I’m not sure I feel like seeing that new “Fantastic Four” movie everyone is panning.

What I’d really like to see is the unaired “Fantastic Four” TV series from 1963.

My friend Jan Munroe (that’s him second from the right), actor extraordinaire (also skilled in mime, juggling, clowning, etc.), was on one of those late-night shows the other night that you’re not watching, in a bit with Kevin Bacon.

But I’m not sure that Jan, who was in a very big movie with Mr. Bacon, enjoyed being called a “bit player.”

Here’s the story.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from my friend Larry Eisenberg that Group Rep, the theatre near my house where he’s artistic director, was staging “The Winning Streak” by Lee Blessing, a play I’d never seen.

I emailed Larry, whom I’ve known and worked off and on with for just over 25 years:

Larry,

I know Lee Blessing.

And he now lives here in Los Angeles.

Has he come to see this, or been involved in the rehearsals?

If not, perhaps I can get him to come see it.

Lee

Now, mind you, Lee Blessing is one of the perhaps 40 American playwrights who make their living writing plays. (The rest are independently well-off or are primarily writing television or they’re in academia or they own marketing companies. Seriously.) His plays, including “A Walk in the Woods,” “Cobb,” “Going to St. Ives,” “Two Rooms” and about 30 others are constantly produced all over the world. He is one of our great, and widely known, playwrights.

So, when Larry and I had a little email back-and-forth where in a very gentlemanly way he hinted that perhaps it was inconceivable that I knew Lee Blessing, I understood. Because how could he know that I’ve been acquainted with Lee for about five years now because of our mutual affiliation with the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha?

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of seeing “The Winning Streak” at Larry’s theatre, in what I thought was a terrific production, with the playwright seated to my right, and to introduce Lee Blessing on stage while sharing with the audience the story of Larry’s friendly skepticism and then turning to Larry, pointing to Lee off to my left on-stage, and saying, “So Larry, I win.” Larry and everyone else in the packed house laughed.

Like all of Lee’s plays that I’ve seen, “The Winning Streak” proved to be moving, funny, and incredibly well-written, so well-written as to appear effortless. But it couldn’t have been. For one thing, it’s a two-character play — probably the single hardest sort of play to write well. A badly written two-character play is like a ping-pong match, with two opposing forces lobbing the ball back and forth; this is why so many of us write, instead, three-character plays, where the conflict can constantly shift. I said this to Lee (who, it should be noted, has written no fewer than five full-length two-handers), who didn’t know why he kept returning to this form — he just does.

To the theatre company’s great delight, Lee had agreed to do a talkback. He was generous with his time, putting in about an hour, thoughtful and funny in response to good questions, kind to bad questions, and not unduly harsh to the one guy in the front who kept asking moronic questions. (“Did you ever think of giving the old man’s ailments to the young guy in the play?” “Would you ever consider writing a play with someone?” — Meaning, no doubt, himself.)

Lee of course got the “How do you face the blank page?” question. He quipped, “Luckily, I have a computer” — but then answered seriously about playwriting. He started as a poet, then found that he had a facility for writing plays, and gradually the poetry fell away (I had a similar experience with writing fiction); playwriting is a form he knows how to express himself in. In addition to grasp of the form, he said he enjoys writing the first draft, but really enjoys writing the second draft — and that’s essential, because all plays are rewritten, and you’d better enjoy rewriting.

Afterward, Lee left to go grade papers for a course he’s teaching online. I chatted briefly with a friend who’s in my playwriting workshop, which was where we both had been just before the start of the play. The day was like having three playwriting practicums in a row — first, in my workshop, as we got to hear and talk about five plays-in-progress; then seeing Lee’s play; then hearing Lee talk about writing plays. It was a fun, thrilling, heady day spent with writers and experiencing their work.

The next day, today, I spent fixing sinks in my house.

I hate the whole “If you don’t agree, just de-friend me” movement. Better to form an argument and CONVINCE people of it than just to write them off.

On Friday night, I went to see the revival of “Bent” at the Mark Taper Forum with a friend, and was inspired on the way home to send out more of my plays, particularly the older ones. So today I spent a couple of hours reviewing all the plays I’ve written.

I found several that I’d completely forgotten about, including “Second Ice Age,” an unfinished full-length that, in retrospect, I now remember writing. I read it and found that it was not only pretty good (so far), it should be easy to finish, because in addition to the pages written, I’ve got a scene breakdown. So why didn’t I finish it? And would I be able to finish it now? I’m not the same person I was in January of 2008 — but have I changed so much that I won’t be able to recapture the rhythm and style and concerns of this particular play?

I found other unfinished plays in various stages of completion. Some of them have titles that make me want to finish them: “I, Teratoma” (a full-length that’s about two-thirds complete); “Ripped-Up Dog-Face Guy” (with a helpful note that it was inspired by a book my then-eight-year-old son was reading); and “Crotch Rot,” to name just a few.

I also found plays that have been staged that I’d forgotten about. And it was a pleasant surprise to come across my very first plays — “Guest for Dinner” and “Uncle Hem,” both written when I was an undergraduate.

All tolled, I’ve got 54 plays. Twenty-eight of them have been fully produced or workshopped in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, London, Arkansas, Ohio, and other places. I wish I’d kept better records; at this point, I have no idea where “Cloned Cat” was produced (I think it was northern New Jersey; maybe Hoboken), let alone “Man and Woman Set Their Sights” (I’m pretty sure Boston).

Of these 54, I’ve got no fewer than 23 marked for completion or revision. As I said, some of them seem like they’d be quick to finish or fix. Maybe I should start doing that.

Remember this guy?

Now we’ve got this guy.

One didn’t win. The other isn’t going to either. But in the meantime, they’re video stars. Of a sort.

1. I continue to marvel (pun intended) at how well-organized Comic-Con. About 150,000 people descend upon it, and the lines move smoothly, the exhibit hall seemed more navigable than in years, the programming was terrific, and even the weather cooperated. Suggestion for the future:  roving peanut sellers offering cold beer.
2. Again, about Comic-Con:  one theme this year was Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality. One panel asked the question “how close are we to creating the Holodeck?” with the answer being:  pretty close. (As long as we avoid the dim-witted Riker’s preferred imaginary jazz club, which writer-producers created in a renewed effort to give his character some, um, character, we should be fine.) Last year, I was impressed with a book I bought heavily featuring Augmented Reality, with the characters frequently leaping off the page. This year, several of the large-scale interactive adventures revolved around Virtual Reality, with visitors helping, say, Vasiliy Fet enlisting your help to fight vampires in modern-day New York. (Unfortunately, I got “infected” and he had to kill me at the end of the adventure.)
3. On Saturday, it rained pretty hard here in Los Angeles. That didn’t stop my wife and me from going to see A Flock of Seagulls in concert outside at the Starlight Bowl in the mountains of Burbank. (It stopped real seagulls, though, because none were sighted.) Only about 20% of the audience showed up, perhaps because of the Angeleno phobia of water from the sky. We just sat there with our big umbrellas and thoroughly enjoyed the show. At one point, I remarked over the quality of the fog machine — it must be enormous! look at all this fog! — before realizing that it was actual fog rolling over from the mountains. Which just added to the experience. The rain came and went and came and went; on the way back home, the sky cleared again, so I pulled over and put the top down.
4. As I had predicted, the next day the Los Angeles Times was filled with dire forecasts of collapsing infrastructure because of all the rain!
5. And then, as I had also predicted, the day after that the Times returned to its dire coverage of the drought!
6. Summation:  No matter what happens, it’s dire! Even though the precise predicament may change from day to day — or return to past themes, as necessary — we’re screwed no matter what. According to the news.
7. I know someone whose business is falling. I just checked his personal Facebook timeline and found 11 posts in the past 24 hours, nine in the day prior, and an average of 10 or more every day, each of them featuring wacky videos from across the globe. None of them about anything important. Correlation?
8. It continues to amuse me that Donald Trump is held up as some paragon of business. His lifelong business is bankrupt. (He’s really good at that one.) His more recent business is celebrity. (Another talent.) Neither qualifies you for any elected office.
9. Before posting this, I double-checked the meaning of the word “miscellany,” just to be sure.

“Somebody” had the notion to come to Raging Waters today, and now that somebody, unable even to find an open picnic table at which to lunch, is sitting atop a fake dock piling writing this post while awaiting his daughter’s return from a food line that would dwarf that found in a refugee camp.

Yes, it’s crowded.

Everyone and everyone is here. Even Thomas Pynchon, probably.

Earlier tonight, I saw a posting from a Facebook “friend” bemoaning that she’d been ripped off. In this extremely long post, she complained that she’d taken a chance on someone and given him a two-and-a-half hour “reading” after he paid her via PayPal, rather than through her own website, and that now PayPal had advised her the payment wouldn’t go through.

Yes, you guessed it, she offers her services as a psychic.

In this post, she went on about how she had had labored over that two-and-a-half-hour reading, how she had believed this person was of good character, and she trusted him, and how hurt and abused and taken-advantage-of she felt for trusting him.

To which I replied (and, of course, you saw it coming):  “But… didn’t you see this coming, as a psychic?”

Then she did something I never foresaw:  She “liked” my reply. Which was… baffling.

I just checked now and it’s all deleted. Her post, plus my comment. I guess she hadn’t foreseen how it might affect her business.