Last night, I got a new car. (A BMW 328 hardtop convertible.) When you get a new car, you want it to smell like a new car, so I waited while the dealership detailed the car again. I texted my wife to see if she’d like me to pick up her and our children for a drive. She texted back, “Sure.” About half an hour later, the car was ready, I did a final inspection, got the guy to link my iPhone with the car, then drove off.

It wasn’t too long before I was in Burbank picking up my wife and kids.They got in and I demonstrated how the hard top folds and slides into the trunk. I knew this would impress my wife; children are never impressed by anything any more. We’re driving around for a little bit, and my son, in the back, asks if we can put the top up. Of course, because it’s 7 p.m., it’s late November, and it’s actually cold in Los Angeles — or at least as cold as he thinks “cold” is. So I put the top up. Now we’re driving to my office to pick up some things I need and that I left there when I went to pick up the car. I start to notice something.

“What’s that smell?” I ask. “Is that my car?” Because now something smells very much like engine failure, or a forest fire, or both. Is it inside? Outside? All I know is, it’s all I can smell.

“That’s us,” my wife says. “Dietrich was making ramen noodles in the microwave but forgot to put any water in.”

“He almost burned the house down,” my daughter chimes in.

“Did not!” the accused calls out.

Now the stench is serious. I can barely breathe. I lower the windows. It doesn’t help. I drive home and head into the house, and sure enough, the entire house smells like Smokey Bear’s worst nightmare. My wife makes both kids scrub everything conceivable, while she takes the offending microwave oven outside and sandblasts it with radically dangerous kitchen solvents. (Hours later, outside, with a cold wind blowing all around it, it will still reek of bad campsite.) I run upstairs and open every door and window to try to vent the house — but, with visions of having to have every article of my wardrobe dry-cleaned, I close my walk-in closet door.

This morning I get up and find that the house still smells ashy. All this from one little ramen noodles tub microwaved with no water. Which really leaves me wondering just what’s in those ramen noodles, and in those containers. Then I think about my car. My new car. With the new-car smell. I go outside and get in. Oh, it’s got a new car smell all right — like someone’s been burning leaves inside, like someone has torched the Hindenburg all over again, and all the ash fell right here. To add insult to injury, it also rained. All night, and most of today. So now I’m thinking of getting my new car, my freshly detailed new car, detailed.

This was my dinner tonight. It was supposed to be oysters, and clam chowder, and maybe crab carapace fat. Instead, I had a Mediterranean crepe with greens and rosemary potatoes. Here’s how this happened.

Because I’m in San Francisco this weekend, I figured I’d like to try Swan Oyster Depot for dinner. I’d seen it on one of the Anthony Bourdain shows —  an episode of “The Layover,” to be exact, that focused on San Francisco. I’d been to some of the places featured, including The Tonga Room, but I’d never even heard of Swan Oyster Depot. Bear in mind:  I love oysters. And clam chowder. And crab carapace fat sounded just noxious enough that I’d like to try it just so I could tell people about it and watch them wince. So I got into my car and drove through thudding rain from the Westin I’m staying at 20 minutes into the city.

I found the restaurant with no problem, and even a parking spot only three blocks away. (A near-miracle in this city.) I even managed to claw two dollars in change out of my car to cover the parking meter. I got to Swan Oyster Bar and, as the program promised there would be, there was a line outside. Which was fine — except I needed the restroom. Coffee and water will do that to you. I cut through the line and inside and found that there is no restroom. So I went on my iPhone and found the nearest Starbucks (which has displaced McDonald’s as the nearest bathroom near you no matter where you are), went over there and availed myself of the facilities. When I came back, the line was considerably shorter. I thought, Wow, my lucky day — until the guy in front of me pointed out that the guy in front of him had the last place in line. How did he know that? Because the guy was holding a sign, provided by the restaurant, that said, “Last customer in line.” The guy in front of me said, “Look at it this way:  At least now neither one of us has to wait in line.” I considered arguing it out with the owner, a middle-aged Frenchman who just then pulled up in a van (I recognized him from the show), or maybe making a plea to his vanity — “I came all this way from Burbank because I saw you on this show” — but I suddenly realized I didn’t feel like eating there anyway. Swan Oyster Bar is just that — an oyster bar — with all the clatter of a soup kitchen. I realized instead that where I really wanted to be was that crepe place I had passed on the way here… so I headed over to the crepe place. Hence the dinner above, downed with a Stella Artois, to my great enjoyment.

Other things that happened while on this little escapade:

I passed a Thai massage place. It looked clean and legitimate. My neck was killing me, so I figured I’d get a massage. Their next appointment was 7 p.m. It was 5 p.m. I told them that no, I didn’t want to wait. So then I went to the Around Me app on my iPhone and found another Thai massage place. I headed over there. They told me that they were sorry, they didn’t have anyone available. By now, I was starting to feel like the fellow in the Monty Python sketch who keeps trying to order cheese from a cheese shop that evidently has no cheese. Do these places sell massages or not? By now, I was near the AMC movie theatre on Van Ness. It was only another three blocks, so I went over to see what was playing. I want to see “Lincoln,” but I want to take my family, so that was out. I want to see “Cloud Atlas,” but it wasn’t starting until 7:10; if I felt like waiting for anything for two hours, it would’ve been the massage. Plus the thought of getting out at 10:30 (it’s a long movie) and then walking back to my car in the rain and then getting back on the 101 South back to my hotel at that hour wasn’t proving too attractive. I had my finger poised on the ticketing touch screen to buy a ticket to the 5:30 screening of “Looper” when I realized that I no longer felt like seeing that movie. So I walked back out, having accomplished nothing.

At this point, I was starting to recall the novel “Hunger” by Knut Hamsun, in which the protagonist wanders the city on one failed mission after another while growing more bedraggled and forlorn. This may have been when my umbrella turned inside out in the gale-force wind.

I went back to the Around Me app to see what was nearby and found that now I was near a third massage parlor. I walked the three blocks down to this one and found that this one did not look legitimate. In fact, it looked like a great place to get knifed. Next door was a punk club. I have liked punk clubs in my lifetime, but I don’t want to patronize massage parlors that are next to them. So I trudged back to my car, stopping in at a Walgreens and a Tru Value hardware store along the way in search of a replacement umbrella and finding none. I kept what was left of my battered umbrella open as best I could, until finally I gave up and just decided to get wet.

Once back at the hotel, I decided I’d go sit in the jacuzzi. That would help my neck. So I changed into my swimsuit and walked down and found that the jacuzzi was out of order. The water was warm, but the jets wouldn’t perform. After I called the hotel maintenance man, he made a valiant effort to get them to work, ratcheting away at something beneath a trap door, then going back into the secret machine laboratory to work on various mechanical geegaws back there, and he was still working on it when I gave up on alternating between the pool and the still waters of the jacuzzi and came back up to the room.

Once up here, I did finally get my neck to stop aching. Two vodka-cranberries will do that.

On Saturday night I took my friend Richard to see The Monkees (what’s left of them) at the Greek Amphitheatre.

Part of my interest was in seeing Mike Nesmith. I like his voice and I like his songs. I’d seen him once before, with the other Monkees, about 20 years ago when they played Universal Amphitheatre (no idea what that’s called now — and now it’s been covered, so it’s probably not called “Amphitheatre”) and Nesmith ran on to do two songs, to thunderous applause, before going back to everything else he’d rather be doing than playing with his former bandmates.

Part of my interest was ghoulish:  seeing what they’re like without Davy Jones. (So shoot me. But hey — the Beach Boys in May were fantastic, minus two dead Wilson brothers. So I figured: who knows?)

So here’s how it was:  Odd. Have you ever been to a funeral where the family didn’t seem to miss the deceased? This was like that. Advance publicity had it that there would be a “tribute” to Davy Jones. If by “tribute,” his surviving bandmates meant that occasionally a song of his would come on and they’d leave the stage while the band played along to the video, and that they’d draft a completely tone-deaf woman from the audience to sing his biggest hit (“Daydream Believer”)  and that never once would they acknowledge his death or that they missed him, well, yeah, then there was a tribute. One could be excused for thinking that rather than being absent due to death, Davy had just failed to catch a cab in time.

There were oddities in the audience, too. Richard and I had the smack-dab last seats in the audience, Row D on the benches, way in the back, just slightly north of Mexico. We had these because if I was going purely for reasons of morbid curiosity, then I wasn’t paying more than 10 bucks a ticket. This low-low ticket price (less than the cost of some six packs) meant, though, that some people felt they could show up, drink heavily and behave themselves like they were at a drive-in movie in the 1970s. In front of us were two families — two sets of middle-aged parents, one with one girl of about 10 and the other with a girl of about 14 and another of about 10. Both sets of parents were drunk. I mean, smashed.  Obliterated. Like I haven’t been since I was… 24 at the most. Like you don’t get if you’re past 24, unless you’re Mickey Rourke. The guy in front of me, an English guy looking like an older, poorer, stubbled Phil Collins with a goatee and cheap eyewear, stumbled his way up to his seat, then later tottered way way way down the steps to get more of whatever they were drinking (something clear in a clear glass bottle — like moonshine), falling down on his way down, then repeated the effect later, then of course fell whammo into a whole section of the audience both those times and when he was trying to leave. The mother was in a similar state and kept trying to engage me in conversation until my frozen stare got her to direct her attentions to my friend instead. But the most appalling thing was the spectacle of how they treated their daughters. The guy sat to the right of her and throughout much of the show leaned in on her, caressing her long golden hair,  whispering in her ear, hugging her close to him, and bestowing all sorts of attention and favor; the mother did the same, from behind. The daughter basked in all this attention and played it for all it was worth. The other daughter, younger, brunette, to the left of the chosen one, got nothing. She sat there abjectly ignored. It’s nice that Mom and Dad got smashing drunk and showed everyone how they really feel about each of their  kids.

All of that was far more camaraderie than there was on stage. The song list was carefully parsed out:  First a Mike song, then a Mickey song, then a Peter song. (At least, before they ran out of Peter songs.) The first Peter song was truly wack-a-doodle, “Your Auntie Grizelda,” which was embarrassing in 1967 and has become even moreso as the millennium turned. The kindest thing one can say about it is that Peter Tork’s singing isn’t as bad as his dancing — and, yes, he did an odd skipping shuffle during the song. If I could somehow wipe this memory from my brain I would, except I like to think there are things to be learned from the embarrassing public displays of others. Here are two:

1. when it’s 45 years later, realize that 45 years have passed and that what was cute when you were 24 now looks like an Alzheimer’s episode; and
2. if you’re going to bring the kids out for your big public drunk, at least buy enough for the rest of the audience, because otherwise we’re not enjoying a bit of it and you’re just a boor.

I enjoyed many of the songs, and indeed, the concert overall. It was great to hear the Mike Nesmith songs played live this once; I doubt there’ll be another opportunity, and even if there is, it isn’t one I’ll be taking. Mike shone when singing and playing his songs; Micky is in good vocal form and really delivered his; and Peter Tork was there. But the band never played like a band — which is fitting, because in some ways, put together by chance as they were, they never really were one.

I’m fascinated by stories like this one, in the Wall Street Journal, with the headline  “Top Ohio Republicans Ask Why Party Lost.” Here are some of their theories — and from my reading, none of these theories seem restricted to just Ohio:

• A “failed voter-turnout operation”
• “An unforeseen surge in African-American voters”
• “An unexpectedly weak GOP ground game, particularly in the final days.”
• “Infighting within the state party that they say crippled the campaign’s organization.”
• “…the Obama administration’s auto-industry bailout, combined with a summer ad barrage, left a decisive imprint that Mr. Romney never shook off.”

There are more of these — my favorite being Karl Rove’s claim that the Obama campaign “suppressed the vote” by, well, running the sort of negative campaigns that Mr. Rove usually likes to fund himself. But I have an alternative theory, one that I don’t see the GOP spending a lot of time thinking about:  When the majority of voters got a good hard look at their candidate, and his policies, they decided they liked the other guy more.

Sometimes, things really are as simple as they seem.

If you’re surprised by this, you are not alone.

Four vast ironies that occurred to me today when thinking about yesterday’s elections.

1. In 2010, California voters passed an Open Primary initiative that means that the top two finishers in any primary, regardless of party, go into the general election. The intention of backers was that more moderates would run and be elected. Both the Republican and Democratic parties here fought it, but it became the law. One of the proponents was then-Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, a Republican sometimes on the outs with his own party. Net result in yesterday’s election:  Instead of a more balanced Legislature, Democrats picked up seats, leading to a 2/3 majority in both the state Senate and Assembly. That 2/3 majority gives Democrats enormous power and renders Republicans completely superfluous. And Maldonado, who was running for Congress, lost. “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.
2. Proposition 30, which raises taxes to help balance the state budget, was put on the ballot by Governor Jerry Brown expressly because Republicans won’t vote for any tax increase, and passing a tax increase requires a 2/3 majority. Democrats now have that majority, ironically, which the lack thereof necessitated the proposition. Also, the proposition, which was positioned largely as “save our schools,” returns little money to schools — it just eliminates further cuts.
3. On a national level, the one thing we were all led to believe about Mitt Romney was that he was a dispassionate numbers guy — a guy who could read the data and make sound decisions. That was his story at Bain, and at the Olympics, and in Massachusetts. Here’s what we found out today:  That his internal polling — and his internal polling alone; nothing objective — consistently showed him ahead, that he and his campaign team absolutely believed that all the polling to the contrary was undercounting Republicans, and that he was 100% going to win. (Indeed, today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Romney never wrote a concession speech because he never believed he’d need one.) In other words:  He completely misread the data, and was operating from bad data clouded by emotions. So… he wasn’t even good at the one thing he was theoretically really good at.
4. On a similar note, Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and all their money couldn’t buy any love. Much as Meg Whitman found out when she ran for governor in California, you can buy ad space, but you can’t always buy votes. But that’s not the surprise. The surprise is how thoroughly revealed Rove is as someone completely out of touch with the electorate. The svengali behind the Bush near-win in 2000 and the Bush probably-won in 2004 does not understand 2012 at all. In advance, he is sure that young people are going to stay home, that Obama supporters are disenchanted, and that Romney is going to thread together an electoral victory out of key battleground states in some complicated 3-4-2 formula (or whatever it was) that he talks about a lot on air and in print. Instead: young people turn out in large numbers (numbers consistent with 2008, showing that that year wasn’t a fluke), Obama voters are charged up (by the prospect of Romney/Ryan), and Romney takes all of… one of those battleground states. (North Carolina, the only state to switch sides from 2008.) Which means that Rove was wrong, wrong, wrong, and some of us don’t have to worry about his “genius” any more.

Like everyone else, I’m glad it’s over, and like about half of us, I’m delighted with the outcome. If you’re among the other half and you’re not so delighted:  I understand. Believe me. I have been over there many times, and it doesn’t feel good. I will say that I was glad to hear the president say he’d like to meet with Mitt Romney to discuss ways to bring people together, I was glad to hear Romney’s gracious concession, and I was also glad that John Boehner has, in words at least, offered to work  with Democrats to avoid the fiscal cliff. There are all sorts of budget cuts I’d like to see put in place, as well as tax loopholes closed and tax changes made, so I’m hopeful a deal can be made — because I’d rather this work were done with a scalpel than with a chainsaw. And I’m reminded that surgery is performed by a team of professionals working together.

They just called Vermont for Obama. With zero percent of the vote counted. MAN, it couldn’t get any closer!

This Saturday night is Moving Arts’ 20th anniversary party. When are we going to have another 20th anniversary party? Never. It’s a one-time event.

That’s just one reason I’m hoping that if you’re in Los Angeles tomorrow night, you’ll join us. (Click here to get tickets, or more information.)

Here are some other reasons:

• There’s great food and drink and entertainment
• It’s going to be a lot of fun
• It’s incredibly reasonable! (Just 25 bucks.)
• I would love to see you there
• What Moving Arts does is really important

Since our founding in 1992, we’ve produced hundreds of new plays. We’ve launched a lot of new plays (and a lot of new playwrights) in that time, racking up awards and a significant body of work. We were the first to produce many of these playwrights, many of whom have gone on to illustrious careers. And we started doing that at a time when practically no one was doing strictly new plays.

Moving Arts is more than a theatre, or a theatre company: It’s a mission. It’s a mission that says that stories from our times must be supported and produced. Not just workshopped, or read, or developed. Produced.

As founding artistic director, I’m incredibly proud of our work, and of the talented people running the theatre and the talented people doing good work that moves audiences to laugh and to cry. Please come out and join me in hoisting a glass to all of that – and to what promises to be our best season ever.

I hope to see you on Saturday night.

p.s. Can’t be there in person? Join us in spirit! Click here to make a donation. Thank you.

As I noted two posts ago, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my theatre company, Moving Arts. (And hey — you should join us this Saturday night for our awesome big celebration! Come say hi.) What’s even scarier?

Today is my 25th wedding anniversary. Yes, my wife and I got married on Halloween. In costume. With a couple hundred party guests, also in costume. Guests were invited to “A masquerade ball (plus wedding).” My wife told me she knows where the photos are — hey, it was a pre-digital photo era — so if she does indeed find them, I’ll post some here.

As with the theatre company, where every year hasn’t been easy but hey, we’re still here, it’s been similar with the marriage. The highs have been very high and the lows, well, we got through them. We’ve got a pretty good life right now; I love her a lot, but more importantly, I enjoy her company. (Most of the time.) If you can find somebody you still think is clever and funny 30 years on, you must’ve done something right. We’ve also got three children I enjoy, even when they don’t adequately rinse off those dishes, and a wide circle of friends and family willing to come over and entertain us on occasion. The roof doesn’t leak, the bills get paid, there’s always food on the table, everybody’s health is mostly pretty good, our shelves are stuffed with books read and waiting to be read and with games waiting to be played again and again. It’s a good life.