The past several months I’ve been watching apocalyptic disaster films with my four-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter. We started with “Last Man on Earth,” in which Vincent Price stars as the eponymous enemy of vampiric zombies (or zombie-like vampires) who slowly and ineptly stalk him at night. For the kids, the most memorable part is when Price finally finds some companionship in the form of a bedraggled poodle — until he discovers that said poodle is also infected and he has to put it down. (My daughter especially seems to think the movie is about the poodle.) On a scare level, even given that the film features nominally flesh-eating undead, the film rates a zero even for young children, who endlessly roam the house muttering, “Morgan… come out…” in a caricature of one of the scenes.

After we had exhausted the charms of this odd little film — in the end, Price winds up battling what seem to be mutant humans who are introduced far too late — I figured we’d move on to “The Birds.” Still somewhat scary, still in a sense apocalyptic. Not having seen “The Birds” in 30 years or more, I had forgotten two things:

1. That for the first half it’s a tedious romantic comedy built around the misadventures of a man who wants to buy lovebirds and the woman determined to deliver them to him;
2. That the ending is lame — and as you find out from the bonus DVD feature about that ending, evidently Hitchcock or the studio or both decided that the true ending would have been too expensive to film… so they just didn’t.

Still, for that brief period of the movie (half an hour?) when the birds are truly on the attack, the kids (this time including my 15-year-old son) were held in its grip. Apparently, birds can kill schoolteachers, pluck out farmers’ eyes, peck through roofs, blow up gas stations and, I guess, if truly pissed, unleash a torrent of birdshit all over you. All of this made an impression.

What is more powerful than flocks of antagonistic birds? Try a swarm of killer bees, as seen in “The Swarm.” This time, there was action throughout, starting with the murder-by-bee of a picnicking mother and father while the son helplessly watched from within the car. Now the kids were riveted. Bees are evidently far more destructive than zombies, birds, or whatever election horseplay Karl Rove can cook up: Bees can derail trains, blow up nuclear power plants, and decimate Houston.

So, what’s next? We watched “The Omega Man,” but this didn’t go over so well, I think because of the testosterone-amped Charlton Heston’s character. After the relatability of Vincent Price’s zombie chores — find them, stake them, haul them to the dump, burn them, much like cleaning the kitchen and taking out the trash — Chuck Heston’s zombie war was clearly high fantasy. It just didn’t carry the threat of dad getting really mad.

So lately we’re watching “Speed Racer.” For one thing, since the lease on my Mustang is up, I think it’s going to be my next car. For another, Spritle and Chim Chim are clearly the heroes of the show — something my kids relate to. (While they don’t hide in the trunk and jump out at key moments to save their older brother, they do like to get into my wife’s minivan through the hatch.)

Once “Speed Racer” is exhausted, I think we’ll move on to other forms of disaster movies, starting with “The Poseidon Adventure.” Or, if we want to see a disaster of truly magnificent proportion, we’ll just rent the recent remake.

Well, I’ve checked Funky Winkerbean every day since, and there’s been no further mention of “the day I’d never forget” (and no further appearance of that character), so I’m chalking it up to an acid trip by the artist.

In the meantime, I’ve talked myself out on the Funky junk — brought it up in my class at USC on Monday night, brought it up last night in my workshop (and I think I’ll spare my Saturday workshop), and generated alarmed stares from my family, who somehow don’t see the incredible importance of correctly depicting the timeline of comic books as cultural markers.

But it is important. Verisimilitude is part of what lends power to literature. Art doesn’t have to be literal — witness Guernica — but it benefits from being specific. Funky may not be art (clearly), but it even fails as pop art because its interior universe is so wrong that everything is called into question.

It’s better to get it right. Asking the right questions — who, what, when, where, why, how — of the universe you’re creating leads you to new and interesting answers. Not asking the questions leads to cliche, sentimentality, and weakness.

Didn’t realize I had so much in common with Funky Winkerbean. I can relate to this origin story, from the 10/15 Sunday strip: “After (reading that first comic book)… the world was never the same!”

Except certain things about the execution of this strip fill me with doubt. For one thing, the comic he’s rhapsodizing about doesn’t belong with the other comics it’s shown with.

The comic he’ll never forget — Action #242 — debuted in July of 1958 and introduced both Brainiac and the bottle city of Kandor. But shown alongside it is an issue of Archie’s Mad House — and that title didn’t debut until 1959. I know that sometimes comics distribution was spotty and slow, and perhaps the Action #242 hung around unbought, but how to explain the Captain Marvel #1, which debuted in 1968 — a full 10 years later?

You’ll also note that the cover price of Captain Marvel #1 was 12¢. In 1968, comics went to 15¢ (making this one of the last 12¢ issues). When had they last been available for 10¢? Try 1962. The cash register in panel five shows a sale of 10¢, which is correct for Action #242, but again, it’s displayed alongside a comic from 10 years later that would have cost more.

In the background of the same panel, one sees a poster for the community Halloween Party, meaning that this is set in October. The issue of Captain Marvel shown would have been distributed in August — so this particular issue would have been pulled and replaced twice in this timeframe.

So… what year is it supposed to be here? Or are we supposed to think that the drugstore (and its distributor) kept comics lingering on the same spinner rack for Ten Years?

Also, whether it’s the 50’s, or the 60’s, what era is this kid’s weird clothing ensemble from? One could charitably say late 60’s / early 70’s, in vogue with the then-counterculture, except in panel 3 it looks as though his jeans are either cuffed or rolled. (Rather than no cuffs, and flared.)

Along a similar line, note the druggist’s eyeglasses. They don’t look 50’s. Or 60’s. They appear to be from the 1970’s.

Why is any of this important?

Because all of the details are wrong, they make the entire story unbelievable. This mishmash of bad facts leads me to only two possible conclusions: The narrator is either a liar manipulating an unseen audience member, or he’s seriously brain-damaged. Ordinarily, I don’t follow Funky Winkerbean. But now I’m going to, just to see which theory is true.

The third potential scenario would take us outside the strip: that the cartoonist didn’t care enough to get it right.

Think it’s obvious what you’re saying (or writing)? Read these instructions for surviving a terrorist attack.

This week several of the playwrights I work with started to worry. Again.

I understand. I do. I was briefly paralyzed by writer’s block in 1991. Every play I was writing not only was not as good as Beckett or Ionesco or whomever, it wasn’t even as good as the last play I’d written. My interior refrain, “If only I was still writing that other play. That was a good one….”

You’ve got to set aside the worry. It’s a distraction. If you’d like, after you’ve done some writing, you can pick it back up. But at least write yourself out first.

As Jordan E. Rosenfeld says in this month’s Writer’s Digest, “Show me a famous painter who went to the canvas and came away with something like the Mona Lisa. Art doesn’t happen that way. If you want to get off the Procrastination Express, resist the temptation to revise and edit as you go.”

I’d add to that, set your worry aside while you’re in the process of writing.

How did I stop worrying about the play I wasn’t writing and focus on the one I was? By telling myself I wasn’t leaving the room until I had finished the draft, and by telling myself that I was free to let this play be as good or as bad as it was going to be.

The play I wound up with was actually pretty good. It got produced soon thereafter in both Los Angeles and New York and both times got huge laughs. (Good thing: It’s a comedy.) Is it “Waiting for Godot”? No. But it was never going to be. In fact, it was never going to be anything at all until I allowed myself to write it.

If you’ve been anywhere near YouTube, you’ve probably see this oaf in Brooklyn who does improvised rants from the secure comfort of his home rabbit hole, which desperately needs a visit from the Queer Eye guys. Bad enough that people forward his videos — which “take on” immigrants, bad service, terrorism, and so forth, with stale diatribes packed with profanity. Worse that he’s gotten so much publicity — up to and including being featured in yesterday’s story on NPR about Google’s purchase of YouTube.
(Much as I loathe adding to “The Big Man’s” web traffic, here’s the URL. It’s my understanding that enraged postal employees especially forward these videos.)

This morning I saw a video by someone doing a riposte that, as crude and obvious as it is, made me laugh. Here it is.

I dutifully forwarded that to a good friend who is an unraged (not en-raged) postal employee, and one who suffers from getting the original inflammatory racist videos forwarded to him. Here’s his own low-tech rant:

“Hey, this is The Old Guy from South Jersey, and I wanna tell ya about method actors. They stink! If ya wanna act, make it look like acting. What the f#@< is all this crap about looking like you're not acting? I pay my money to rent a movie and some a$$h@le is on the screen acting like he's not acting. What the hell is that about?"

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

I used to like John McCain
But now he gives me a pain.
He was a Bush critic
But it seems to this cynic
He’s switched his positions for gain.

His opposition to torture
Is open to forfeiture
For embracing Gitmo George.

He’ll reform campaign finance
Unless if by some chance
There’s a banquet at which he can gorge.

And suddenly the religious right
Is dandy in his new light
Of forgetting when they were his scourge.

Nobody should misconstrue
His new affection for W.
John’s running for president,
Meaning values once resident
Have all been flushed down the loo.

–Lee Wochner

Trust yourself and follow your characters. If you have strong characters, they will speak to you. Listen to them.

If you don’t listen to them — to their inner thoughts, to the subconscious that drives them and that even they cannot knowingly heed — then you fill their lives with something less than a truthful portrayal, and then you are writing melodrama.

It’s hard to listen. It’s easier to talk. The same goes for playwriting. It’s easier to be wilfull and stuff words where they don’t belong and where they will sound hollow. It is even easier to throw up your arms in defeat. It’s harder to be open. But it’s also better.

Comedy or drama, the strength of a play is in its veracity. You get there by listening hard and letting go.

Playwriting doesn’t work like mathematics.

In math, two plus one equals three.

In playwriting, having an extra character often leads to a negative outcome.

That’s because a character you don’t need – a character that isn’t essential to the scene, that doesn’t bring any additional insight or conflict or entertainment value – winds up detracting from the scene. Worse, that extra character cheats other, important characters out of additional opportunities.

One of my students was writing a smart, fresh and funny play about a hometown guy who finally has a chance with the high-school princess. For reasons we don’t know, she’s returned home from the big city and is seeing with new eyes that our protagonist has qualities we all admire: a humble, centered, decency. We sympathize with him when the other mechanics at work tease him and root for him when the pretty woman’s interest in him arouses the envy of others. When he takes her out for dinner, he’s honest about what he can afford and what he can’t. In every way, he reflects simple human goodness.

Imagine how disappointed I was, then, when we read the scene where we learn why the prom queen has returned: Our man isn’t in the scene. Instead, we learn through the introduction of a new character, the woman’s father, that she has returned to care for him as he recedes farther and farther into Alzheimer’s disease. We get a full scene of his ranting about Commies or Nazis or insurance investigators and such, and her trying desperately to deal with it. This is followed by a scene with her relating what just happened to our hero, her new would-be boyfriend, and his sympathizing and sharing his own world of hurts.

It may have accomplished the goal of explaining – but nobody goes to the theatre for an explanation. They go for entertainment and they go for enlightenment.

When I asked the class to restructure the scene minus the father, it didn’t take long for everyone to realize we didn’t need that character. With the father in the scene, we miss our protagonist, we’re subjected to a scene that fills us with grave doubts (we all had a hard time buying the reality of the father’s ranting), and the end result is a scene of confession and sharing – not exactly high drama.

But without the father, and with the scene rebuilt to focus around the two leads, we were back in the realm of dramatic tension. Our hero goes to pick up the woman for a date but she’s flustered and apologetic – something’s wrong and she can’t go. She tries to put on a brave face, but our hero pulls the facts from her (which by the way highlights his compassion and all his other positive traits.) Her father’s sick – it’s really bad. It can’t be that bad, he says. (And here, as we hear only glimmerings of the old man’s condition, our mind is free to fill in something even more stark than we would have seen.) There is tension in what is not said – her real problem – until it is said; there is tension in what is not shown – the extent of the old man’s dementia; and there is tension in what this means for the relationship on the doorstep of what would have been their first date.

Any character that doesn’t add to the tension somehow or other in the play is a character that winds up weakening that tension. Sometimes when you add one, you’re actually subtracting from the whole.

My Shatner moment, during the Orlando’s Joint recording session.

Quintessential actor, or Honeybaked Ham? You decide.