Kennedy is generating on the trail.

(A side note:  With me personally, an endorsement from Kennedy is a negative endorsement. In some things I’m old-fashioned. One of those things is the belief that people who kill young girls and walk away from the scene should do prison time. I don’t care what their last name is. But as I said, I’m old-fashioned.)

I was invited to the debate but couldn’t attend. (Imagine my frustration at that.) But I did watch it later and there was Obama again, looking and sounding like what many of us would hope for in a president. He’s cool and thoughtful and seems real. Next to him was Hillary, her uncomfortable smile plastered on her face, her lips issuing — again — her obvious lies about why she initially supported the war in Iraq when really she didn’t. I actually felt sorry for her until I remembered someone else with her last name who lied to me for years. Those were certainly better times, but I didn’t like being lied to then (whether they were silly lies about “not inhaling” or lies told under oath), and those times could have been even better had that person focused more squarely on enacting a vision for the future — rather than being forced to deal with one personal failing after another. I don’t want the Clintons and their baggage back.

Obama expresses a hope of uniting the people in this country — and that’s what we need. I don’t think any one person can do that, but one person at the top certainly sets the tone. Don’t believe me? Look at the past seven years.

This Tuesday will mark the first time since moving to Los Angeles in 1988 that I won’t be in town on election day. I like to go and vote. I like to wait in line, I like to chat with other people waiting, I like to glance at the sign-in sheet to see if my neighbors have come yet, and I like to ask the poll workers about turnout. I especially like wearing the “I have voted” sticker all day. I remember when I was 18 or so and much of the family — my father, my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, a kid or two, and I —  piled into a car and went to vote. My father said something corny about how we’d just “performed our duty” or something like that that I didn’t appreciate, but much as he made me wince I felt he was right. (And I think that most years my father and I canceled each other’s vote out — and my mother decided elections.)

While I’ll miss voting on election day, I won’t miss out on voting. Especially now when I think we really need a new broom to sweep clean. Last night when I got home I checked the mail and happily extracted from the pile my absentee ballot, opened it, and filled in the circle for Barack Obama.