The man to the left is actor William Fichtner, or, as I refer to him at home, “Bill.”

Bill is a celebrity actor. He’s on Prison Break (which I haven’t seen, and which, I’m given to understand, also features a sinister character called “Tea Bag,” for reasons best left unmentioned). Previously he was on a creepy small-town alien invasion show called, I believe, Invasion, which I also haven’t seen. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Bill on anything except, if memory serves, a two-part X-Files in the 1990’s, but he is much-discussed at my house because of the shows my son watches and because, as you’ll see, of our special relationship.

Where I have seen Bill, and a lot, is at the gym. I see him there a lot because I’m there a lot, and also because I’ve grown convinced that he’s stalking me. When I’m there in the morning (as just this morning), it’s only a matter of minutes before he arrives and starts lifting or using the cross-trainer right next to me. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I don’t know if he comes looking for me on Sunday, because I don’t go to the gym on Sunday. I do know that when I sometimes go on Saturday afternoon after my playwriting workshop, he’s there. In fact, when I go on other afternoons rather than mornings, he seems to arrive shortly after me and then pretend to casually scan the various dumbbells (hand weights, not people) near me before “selecting” one or two.

In fact, the only place at the gym that I haven’t seen Bill is in the steam room while I’m in there. I guess he’s too modest.

One time Bill broached a conversation with me. He asked if he could turn the ceiling fan near us up or down or off, I can’t remember, and I obliged. His tentativeness in conversation with me was touching and sad. It’s hard for me to condemn Bill for his interest. In some way it’s flattering.

By the way, there is also a man named Jeff whom I take to be gay (I’m not always good at discerning these things) who strikes up a conversation with me every morning. But I don’t think Jeff is interested in me; rather, he seems more interested in discussing his daily work commute from Burbank to West Los Angeles, a troubling subject I sympathize with.

My wife tells me that she saw Bill at a children’s party one weekend a few months ago. His cover story was that evidently one of our children plays with Bill’s child, but I can imagine Bill’s disappointment in two things: 1) not seeing me there (I take our kids when these events are on Sunday, and I can only hope that Bill isn’t reading this), and 2) my wife’s comment, after looking at Bill for several minutes and blinking and wondering aloud where she knew him from before finally venturing, “Do I know you from Burbank PTA?” (No, because I don’t attend PTA meetings., and therefore neither does Bill. You see the pattern.)

I’m not sure what to do about this relationship. I don’t want to encourage Bill, but I don’t want to have to find another gym. I’ve been a member of this one for more than 15 years. I was there first. The management of the gym has been completely ineffectual at even replacing a shower door handle despite my repeated requests, so I’m sure they’re similarly powerless to do anything about larger issues.

Beyond just hoping that Bill starts to book movie roles that require his presence overseas, I’m unsure what to do. I am, however, open to suggestions. Thank you.

So it appears that gypsy moths are once again going to devastate the clan homestead in southern New Jersey. And somehow the state and the township couldn’t work out in time who might pay to eliminate this infestation, until it was too late.

It further appears that this is the big news from my home town paper, the one I served as a classified ad salesperson (in high school) and editor (after college).

Twenty years after I moved across the country, some things still haven’t changed.

Another reminder to the would-have-been self-centered that there are other people in the world:

Today I was one of what turned out to be quite a large group of playwrights who received an email from the very nice man in England who maintains one of the world’s foremost databases of playwrights, www.doollee.com. Here’s what it said:

I am celebrating – the 20,000th Playwright has just been recorded on www.doollee.com, together with 67,189 of their plays.

Are your plays, bio, picture, agent etc etc, all as you want them?

A template is attached – your individual page should contain the information YOU want for now and posterity!!

Listing your work is a pleasure, thank you.

All good things
Julian

ps Have you entered the new competition? – http://www.doollee.com/Publishers/x-competitions.html

Julian Oddy
48 Dorchester Road
Weymouth
Dorset  DT4 7JZ
UK

[both www.doollee.com and google appreciate reciprocal website links]

www.doollee.com receives over 12,000 individual hits per day (4.5 million/year) – your information is important to many people from all over the world.

I read this email aloud to my wife, never feeling less special in my life now that I know that I’m one of 20,000 produced playwrights listed on this site (and who knows how many more aren’t listed?). Even one of 19,000 would have been better. At least I’ve got about 30 plays that have been staged, far more than the average  (although only three are currently listed on Doollee – I guess in my copious spare time I should ask Julian to update the listing).

This brought to mind something Stephen Dunn said over dinner once when I studied writing with him in the 1980’s. He said, “There are only 40 real poets in the country and we all know each other.” I’ve always kept this in mind because even though I’ve had poetry published I’m quite aware I’m not one of those 40 real poets. In grad school I used to wonder how many real playwrights there are — at the time I estimated 200. Now I know:  20,000. Plus.

Today’s LA Daily News has a nice piece by Evan Henerson (who for years has kept theatre coverage an important part of the paper) profiling David Henry Hwang and his new play, which I keep raving about. You can read the profile here.

And Gregory Rodriguez’ op ed in today’s LA Times remarks upon how the context of the play has changed in the 17 years since the events that shaped it. Well worth reading.

In today’s LA Times, Larry Flynt writes a fond remembrance of his buddy… Jerry Falwell.

Surprised?

I’m not. While at first glance the friendship between the pornographer and the preacher may seem hypocritical, on further examination everything becomes clear:  It was all just business. Their seeming enmity was gratifying for one and lucrative for the other.

It used to be that months, sometimes years, were required to generate a backlash to a backlash. But accelerating communications technology has changed all that. Now, with an instantaneous and ongoing news cycle, coupled with satellite transmission, the internet, cell phones, texting, blogs, websites, RSS, and probably secret messages in your alphabet soup, the backlash backlash is upon us before the first backlash has even ended.

Take the Imus situation. Only moments ago he was a racist villain. Then Bill Maher and others painted him as more of a free speaker chased out of town in a witch hunt. Now Imus’ $120 million lawsuit against CBS is proceeding apace from the position that, well, they wanted a shock jock and that’s what they got. (Which is in line with what I said before.)

I think Imus is going to win (either at trial or in a settlement). For CBS, it was never about the outrage and always about the money. (Of course.) They hired Imus to generate ratings and money, which he did. When he went “too far” (a location hard to define, given the nature of the job description) and sponsors and advertisers backed away, they canned him. Now he’s suing them — for money. It’s going to cost them all around, in every way.

And when he wins, Imus will seem redeemed, completing the backlash backlash. And if it isn’t okay to mock on the supposedly public airwaves attractive intelligent young college women as “nappy-headed hos” because they happen to be black, then he’ll take this brand of what passes for humor to satellite radio and make a lot of money for someone else.

Elie Wiesel regrets his early bad writing.

Don’t we all?

At left is someone I’ve known off and on for almost 15 years, playwright and critic Hoyt Hilsman. And, possibly, future Congressman. He’s one of two announced Democrats (I know of) seeking to displace David Dreier, a Republican I see all too often on Faux News (including just the other morning while I was at the gym).

I’ve always known Hoyt to be a smart critic, one whose opinion I respect (in a town where I often make decisions purposely opposite to certain critics’ opinions). That, plus the fact that he’s got an image of outer space on his website (and funding for space exploration research and technology is to me a key issue — and one that no one ever addresses because they don’t believe there are any votes to be had from it), plus the fact that he’s a playwright, makes this a candidate that I’m interested in finding out more about.

If you feel the same way, here’s his website.

This is a photo of the aforementioned Handlery Hotel, where I stayed for the state Democratic convention a few weeks back. Want further proof that there’s no truth in advertising? Here it is: The Handlery “Hotel” is a motel.

After missing Senator Gravel (a feat that I and I’m sure the rest of the country will be repeating), I spent my first night at the convention attending the environmental caucus meeting and then various hospitality suites. The meeting room was packed with people. All along the walls rows and rows of elected officials and candidates stood hoping to get just a few minutes to talk. The chairman, Luke Breit, noted the standing-room only crowd and the obvious message: that the environment is a key concern for California Democrats. (And that comports with my own observations; last summer when I got to meet with Howard Dean, while he wanted to talk about campaign finance reform and clean elections, almost every Democrat in the room wanted to talk about the environment.)

When we got to voting on actual resolutions — to, eventually, go into the state Democratic party platform (or not) — here’s how seemingly every vote went:

1. The resolution would be read and the issue explained and discussed;
2. A guy half a row away from me would complain that it didn’t cover some other arcane aspect and the chair would explain that we were voting on the resolution as written and that this guy could offer up his own resolution if he wanted and if he could get enough support;
3. We would vote on the resolution, with everyone voting aye except that one guy;
4. Then we’d move onto the next resolution and he’d do it again.

As an example, he voted against the resolution decrying the attempt to put a toll road straight through the middle of a state park (you just can’t make these things up) because it didn’t provide public transportation for low-income people who needed to get through the park.

He voted against the resolution seeking to ban certain “Gopher-Getter Killing Methods for Gophers and other Rodents” because it didn’t cover some other small animals.

He voted against supporting the insidiously named “California Clean Car Discount Bill” (which would actually raise prices on non “clean” cars, meaning that the “discount” is actually an avoidance of the increase) because it didn’t cover motorcycles.

I think he would have voted against seating because it didn’t cover standing.

You like to think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the one person in the room willing to disagree, but we hope that person is Henry Fonda in “Twelve Angry Men” and not, well, the village idiot.

By the time the caucus meeting ended, I was more than ready to hit the hospitality suites. Although I dropped in on all of them, my first stop was Dennis Kucinich’s “hootenanny” — their word, not mine. Essentially this was a small room of shoeless hippies dance to bad jug music. With tortilla chips as the “food.” Kucinich wasn’t there, and after a moment, neither was I.

Yesterday in my email newsletter I wrote a piece with advice on how to become a produced playwright, which some people have emailed to thank me for. If you missed it, click here. In a nutshell, here’s the advice:  be diligent and persistent.

Just today, the graduate writing program I teach in at USC uploaded a podcast that advocates the same mindset, but adds the perspective of fiction writers and screenwriters. I find it fascinating watching friends and colleagues share war stories that sound so very, very familiar. (Click here if you’d like to see it.) One of the speakers is novelist and dramatist Chris Meeks. (A good guy and a good writer.) If you’d like to check out his own email newsletter, here’s the archive.

Almost everyone who has met with any success as a writer has pretty much the same story. They tried harder.