If there’s a consistent message I hear from those in the writing profession, it’s that all too often we’re begging for scraps and ought to stand up for ourselves. That’s the message that Gary Garrison puts out from the Dramatists Guild (and, indeed, in his most recent editorial he advised playwrights to “stop kissing ass.”), and that’s what goes on behind the scenes with the writers’ guild, and that was the subject of Frank Miller’s opening comment during the Petco Park screening of “300” during Comicon.

So this piece in Wired magazine caught my attention. It has to do with the WGA strike that informed sources in this town are predicting is coming in the fall. Interestingly, Nancy Miller seems to blame the writers for getting into this situation by being greedy and/or inept in their past negotiations. But most astonishingly, she quotes studio executives and producers (and, therefore, provides their point of view) — but not writers. This, in a piece written by a woman who, based sheerly upon the evidence, is a writer.

I don’t have any personal point of view in this struggle, except to say that the writers are due some participation if the actors and directors and producers are getting participation. That’s a fairness issue.

My primary point of view is that in a piece about writers’ negotiations, writers should be represented. That too is a fairness issue.

My plays fall into three categories:

• Those that are unproduced and better left that way (I have more than a dozen that I don’t like and don’t send out, but for which I still harbor the hope to one day “fix”)
• Those that are unproduced because either they are recent or I wrote them and kind of lost track of them (fewer than 10)
• And those that have been produced.

Last weekend I devoted a day to reviewing about 20 of the latter to submit them for further productions. And here’s what I discovered:

Even though they’re only between five and 15 years old, many of them have become period pieces.

There’s the play that references Johnny Carson’s show. OK, a while ago I updated that to reference Jay Leno. Now Leno is leaving in a few years. I could keep updating that one — or allowing directors to do so — but the play also references another show, popular at the time, that is long-gone and largely forgotten. Understanding that reference isn’t key to understanding the play, but it adds a large undertone throughout.

There are all the plays that seem to revolve directly around newspapers. Yes, I am an inveterate newspaper-reader. Or used to be — even I don’t read it every day any more. These plays for sure have to be staged as period pieces, because the newspaper is in some way crucial to the play and it is vanishing from our culture.

There is the play about the rock band, written before, believe it or not, “dude” became the preferred form of address between males of a certain age. The play also revolves around the Chapman stick, a cutting-edge instrument of, oh, the late 1980’s. And when the band has a fight with the bassist and has trouble finding a new one, the drummer says they have to find one because you can’t have a band with just one guitar and drums — something disproved by a little band known as The White Stripes.

There are many, many more such examples; plays that seemed to me so trapped in the moment of their time that I actually wondered if most of my “back catalog” had any further performance value. I started to understand how the Beach Boys must have felt, watching the British Invasion roll in. But here’s something that clearly I never foresaw:

In one of my plays, an unscrupulous vacuum cleaner salesman dupes a television-addled housefrau into buying a vacuum cleaner at a ridiculous price. I thought of this yesterday as I decided to buy a really good vacuum cleaner once and for all and be done with it. The ridiculous price of such a cleaner in my play? $400. The price of a good vacuum cleaner now? $400.

Here’s a show I wish I could attend (but can’t, due to a prior obligation):  Dweezil Zappa revisiting the catalog of his father, Frank Zappa, in a live performance. Dweezil says he spent a year holed up at home studying his father’s compositions so that he could not only learn the pieces, but also understand them and gain the skill to be able to play them. (Nobody has ever had to say anything like that about, say, the Ramones’ catalog.)

I had several opportunities to see Frank Zappa when I was living near Philadelphia, and never took them. Then of course I never got the chance again because he died. I also didn’t see Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band on that reunion tour of a couple years ago, which I regret. (Once, at the urging of a then-somewhat-friend, I did see a Hall & Oates concert, which I also regret.) I hope that Zappa the younger does this show again or takes it on the road.

Tonight I spent about 40 minutes trying to adjust these sprinklers. No matter how I set them, the head wouldn’t fully rotate. And yes, I tried “lifting the lever” as specified. Then I settled for letting it water an area, then picking it up and sticking it in the ground in a new position. I did this twice before it settled upon me how truly stupid doing that made me feel. Then I said, “Fuck it,” lit a cigar and took the dog for a walk.

Then I came back and did it all over again.

Then I turned it off and went inside and had a drink and told myself I’d fix this in the morning when at least it would be light outside. I refuse to be defeated.

It’s daily tribulations like this that keep me modest. That, and about a hundred other things.

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Now playing: The Beach Boys – With Me Tonight
via FoxyTunes

 Former “Fantastic Four” and “Flash” artist Mike Wieringo died Saturday from a heart attack at age 44.

Evidently, he was in seemingly good health and a vegetarian.

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Now playing: The Beach Boys – Sail On, Sailor
via FoxyTunes

 If you’ve noticed the “now playing” end tags on my posts lately (and sometimes on my emails), they are courtesy of FoxyTunes, a free download for Firefox.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple comes up with something similar for Safari and calls it JukeBox or something. And the Windows version will be called, um, LinksToMusicYouWereListeningTo.

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Now playing: The Beach Boys – Add Some Music To Your Day
via FoxyTunes

 Former teen heartthrob has built a 1/5 scale model of Disneyland in his back yard.

This makes me think of “The Music of Chance,” by Paul Auster, in which a grieving man and his ne’er-do-well partner are forced into indentured servitude and made to build a medieval wall in the back yard of two lottery-winning yokels who, it seems, also have a mini-scale replica of their home town occupying an entire room of their mansion.

Whether or not truth is stranger than fiction, they are certainly on speaking terms.

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Now playing: The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up
via FoxyTunes

Judging from the news coverage, yesterday and today seemed particularly bad for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

First, he was captured on cellphone video shopping at a mall in Encino with his mistress, Mirthala Salinas. That video was promptly sold to TMZ.com, where you can watch it. Theoretically it isn’t that interesting — just a highly recognizable public figure and his girlfriend, until recently a major local news broadcast figure, neither of them apparently smart enough to realize that everyone everywhere now has a cellphone with video capability, and that of course someone would capture them on said video and sell it to a sleazy website, where it would then lead off the local news. My understanding of witness protection is that it works only when one relocates, stops being a public figure, and doesn’t act stupidly. The video is also interesting because of the immediate distance the mayor puts between himself and Salinas as soon as he sees someone pointing a cellphone at him; I understand the impulse, but it’s already too late. (And actually, if he’d had better impulse control perhaps he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.)

Secondly, we were then treated on the evening news to newswoman Ana Garcia’s ongoing pursuit of Antonio at City Hall to release some sort of papers or others, papers that evidently James Hahn had released when he was mayor. If I’m remembering this storyline correctly, what Garcia and others are after is Villaraigosa’s schedule (no doubt, to fully establish how long he has been seeing Salinas on the sly). As part of this coverage, we are witness to Garcia’s passage through City Hall being illegally blocked by security, her being actively jostled (“Don’t push me! Don’t push me!” she cries out on tape), and Villaraigosa, finally cornered at some public event, lamely telling her on-camera that he’s just going to continue to focus on doing the people’s work. (Perhaps not realizing that he is the reason the focus has shifted.)

Finally, today there was a major rally downtown in support of state bill SB-840, which would establish single payer healthcare coverage in California. Hundreds and hundreds of activists and all the major local news crews were in attendance. Major speakers included Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, actress/comedienne Lily Tomlin, City Council President Eric Garcetti, and, a surprise turn-up, the always entertaining presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Who wasn’t there? Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Where was this rally held? Oh, the steps of City Hall. Tell me he’s not hiding out. Especially because, until recently, nothing got between Antonio and his limelight.

Given all this, I think I’ll share some advice for Antonio, advice I shared with two fellow Democrats in the car on the way down to the rally. I like Antonio, and I am rooting for him to pull himself out of his predicament of a 24/7 news cycle about his adultery which after two months so far just doesn’t seem to be ending. (And which he isn’t helping to end by going shoe-shopping with girlfriend in tow, thinking that those sunglasses actually hide his identity. Although this may be the first time in decades anyone has seen a mayor of Los Angeles in the Encino area when he wasn’t shopping for votes or donations.) A few years ago, when he was on the City Council and had not yet announced for mayor, I asked Antonio to do something about an issue I cared about; he did it, and I haven’t forgotten. Moreoever, although because I don’t live in the city proper I couldn’t vote for him, I don’t think people elected him to be faithful to his wife — they elected him to do a job. But now it’s the job that’s suffering.

So here’s the advice:

Antonio, stop sneaking around. You can’t avoid the camera crews, let alone the cellphones. Pick a moment (say, after a ribbon cutting), and give every news crew both professional and amateur the full benefit of your time. Stay an extra five hours if need be. Tell them that your relationship with Mirthala Salinas is an afffair of the heart, that you are a person of passion who got swept off his feet, that you ask for their understanding, that you are sorry that you hurt your wife and children, that you intend to keep seeing Ms. Salinas although you have made no decisions about marriage, and so on and on and on. You don’t need to share tawdry details, but you do need to be frank and forthcoming. In case you don’t get it, they’re chasing you because you seem to be hiding something. So stop hiding. And with regard to the papers that Ana Garcia wants: release them. If James Hahn released them, you should release them. Even if he didn’t, you should. You told people you were better than Hahn. Show it. And stop having security block her or shove her around, and give her a special interview as a make-nice.

Then, next time, you can join your compadres on the steps of City Hall for the news crews. And in a couple of years you can still run for governor.

p.s. Advice for Mirthala Salinas: your news career is over. Unless you pull a Geraldo and go tabloid.

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Now playing: Echo & The Bunnymen – A Promise
via FoxyTunes

On this post, longtime fans of the Ritz Theatres in southern New Jersey were bemoaning the repurposing of that art-film house.

Now comes word that the historic Rialto in Pasadena is closing after 82 years. Landmark Theatres has no apparent plans to reopen or repurpose the space.

The Rialto has not been an art house, per se. What it is is a historic, beautiful theatre; one with a huge screen, hundreds and hundreds of seats, and a balcony. In the 90’s it was also a place I was able to see big beautiful art films, re-releases, and foreign offerings on a big beautiful screen, like Peter Greenaway’s films, one of the many final directors’ cuts of “Blade Runner,” and Roberto Begnini movies. I also remember being myself and whomever was accompanying me being two out of about seven people watching the film, so its closing is not unexpected. That doesn’t make it any less sad, though.

As you’ll see below, a man “killed” a rattlesnake, beheaded it — and then suffered a venomous bite from the head when she stooped to pick it up. This Associated Press story shows us just how out-of-touch with nature most of us — and especially the media — have become.

I say this because, where I grew up, I thought it was common knowledge among people who lived in rattlesnake climes that the severed head of a rattlesnake could (and would) still bite you; it was certainly knowledge among me and my 10-year-old friends.

I say that also because the AP has reported this event as news.

Beheaded rattlesnake sends man to hospital

Rural Washington man thinks he’s killed the reptile and is then bitten by it

PROSSER, Wash. – Turns out, even beheaded rattlesnakes can be dangerous.

That’s what 53-year-old Danny Anderson learned as he was feeding his horses Monday night, when a 5-foot rattler slithered onto his central Washington property, about 50 miles southeast of Yakima.

Anderson and his 27-year-old son, Benjamin, pinned the snake with an irrigation pipe and cut off its head with a shovel. A few more strikes to the head left it sitting under a pickup truck.

“When I reached down to pick up the head, it raised around and did a backflip almost, and bit my finger,” Anderson said. “I had to shake my hand real hard to get it to let loose.”

Venom was spreading
His wife insisted they go to the hospital, and by the time they arrived at Prosser Memorial Hospital 10 minutes later, Anderson’s tongue was swollen and the venom was spreading. He then was taken by ambulance 30 miles to a Richland hospital to get the full series of six shots he needed.