Several people today have emailed me with links to the plays of Cho Seung Hui, the student behind the Virginia Tech massacre. Click here if you’d like to read them yourself.

They don’t tell us much beyond this: Mr. Cho was a very bad playwright. Really bad. The dialogue is forced and expositional, the staging doesn’t work, and characters such as the stepfather are set up as paper tigers for other characters to express their viewpoints. In fact, the only thing I like is the stepfather character’s name, Richard McBeef, but then only for a play in the style of Alfred Jarry.

Here’s the statement that these plays do not — repeat, do not — make: that because these are dark, troubled plays, Cho was clearly a dark, troubled person, someone who was going to be a murderer. No. These are dark, troubled plays that happen to be by someone who turned out to be a dark, troubled person who happened to turn out to be a murderer.

It always troubles me when people confuse the unattractive character in a play with its creator. Just because you’ve written racists, pederasts, murderers, and even Republicans into your play doesn’t mean you are one. It means that you are writing about them. Ian Fleming was in no way James Bond, Edgar Rice Burroughs was not raised by apes, and Harriet Beecher Stowe did not have an uncle named Tom.

These things may seem obvious to most of us reading this. Yet all across the net tonight people are reading the plays of Cho Seung Hui and deciding that someone “should have known.” If Cho gave other signs of mental distress, that’s one thing. But the writing in these plays tells us only that he had no future as a playwright.

Except — and here’s an irony — I guarantee that some enterprising director or producer somewhere is right now printing out those plays and getting ready to produce them. Remember, you read it here first.

“Horse and cow chiropractor.”

At first I thought she was kidding.

Nope.

It must be hell getting them on the adjustment table.  And collecting the inevitable insurance co-pay.

Yesterday there was a shooting spree at Virginia Tech. I don’t need to link to it — you’ve already heard about it. And been depressed by it. And today the polarized camps of “take away the guns” vs. “I have a right to bear arms” are once again all over the internet, still locked into their positions.

My position is somewhere in the middle. (But then, that’s where I think most sensible positions on most things are — somewhere between the polarized positions.) I was raised by gun owners and gun users and was one myself and I don’t recall any of us ever shooting anyone. Not for fun or sport, not out of dementia. In most ways, though, we were (and are) responsible people, so we also didn’t run a meth lab or produce child pornography in the basement or plunder savings and loans and bill the government for our reckless greed. I realize that not everyone can make these claims, and that laws exist to protect us from the irresponsible people, not the responsible people.

I don’t have much to add with regard to the gun “debate” — as much as there is a true debate — except this:

1. I don’t trust people who make their living being in either camp. That’s their butter in what is a guns and butter debate.
2. No matter what anyone in the bluest areas of the country think, no one is going to be able to round up all the guns in this country. There are dozens of millions of them. We’d better find better ways to live with them, and we would do better to limit the extremely crazy varieties (like automatic weapons that would leave nothing of Bambi’s mother behind to cook).

A couple of years ago Reason magazine ran a debate — a true debate — on this issue. Here’s a link.

Alannis Morissette, take note, because this is an actual example of irony:

After all my complaints the other day about Quickbooks’ tech (un) help line, for the past few days Quickbooks and Quickbooks-related products have been the chief sponsored links on this site.

This makes me wonder if I railed against lynching whether or not the KKK would place ads here.

Remember this commercial from the 1960’s? I do. Take a minute — and it is one minute — to watch it, then return here.

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Okay. You’re back.

To some of us, this commercial is about, well, Crackerjack. (Which I used to enjoy at the midget car races with my father in Atlantic City Convention Hall when I was a boy.) To me at some point this also became about comic acting; Jack Gilford’s pantomime here reminds me of the silent era, which makes me think of Buster Keaton — ironic because Keaton’s face was frozen, while Gilford is mugging.

This morning my two youngest children, ages 8 and 4, ran over to watch this commercial on my laptop screen. To them, this entire commercial is about the missing parents of the two children in the commercial.

“Where’s their parents?” asked one.

“Maybe they’re dead,” said the other.

Viewed from this perspective, the commercial does seem oddly deathlike. These kids get one last treat from a friendly, helpful envoy (akin to Charon, ferryman of the dead, who assists one on one’s final journey). Liberated and with prize in hand, the children run down the pier, not an adult in sight — in fact, no one else in sight — and as the camera descends on them enjoying their final moments, we see them ascend into the clouds.

To most viewers of the time, this commercial was about candy-coated popcorn that even the helpful candy man can’t get unstuck from his teeth. (You’ll note Gilford’s elaborate mouth action.) To my kids, it’s a cautionary tale of children abandoned to their own fates on an isolated boardwalk, far from the watchful eyes of parents.

It’s not unusual for me to find myself entwined in discussions about “bad theatre” with fellow practitioners. Sometimes these discussions are in person, sometimes they’re virtual. Here’s a sample email, received this morning:

“Saw [the new show directed by a mutual friend/colleague] and cannot recommend it. It isn’t bad, and there are some laughs, but I also think there are some inconsistencies in the performances, and the script is obscure. … I keep saying this and then letting it go, but I really don’t know why I go to theater in L.A. anymore. In the past 12 months I’ve probably seen 25 to 30 shows, and I think I really liked two. Water and Power at the Taper or Dorothy Chandler or one of those, and Huck and Holden at Black Dahlia. I can’t think of anything else I’ve really been happy I saw, instead of saving my money and staying at home. Not that they’ve been bad, most of them, just that they didn’t give me any more than I’d have gotten staying at home surfing the net, or watching tv or reading. I know I’ve not mentioned the car plays, of which one was yours. I enjoyed that, and thought the concept was terrific, but it didn’t knock my socks off, sorry.”

All tastes are individual. I would disagree with him about The Car Plays (which Moving Arts is bringing back to the Steve Allen Theatre this summer) which was terrific precisely because of the concept and its execution, but because I was involved in that perhaps I’m biased. I can’t disagree with him about the show he describes because I haven’t seen it. I have to agree with him that in most cases my socks stay firmly on — just as they do through most movies and television. It’s hard to get these socks knocked off any more. Whether the play winds up being good or bad, I still get a visceral thrill from going to the theatre; its very nature (of having to drive there, and arrange for tickets in advance and so forth) makes it far more of an event than lying on the couch scanning channels, and given the backwoods environment I grew up in I still count myself lucky to have such opportunities.

With regard to my friend’s batting average, I would say that it sounds about right. I think he’s equating “knock your socks off” with excellence — and isn’t excellence at the furthest end of the continuum? Excellence is by its nature exceptional. If there were more of it, it wouldn’t be excellent.  I wrote about the batting average here, and here’s the relevant clipping:

Every once in a while you see a show that rewards your devotion to the theatre. Some months ago I asked a group of fellow playwrights how often they were glad they’d seen a show. How often had it been worth the effort involved? Responses ranged from 25% (the always upbeat and bright-eyed comedy writer Stephanie) to 10% (me) down to 5% (the would-be curmudgeon in the group who is a closet romantic — and isn’t that what every cynic is: a romantic who got burned?). The theatre is notoriously difficult to pull off. The writing has to be good, as well as the performing, it has to be pulled together and presented well by a director and designers, the theatre had better not be too hot or too cold, the right audience has to have found it because they are very definitely part of the experience, there had better not have been a bad parking or driving or box-office experience, and on and on and on.

So why do so many of us go so often? Just to get angry at ourselves for our blockheaded refusal to give up? No — because when it is superb, nothing surpasses the visceral thrill of performers and material connecting with an audience in a defined space. I love great performers of all stripes and honestly feel blessed to have worked with so many wonderful actors, and I love great provocative writing. Put the two together and you’ve got the theatre — when it works.

I stand by that. I have had some amazing experiences in the theatre. Are they frequent? No. Then they wouldn’t be amazing.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you come across someone on a help line who is actually, well, helpful.

Today, I tip my hat to “Dennis,” wherever he may be.

If you’ve been following my ongoing data nightmare, which I began writing about here, you’ll recall that while I have all my data (and therefore can rest somewhat easy), I haven’t had access to it. I have a variety of computers both here at home and at my office, but I couldn’t see any good reason to restore it all to any of those — better to wait for the return of my primary laptop. Astonishingly, it came back yesterday, after only a little over a day in the shop. Now I’m putting the data back. So far it has been a major timesuck, but not too frustrating — that is, until I hit the QuickBooks accounting issue.

Last night I attached the MacBook Pro (recently fixed) to my old iMac via FireWire and did a “new computer” file swap that Apple allows when you’re configuring a computer for the first time. It’s incredibly easy and, once again, worked like a charm, transporting all the files from the iMac onto that laptop and, with it, all the various configurations. That means that applications I own but don’t have the software for, such as Appleworks, came over. That’s a good thing. It also means that the internet settings and accounts (and I have multiples of them) came over as well. Another good thing. It also brought over QuickBooks Pro, and I was able to download from .mac my backed-up file. Again, good things.

Then I booted up QuickBooks and was asked for a key code to register the product. I entered the key code directly from the software label — this is one piece of software that, believe me, I keep close to hand. It wouldn’t accept it. I tried it again. Wouldn’t accept it. Then, providing a physical picture of the definition of insanity, I tried it yet again hoping for a different result. Nothing doing. I was able to access my file, but the screen warned me ominously that I had 14 boots left, after which I’d have no access. Bear in mind that I’ve been running my business from his file since 2003. Resisting the urge to have a really strong drink (which would have led to many more), I went upstairs and watched a boring bad movie and finally fell asleep fitfully.

This morning, after putting off the inevitable, I finally called Intuit, maker of QuickBooks. I got what I expected:

1. Someone teenage-boy-sounding who suggested I go online to www.quickbooks.com/keycode, and who then chased me off the phone. I tried the URL — again, three times — and each time it redirected me to Yahoo. Evidently, that URL doesn’t exist.
2. I called back and spoke with another person who sounded like a teenage boy. This one suggested that I buy a new copy of the program ($249). I said I didn’t see any reason to do that — I already own the program, have registered it, and have a key code on the disk, it’s just not working. He told me to go to the quickbooks.com site, search for “keycode” and follow the directions. I did that, and it promised to email me a new keycode. When? It didn’t say. That wouldn’t do. Had it said even “today” I might have felt I could wait.
3. Third time, again navigating through the aggravating phone tree, I went to gethuman.com, a directory that provides prompts to avoid aggravating phone trees. (Use it often!) It worked — and I wound up talking to what was clearly India. I could barely understand this man, not only because of his accent, which was thick, but also over the din of about 5,000 other Indians on other phones behind him. I was irritated but did my best to keep it out of my voice; I didn’t want anyone, no matter where in the world, confusing my irritation with Intuit and my software issue with, possibly, irritation about speaking to Indians as a people. I also didn’t want to spread the image of the Ugly American — and I was certainly feeling ugly. This gentleman gave me a new number to call. You guessed it: It was the number for sales.
4. But this time, I got lucky. Whomever “Peter” in sales is, he took pity on me, even though I wasn’t going to buy anything. Although he’s now in Phoenix, he looked back fondly on his time spent living in Burbank, even mentioning the Black Angus that my friend Grant criticized for having food that was “too salty.” I explained my situation, and he said (before I could), “You shouldn’t have to buy a new version, you already own a copy.” And he transferred me to Dennis — evidently the lone helpful tech at Intuit, who gave me a new keycode and my registration number.

So now I have access to my accounting again. Thank you, Dennis, and thank you Peter for forwarding me to Dennis. I suspect you knew Dennis would help me where others would not. When he did help me, Dennis said, “I don’t understand why nobody would do this for you before.” Well, neither do I.

Tonight in class one of my students looked up and announced, “Oh, Kurt Vonnegut died. A friend texted me.”

And so he had.

Vonnegut was an early and lasting hero to me. My brother introduced me to his books starting when I was 11 and I was quickly hooked. In fact, the first book I ever bought myself was a Vonnegut book. I had read “Cat’s Cradle” and one or two others already, including probably “Sirens of Titan,” when David Evans, one of my teachers at Arthur Rann Middle School, noticed my interest and started talking about “Breakfast of Champions.” I asked if I could borrow it. (That one didn’t appear to be in my brother Ray’s library.) The teacher agreed. Later that day, though, there was a call at home from Mr. Evans asking to speak with my father. I put my father on, then ran upstairs and listened in on the other line. Mr. Evans said something like this: “Your son is very bright and he’s reading books by a man named Kurt Vonnegut. Lee would like to borrow his new book, and I would lend it to him, but I wanted to check with you first because it has adult themes.” Mr. Evans stressed that I was already reading things along these lines. My father had a question or two about the adult themes, Mr. Evans filled in some additional information, and finally my father said, and I’ll never forget these words, “Don’t lend it to him.” I hung up the phone, went downstairs, got my bicycle out of the garage, rode a mile through the woods to Goetsch’s Market, and bought “Breakfast of Champions” for myself. I took it home and read it cover to cover, outraged that my father was trying to ban it, and eager to find the adult themes. When I was done I couldn’t imagine what the objectionable part was, unless it was the little line drawing of what looked like conjoined parantheses and which was clearly identified as “a cunt.”

(And let that be a lesson to all would-be censors everywhere: Your actions only foment demand.)

Vonnegut taught me early lessons in thinking for myself, both in this example and in his actual writing. Being of a pragmatic bent, I don’t share his dour view — I always think we can make life even just a little bit better, and in the meantime there is much that is glorious. One of the glorious things was his string of bitingly funny and wise books.

A couple of years ago when my son Lex was between books I plucked “Cat’s Cradle,” a book that for some years I reread every year, and handed it to him. He liked it a lot and moved on to “Slaughterhouse Five.” In “Slaughterhouse Five,” Billy Pilgrim famously “comes unstuck in time.” Similarly, other characters throughout Vonnegut’s oeuvre find themselves transported to distant times and places, whether on Earth, Trafalmadore, or elsewhere. One thing that will not be coming unstuck and leaving us is Vonnegut’s body of work.

Word back from my authorized Apple repair site:  Yep, the hard drive is toast. Good thing my data was backed up.

Three questions:

1. No matter whether they like it or not, why are people shocked about what the shock jock said?
2. With regard to the following interview, has Senator Obama (and others) ever tuned in to Fox News? Ann Coulter isn’t one iota more pleasant than Mr. Imus, but I don’t hear about any boycott over there.
3. Again with regard to the following interview — and not to pick on Senator Obama, whom I generally like and respect — given that he and his wife are very well-off, shouldn’t these scholarships he’s scoping out for his daughters be reserved for other kids who actually need them?

From MSNBC.com:

Before the announcement was made, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) had appeared on the MSNBC program “Hardball,” where host David Gregory asked the senator and presidential candidate if he thought Imus should be fired.

“I don’t think MSNBC should be carrying the kinds of hateful remarks that Imus uttered the other day,” Obama said.

He went on to note that he and his wife have “two daughters who are African-American, gorgeous, tall, and I hope, at some point, are interested enough in sports that they get athletic scholarships. … I don’t want them to be getting a bunch of information that, somehow, they’re less than anybody else. And I don’t think MSNBC should want to promote that kind of language.”

Obama went on to say that he would not be a guest on Imus’ show in the future.