No, that isn’t Mr. Malaprop (the quote unquote president) wondering about the latest actions of “Islamofascists” (a word no doubt coined for him by others). That is my favorite headline of the day, and it accompanies coverage on MSNBC.com about the Westminster Dog Show.

In the days before the World Wide Web, I was a copy editor at The Atlantic City Press. (Excuse me — “The Press of Atlantic City.” Clearly the name change, made in the early 80’s I believe, fixed a grievous misconception that this daily newspaper was in some way aligned with Atlantic City.) The duties of a copy editor include, yes, editing copy, as well as rewriting, and supplying headlines. At times the headline assignment — always on the fly, with a deadline looming — was a real head-scratcher. It wasn’t uncommon to be assigned a “242” (a headline to fill two columns in a 42 point-typefont) or even a “142” (ONE column, 42 points) with seemingly mere minutes to go and on a subject best summed up by a 90-minute lecture with Q & A to follow. At some point our beloved managing editor Bob Ebener (well, I loved him; he was my Lou Grant) sweetened the pot with a weekly contest — $25 for the best headline and $25 for the best caption. I won each of these several times in my 6-month stint on the copy rim, winning best caption once for a photo of a billboard painter doing the art for a gigantic sign of a human (lending me the inspiration for a caption that played off Lilliputians), and best headline once for anchoring a lengthy piece on local welfare fraud with the headline “Brother, can you spare too much?” This latter achievement was especially noteworthy among copy editors because the reporter actually sought out the editor responsible (me) and thanked him profusely. I would say that was better than the extra 25 bucks, but I really needed the 25 bucks.

While I haven’t been a copy editor for 20 years, I haven’t lost one bit of my appreciation for the oft-neglected art of headline writing. (An art I still employ, of sorts, with corporate clients.) The “Reign of terrier” headline works in all aspects: It fits the small space assigned, it grabs the eye (because, indeed, I thought at a glance there was a story about a “reign of terror” alongside a photo of a dog), and it delights the reader.

I don’t know who wrote this, but somebody oughtta send him 25 bucks.

Since he announced — seemingly yet again — today that he’s running for president, here’s the obligatory Barack Obama post. (I don’t want to be the only blogger in the U.S. to miss out on this. Too much like being the only Nader in ’08 supporter.)

I don’t have any further thoughts about his candidacy except this one: All the pundits who are saying “it’s too soon” for Obama to run because he’s inexperienced would be running themselves if they suddenly found themselves in his position — at the height of buzz-fame. Obama has nowhere to go but down from here (and I predict that is coming soon); the question is whether or not he’ll go back up.

Aside from that, as Mark Evanier points out, it’s way too early to predict who will emerge from an ever-widening pack on both sides of the aisle — although that isn’t keeping plenty of people from making predictions. My only prediction this early is this one: that the group with the most to gain from a two-year campaign cycle of 24/7 political news (i.e., the media and the consultants who feed them and are fed by them) will build up and tear down each of these candidates one by one. That makes most of the process of picking a president an entertainment, which is also known by another word: spectacle.

They aren’t dying wishes, because they’re still alive. So here are a few selections, with commentary, from the “living wishes” of what some prominent baby boomer celebrities would like to do before they die, as posted on MSNBC.com:

STEPHEN KING, Author, 59 (Above)
One of the world’s best-selling novelists, with more than 25 top sellers under his belt, King has built a loyal fan base of millions by consistently scaring them. His latest, “Lisey’s Story,” came out in October last year.

“I’d like to outlast George W. Bush’s second term of office.”

TO-DO LIST

1. To live to see George W. Bush tried for crimes against humanity.
2. To fly in space—orbital would be fine—and to write about it.
3. To see “American Idol” canceled.

I don’t care about #3, but I’ll join him in the other two.

JOAN JETT, Rocker, 48
A member of the Runaways when she was only 15 and lead singer of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Jett is one of the original bad girls of rock and roll—who doesn’t drink or smoke, is a vegetarian and reads ancient Hindu philosophy in her downtime. Her record “Sinner” came out in June.

“Accept what is going on and grow with it and adjust to it.”

TO-DO LIST:

1. I’d like to go to India and Africa, do some serious traveling.
2. To somehow combine my love for animals, nature and children.
3. To learn a language. I took French in school, but I didn’t like the teacher so I learned nothing.

Nothing stopping her from doing #1 — just book a show or two in those regions and more than pay for it. No problem with #3; she already knows a language: English. (Unless she means learn another language.) As for #2, perhaps she could combine these things by taking my kids and dog to the park on Sunday. That would “somehow” combine her interests. In fact, if Joan is going, not only will I go as well, I’ll even drive and pack lunches. Joan: Email me. I speak your language.

ERIC BOGOSIAN, Playwright, 53
This monologist and playwright became a household name in the late ’80s with the movie version of his play “Talk Radio,” then buffed up his Angry Young Man status with stinging monologues like “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll” and “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.” Fast-forward 20 years. Eric Bogosian still writes plays and dabbles in Hollywood movies, off-Broadway productions and TV, lately as Capt. Danny Ross on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” His work is speaking to a new generation: “SubUrbia” got revived last fall and “Talk Radio” starring Liev Schreiber opens on Broadway next month.

TO-DO LIST:

1. Learn to speak Armenian.
2. Master the yoga posture Eka Pada Koundinyasana.
3. Read The New York Times headline US FORCES LEAVE IRAQ TODAY.

While I’m thrilled to see a playwright on this list, I’m unconvinced that Eric Bogosian is — or ever was — a “household name.” Perhaps in his own household. The households of others? Not so much. What I like about his list is its specificity (plus, I like saying “specificity” in my head while writing): unlike Joan, he doesn’t want to learn “a” language; realizing that he already knows at least one language, he wants to learn Armenian. He doesn’t just want to take up yoga; he wants to master a certain position. He isn’t waiting for nebulously defined charges against the quote unquote president, he wants a definite action with legitimate reporting of it. Given his mindset (concrete actions and goals), Bogosian should be in business. Or running the government.

Speaking of someone who once ran the government, or at least part of it, here’s the list of doctor-by-telepathy Bill Frist, who once inaccurately diagnosed Terri Schiavo over a video feed so that he could wring political capital from it:

BILL FRIST, Former Senator, 54
Frist served two terms as Senate majority leader before relinquishing his seat in November. A physician for 20 years, the Tennessee native has traveled to Afri-can nations to set up a hospital and provide medical care since 1997. He plans to leave for his next trip—to Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Sudan—on Jan. 30.

“Medicine as a currency for peace—it’s not just a mantra, it’s something I live.”

TO-DO LIST:

1. Continue yearly trip to African regions without health care to perform needed surgery.
2. Fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, and work to provide clean drinking water to poor areas.
3. Treat heart problems in gorillas at D.C.’s National Zoo.

Bill, I am with you on #2. If you can find some way to do that in what we euphemistically call “developing” countries without 90% or more of the aid going to strongarm thugs with submachine guns who hide under the rubric of “government,” all the better. Because sadly, I think that’s job number one in most of these areas. With regard to #3, I share your concern about these gorillas as well as their gorilla kin and indeed the entire ecosystem that supports them, in the wild or not. But I don’t remember you as much of an environmentalist. Have you had a change of heart (no pun intended), now that you’re so far removed from the levers of power? Wish you’d had it sooner.

With regard to #1 on your list, though, there is simply nothing anyone can do about it. You say you’d like to “continue yearly trip to African regions without health care to perform needed surgery.” Sadly, as a former Senator it doesn’t matter where you go, you’ll have health care. I wish we could make this dream come true for you by taking it away, but you’ve got it for life (just as the benefits and entitlements due convicted felons who happened at one time to be in Congress continue to roll on). If it’s any comfort, there are 45.8 million Americans without health care; I only wish you were one of them.

A few years ago I borrowed a video tape from good friend and actor Mark Chaet. The first thing on the tape was the premiere of “Lost,” and I wound up watching it — and these years later I’m still watching the show. The difference is that I used to enjoy it.

Where the show used to be about event — a plane has crashed, and how will we survive, especially when there’s an invisible monster in the woods? — it’s now about effect: “Here’s how we’ll double back in the writing again, here’s how we’ll string the audience along, here’s the shocking surprise” and so forth. Of course the show always had these effects, but they weren’t the point of the endeavor before.

I’m still watching the show because it’s become a ritual for my eight-year-old daughter and me to watch it together and I can’t bring myself to tell her that much as I like her, I don’t like the show any more. (As with Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest, I too am trapped on “Lost” island.) This week’s episode — the return from a three-month hiatus — clarified my disenchantment. We get a lot of back story on Jack’s blonde captor, Juliet, which is absolutely uninteresting because I don’t care about Juliet. Indeed, the show has trained me not to care about recently introduced characters. Just as soon as Michelle Rodriguez’s character of Ana Lucia, a gun-toting, smart-mouthed, emotionally battered former member of the LAPD, had breathed gasoline into the show’s carburetor, she was shot to death. Another character torn between the good and bad, Mr. Eko, was similarly dispatched. At one time, the love story of Rose and Bernard was seemingly so important that an entire episode had to be devoted to it, but I haven’t seen or heard from them in months and months. So why care about Elizabeth? Because the unshocking revelation is that she too is a prisoner on this island and has been for three and a half years? You could say the same thing about driving to Burbank from Santa Monica. No, the most interesting aspects of Juliet’s flashbacks was seeing “Deadwood” actress Robin Weigert sans her Calamity Jane accent.

Just as I no longer care about the back stories of the show’s new characters, I find that its metafictional tricks have grown dull. It was fun at one point to see Walt reading a comic book featuring a giant polar bear and then to see just such a bear menace the islanders. It was also amusing to have the leader of the Others named, at least temporarily, after the fictional Henry Gale, whose niece was blown by a tornado into a mythic otherworld named Oz. But now the references seem more copied than creative. Sawyer and Kate break into one of the hatches to rescue Alex’s boyfriend from Room 23, number 23 being both one of Hurley’s numbers and also the title and subject of a forthcoming Jim Carrey movie in which everything apocalyptic is associated with the number 23. Those two references seem in keeping with the show’s history of reference and self-reference. But what is inside Room 23? A scene we’ve already seen — an iconic scene — depicted no fewer than 35 years ago in the film of “A Clockwork Orange.” In “Lost” it seems less an homage than a swipe.

A prime metafictional misfire would be the demise of Juliet’s husband. Surely no one was surprised when Juliet said she could join up with what turns out to be Dr. Moreau’s island only if her ex-husband is hit by a bus — and then it happens. Was the effect comic? No. Because it was foreshadowed so strongly that only the blind deaf and dumb could have not foreseen it, it missed being comic, or even jokey, and instead seemed a pathetic gasp from an etherized patient who was not going to make it.

When did the show slip? At the time, it felt like the end came with the valentine to Rose and Bernard. But in a larger context, I think provisioning the castaways was a mistake. Shadowy commercial enterprises, such as the one evidently behind the Others’ research, are worrisome in a general aspect (witness Halliburton) or, sometimes, in a practical aspect (as when they show up with guns and animal cages on “Lost.”). But in the day-to-day, nothing is more fearsome than hunger and privation. Once food and supplies began materializing, either in underground vacation villas like the Hatch, or in drop-shipments around the island, the exigencies of day-to-day survival took a back seat to philosophy, much to the show’s loss.

Didn’t get a room for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con? It’s probably too late now.

As their site says, “Comic-Con 2007 Starts NOW.” Given the problems with room registration, that’s sounding less like a pledge than a threat. Rooms went on sale this morning at 9 a.m. Pacific and went off sale almost instantaneously, through a mixture of breakdowns, timeouts, and soldouts. Well do I remember the days when one could saunter down to San Diego and pick up a room last-minute if one was of a mind to. Try that now and your room would be in Orange County or Tijuana.

Months ago I set a reminder in my iCal and on my Treo that rooms went on sale this morning and to for God’s sake book one! Our group who goes every year strategized in advance and Paul, who is a hotel professional, strongly suggested that he and I separately book suites in the hopes that we could get one (and, if we wound up with more than one reserved, cancel one of them).

At 8:55 I was ready. Had the browser open to try online reservations, had the phone at the ready to try phone reservations. For the next 48 minutes, the toll-free phone number was busy, and I lost every bit of cool I had trying to book a room online. The system kept crashing: timing out due to overload, or telling me that my session had timed out after 12 minutes with no activity (the activity, of course, being trying to get their overloaded servers to load the page). At one point I actually got far enough in the process to book an Embassy Suite for four nights, but when I clicked to confirm the site kicked me off again. By the time I got back on, it was gone. Just when I had visions of crashing somewhere in Petco Park, Paul called on my cellphone to say he’d managed to book a suite. Phew!

Here’s what I emailed him (cc’ing the rest of the group):

Bless you, my son. You have clearly saved our souls yet again. (Without Paul, there would be no room.)

Phew!

I cannot even begin to describe the ordeal this morning was trying to get a room…!

Please note that Paul and I agreed to book the Wednesday night “preview night” as well, given that last year it took about two hours (!) to get through the mob into the convention center on the first day!

I think if terrorists really wanted to take down our society, they’d hit the Con. Please don’t forward this to terrorists!

Lee

As you see from that, it no longer matters how early one leaves to get to the Con on Thursday morning — once you’re there, you still cannot get in. We were preregistered and the line we had to wait in was still so long that I was sure at the end of it someone was handing out sacks of cash. This year we’ll be staying over the night before (which gains us admission to the Preview Night, and, most probably, a drinking and poker night in our room).

So: Thinking of just “dropping in” on the San Diego Comic Con this year? Take some friendly advice: don’t.

Where’s Lonelygirl gone to? Evidently, she’s gotten caught up in the 2008 presidential campaign and Hillary’s listening tour, as this video shows. (And it’s worth watching just to see Rudy Giuliani in drag clowning around with Donald Trump.)

While I’m on about Dick, I should add that his influence will be continue to be felt as a character appearing in other pop literature. As with R. Crumb, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Henry James and other real-life people, we can expect plenty more appearances of PKD like this forthcoming thinly disguised fictional biopic.

“Your Name Here” (2007)

The lines between reality and perception blur in this comic journey into the life and mind (literally!) of one of sci-fi’s most brilliant authors. Paranoid conspiracies of the highest order, drug-fueled interdimensional shifts, and 1970’s pop culture combine for the mind-bending adventure of the century.

“Your Name Here” tells the tale of the Sci-fi author William J. Frick (Bill Pullman) during the last few days of his life. Penniless and living in squalor, Bill Frick is on a mission to finish his latest literary masterpiece. His inspiration is the actress Nikki Principal (Taryn Manning): the object of his obsession. After evading a lengthy visit from an IRS agent (Dave Sheridan), Bill has a sudden stroke and wakes up in a limo with none other than Nikki Principal herself, who informs him that his current literary endeavor is going to change the world. He looks out his window and soon realizes that he has become a God amongst mortals, as murals and statues of him permeate the entire city. The vast majority of people worship him, but some like the nefarious Maurice Kroger (M. Emmet Walsh) want Bill’s knowledge and power for their own malicious agenda. Over time Bill realizes that he is now living in a world in which he created, he is living one of his novels. “Your Name Here” continues the tradition of “Being John Malkovich”, and “Adaptation”, and creates an alternative universe that captures the essence of America’s most provocative Sci-Fi stories.

Android version of PKD:

PKD referenced in “Zippy”:

PKD as depicted by Crumb:

Some teachers of writing disdain genre writing. I’m not one of them.

I’m not one of them because it would be hypocritical of me as a consumer of comic books, pulp novels, the occasional horror or science fiction or Western novel, to turn up a nose at genre. Samuel Beckett spent his idle hours reading detective novels, so who would I be to judge? Turn up a nose at badly written genre? Sure. But because of what it is? No. In some way, to do so seems close to racism: prejudging books by their packaging.

I’m also not someone who disdains genre because I don’t know where to draw the line. Is “The Road” a horror novel, a science fiction novel, or literature? (All three.) How about some of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories? Was Edgar Allan Poe a “genre” writer? And wasn’t “The Turn of the Screw” a gothic horror novella?

Toward the end of his lifetime, Philip K. Dick found the mainstream — i.e., the mainstream of popular readers. He found it because the film version of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (“Blade Runner”) brought attention to his work. What he didn’t find was literary acclamation, and the people who hold the reins on that call it “mainstream.” It isn’t. It is the niche (literary readers) of a niche (book readers). (Proof is the LA Times’ lack of a link to the Book Review section.)

Today’s L.A. Times includes a fine review of Dick’s recently published but 54-year-old novel “Voices From the Street.” (The link may require registration.) Reading between the lines, the book doesn’t sound particularly well-written or well-paced. (Years ago I blithely commented to good friend and mentor Rich Roesberg that “nobody reads Philip K. Dick for the prose.” Rich later told me he didn’t know what I meant until the next time he picked up a Dick novel and saw exactly what I meant.) As a longtime admirer of Dick’s themes and obsessions (if not always the word choices in its execution) I will probably read this book; I doubt it is the masterpiece that I still believe “Confessions of a Crap Artist” to be, but I hope it’s at least as entertaining as the meandering but nonetheless gripping “Mary and the Giant,” long out of print and which I was fortunate to discover in a second-hand book shop in Utah (!) for eight dollars.

The photo in today’s Book Review shows Dick seated cross-legged holding a copy of “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said,” not one of his best novels. The front of each of his shoes reveals a wide hole along the bottom. I think Dick’s attraction to the literary mainstream was one of class, but also one of cash. (There is an apocryphal story of Dick ordering horsemeat for his dog only to ingest it himself.) We live in an age of wonderful irony, only the latest being this: In 2007, it is overall the genre writers with lucrative writing careers and the literary writers who scrabble to make ends meet. Philip K. Dick, in being ahead of so many in his own time, died too soon to enjoy the benefits of the true mainstream.

Here’s the latest installment on this ongoing (but dying?) feature of my blog.

Why might it be dying? Because today represents the first time in six days that I’ve read the Los Angeles Times. This is Very Bad News for them. Not because I am in some way a significant readership in myself, but because I represent their most significant readership: inveterate newspaper readers. That would certainly include me. Since boyhood I’ve read the paper on a daily basis, sometimes fighting for sections over the breakfast table. That is probably what propelled me into journalism (that, plus the opportunity to see my name quickly put into print). In my teens I was getting published in fanzines, and then magazines, and in my late teens I was getting published in newspapers. I became a beat reporter, then an entertainment reporter editing his own features, then a copy editor, then senior copy editor, then the production editor of a daily newspaper, all before hitting 25. I love newspapers, and until today I hadn’t read one in a week. If I’m going to drift away so easily, what can print editions forecast about casual readers?

Reading the print edition of today’s L.A. Times has reminded me of a few conclusions I’d previously made:

1. The “news” in the newspaper isn’t news. The Times was smart enough to put a story about the quote unquote president’s detente meeting with Democrats deep inside the first section. Why deep inside? Because I read this story online from another publication yesterday afternoon. A full 24 hours later it carries all the newsworthiness of the Hindenburg disaster coverage. With some news stories, 24 minutes later feels too late.
2. Features and “uncovered news” are more interesting, whether or not they’re relevant. I read the story about the Arizona councilman who won’t give the pledge of allegiance because he’s protesting the war in Iraq. (I don’t like the war in Iraq, but I don’t like sitting out the pledge of allegiance either. Evidently I would fit right in with his constituents, who are hopping mad.) I also read the feature “She earns more, and that’s okay.” At times, that has been the situation at our family HQ here and I was interested in the experience of others. I’m also hooked on Steve Lopez’s column, especially his recent string of columns about — you guessed it — LA’s impenetrable traffic situation, which has engendered the paper’s Bottleneck blog (which here includes a picture of the 405 on Friday).
3. On a related note, there seems to be no home-page link on the Times’ site to its own Book Review. I searched up and down. That’s sad. In a way, I don’t blame them — I think we can guess the extent of people’s interest in the books section if they’re not even reading the paper — but in another way (the way that thinks of newspapers as needing to benefit the community) I think it should be there. If you click on “All Sections,” a sitemap comes up that links to Books, but there is no direct link to Books from the home page, and so nothing to make you think about using the Times site to read about Books. Even after using that link to go to the Books section, I can’t find a link to what I want to link to here: A review of the “new” Philip K. Dick book. The only way to find it, finally, is to do a search of the website — and this obscurity is perfectly ironic given that the piece is also about Dick’s desperate desire to be accepted in his lifetime as a mainstream writer.

I’m going to write about this review, and Dick, in my next post. But first here’s my conclusion with regard to the Times: the paper’s readership (as well as its staffing and coverage) is shrinking. Its online environment is encouraging, but lacking. So to truly “read” the L.A. Times, one needs to read both editions (else I would never have seen the Philip K. Dick piece, for one) — and it is asking us to do that in an era when we have less time than ever to read either edition at all.

So my outrage about mandated vaccines to address cooked-up “epidemics” isn’t going away, which I think is a good thing. Being outraged is healthy.

How many incidents of cervical cancer are there? Try fewer than 8.5 for every 100,000 women, as of 2002. (And the trend continues downward.) So the comparison to the polio vaccine doesn’t hold water. In 1952 alone, when polio infection was at its height just before Salk released his vaccine, there were 58,000 new cases of polio. There are fewer than 11,000 cervical cancer incidents a year, and our population has grown by 40%, from 157 million to 260 million.

So much for the “epidemic.”

I do enjoy the immediate response of many parents in Texas to this forced vaccination: the equivalent of “over my dead body.”