That’s how you might feel if you strained too hard to pick up Thor’s hammer.

But how would you feel if you found out it was rigged?

Well, I’ve broken in my new writing office at home. Just finished the first draft of a new play in here. While running downstairs periodically to check on a big complicated soup I’m making.

I watched the first Democratic presidential debate of the season last night, with my daughter, who is 17 and a soon-to-be first-time voter. Her insights into the debate were somewhat different than mine. To my ear, it took Hillary Clinton all of 10 seconds to start pandering on issues that she knows she couldn’t affect if she were made president for life (such as mandating profit-sharing by corporations). My daughter, in addition to cheering on free college tuition and railing against what I know she was mentally characterizing as “handouts” (she’s rather conservative on some issues; one of her brothers called her a fascist the other day), she had this to say about the candidates: “They’re all so olllddd. Lincoln Chafee looks like a turkey. And Hillary dyes her hair.” Which reminded me that, eons ago, Millicent Fenwick, a female candidate for Senate in New Jersey, lost her race purely because she was photographed smoking a cigar. (Far ahead of her time, Ms. Fenwick.) With about 15 minutes left in the debate, it occurred to me that while Emma will be a voter in next year’s presidential race (she’s already registered), she won’t be eligible to vote in the primary, which in California is in June, because her birthday is in July. So, to some degree, the debate would have been pointless to her. The instant I related this to her, she picked herself up and left the room.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be looking to do a quick polish on that play, then I have a meeting I’m looking forward to, and then later I’m off to Knott’s Scary Farm (!) with said daughter, her ominously silent boyfriend, my elder son and my good friend Trey. Every year for more than 15 years now, Trey and I partake in haunted mazes. A couple of years ago, I swore off Knott’s Scary Farm (our usual haunt) because it had grown so colorless, but last year Universal Studio’s Haunted Halloween was so over-saturated with shuffling bodies standing in line for hours desperately trying to get elsewhere that you’d have thought the zombie apocalypse had begun. Given that, plus a rave review for the reportedly massive upgrade that Knott’s has done this year, we’re back at Knott’s Berry Farm. So: not sure if there’ll be a post here tomorrow. I hope I’ll be getting the bejeezus scared out of me in an entertaining fashion.

Just announced: Playboy is nixing fully nude photos from its magazine.

In other news, “Car and Driver” will now show only drivers.

Here’s that video from Colbert about nobody wanting to become Speaker of the House. It’s still funny (and still kinda not funny).

The other night on a friend’s recommendation I recorded Stephen Colbert’s show to catch a bit he did on the multi-car pileup that is the House Speaker’s succession. (Or, I guess, secession. For two men in a row.)  The piece was indeed hilarious.

I wound up watching all of the show (although fast-forwarding a rather empty interview with James Corden who, yes, can sing and dance, but who seems to have nothing to say) and then came upon the musical guest:  Halsey. I recognized her song, “New Americana,” which is at #95 on the U.S. charts but constantly on my radio, and decided to learn a little more about her. I looked her up and learned that she’s 21, grew up about 30 miles away from my birthplace, and is biracial, bisexual, and bipolar. And then it occurred to me that, even 10 years ago, any one of those three would have disqualified you for any number of things; now you can be on network TV and mention all of it in your official biography.

Meanwhile, the GOP is acting far crazier than any of the bipolar people I know.

A friend of mine just posted this on Facebook:

ME: There was another shooting.
THEM: I’ve heard about that already.
ME: No, you’re thinking of the first shooting this week.
‪#‎America‬

So that’s how I heard about this latest shooting. It happened in Texas, where I hear they’re armed to the teeth in their own defense, so I’m not quite sure how this could have happened.

Oh, well. I guess it’s all just the natural order of things. We shouldn’t worry about it, because clearly there’s nothing anyone can do.

Yesterday I was leaving a meeting in the city next to mine, Glendale, at 5:30. The trip to my house is only 7.8 miles, but at 5:30 on a weeknight it may as well be 70 miles as traffic floods the 134 freeway, the main thoroughfare linking the two. A quick glimpse down onto the freeway below the ramp I was approaching confirmed the worst:  cars backed up like carpenter ants in the rainforest. With that sort of automotive buildup, a trip that’s normally 15 minutes could take 45 or longer, and I really really needed to be home by 6ish so that I could take my daughter to this much-loved theatrical event.

So I turned on Waze.

Waze, as you probably already know, is a community-sourced traffic app that directs you along the best route. At times it has saved me crucial time over Siri (the default of Apple’s Maps, which I run through my phone) or over my own idea of how to go. Last year, the only reason my friend Paul was able to get me to Philadelphia airport on time was because Waze foresaw a terrible traffic jam and redirected us. At other times, Waze leads me through more treacherous swamps than the route to becoming the next Speaker of the House. Yesterday, I turned it on and it directed me to make an immediate left — “get away from the 134!” seemed to be the command — and head on down to the 5, which turned out to be great advice. I made it home with time to spare.

Unfortunately, when I was stopped at a red light en route and saw a message come up, I hit what I thought at a glance was a dismissal button for an alert. In actuality, it was an inducement to change the voice of Waze, from whatever nice lady had been directing me… to the voice of Jay Leno.

I need to switch this back pronto.

Now, I don’t mind Jay Leno (what do I care?), but I’ve never been a fan. I don’t think he’s funny. And I find I like him even worse when he’s telling me where to go and how to get there.

When he first came on, he advised me to check out other cars around me owned by people who are even bigger losers than I am. Thanks. That’s hilarious.

And then there’s this repeated bit of advice from the Jayster:  “Make a left, pal.”

I don’t like being called “pal.” Especially by people I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of Jay Leno as snotty — I haven’t given him much thought at all — but when he’s reduced to a voice, bereft of whatever facial charm he may have, he sure sounds that way. This is not a good vocal tone when traffic in Los Angeles (or anywhere!) already has you feeling like you want to ram other people with your car.

Even worse was when he started calling me “Sparky.” “Merge right, sparky!”

But even even worse:  now, again, minus the clamor of a late-night talk show and band and drummed up audience surrounding him, I noticed that Jay Leno has a rather low voice (often represented as squeaky by impressionists, but not on Waze), and a thicker Boston accent than I knew. So I also found him to be hard to hear and hard to understand. Whomever Lady Waze is, I can hear her and understand her. Jay Leno? In addition to not understanding how people find him funny, I now just can’t understand him.

A quick online search reveals that the Jayman (how do you like that, sparky?) will be voicing this only for a month. So I could invest the time in disabling him and returning to the delightful voice that guided me without having an attitude about it. Or I could wait three weeks until, thankfully, Jay just goes away.

Just as he did with NBC.

Which means… even though we think he’s gone, he may be back.

I guess I need to disable him.

I can’t ever keep them straight, so let’s see:  Is today a Jewish holiday?

Nothing’s more important than fame, and how much like us the famous are, in so many ways. So let’s find out:  Which celebrities have your disease?

And, most importantly, is Abe Vigoda still alive?

The ancients would have killed for such easy information.

I’m usually reading a novel and a non-fiction book at the same time (as well as, of course, comic books), but right now I’m between novels.

I finished “Nora Webster” by Colm Toibin (which I completely recommend; it’s one of the most deeply felt and deeply moving novels I’ve read, on a par with “Anna Karenina” by that Tolstoy guy), and then, unfortunately, read “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen, which seemed both shallow and false (and occasionally badly written).

After reading two novels newly bought while ignoring the stacks towering alongside my bed and overfilling the bookcase next to it, I had the idea that perhaps I should pick a book out of there and read it. Because, y’know, they are stacked and placed there to be read.

Except a closer examination revealed that I had already read almost all of them. Except, that is, for “The Nightclerk.”

“The Nightclerk” is a “cult classic” from 1965 that seems to promise, judging by the cover image and the jacket copy, to be a forerunner of “A Confederacy of Dunces.” To wit:

“J. Spenser Blight — ‘the fattest man in American literature’ — whiles away the long night hours with a number of passionate pursuits: reading twenty-five-cent paperback erotic epics; cutting up old magazines; and, above all, reminiscing about his impossibly beautiful and equally corrupt wife Katy. Blight dreams of his long-lost travels with Katy around the world to exotic erotic climes, recalls how he rescued her from the clutches of a Hollywood bogus mogul, and dwells fondly and at length on Katy’s subsequent career as a caterer to the sex-fantasies — the comic-trip erotic desires — of customers Blight brings home to her. …”

Read closely, and you’ll find the problem I had fully identified by page 21: no forward motion. Even in the synopsis, Blight is “whiling away time” while dreaming and reminiscing. If I’m going to read a book that involves dreaming and reminiscing, its author should be named Proust. That, plus the tiresome writing style — acid-induced late-60’s quasi-hipness — sent me back in search of a novel.

So now I believe I’m going to try again, for the third time in recent years, to read the expanded version of “Creation” by Gore Vidal. I read the original, Herculean-length version, when I was 19; the Atlas-sized version has thus far daunted me. That, plus with 30-odd additional years of reading wisdom behind me, I now see that Vidal doesn’t know how to set a scene well or give dimension to his characters.

So, perhaps I won’t be reading that. Which means, I’m open to input. Because I believe I’ve read every other novel in the house. At least every one that doesn’t have dragons in it. (Those belong to other tenants.)

I’ll give you a hint: She’s running for President.