About two hours ago, a park ranger found a human head in a bag on a trail near the Hollywood sign.

Rumors of this sort of thing  have often been associated with Griffith Park’s past, but for the area surrounding the Hollywood sign it’s the first that I know of.

Favorite line from the story:  “The detectives are treating the case as a possible homicide.” Well, I think we can rule out suicide.

Or is it the two actors I’ve worked with who turn up in this video tribute?

Coincidentally, I just found out that the OFFICIAL video to this song (the Lionel Richie version) prominently features my friend Brendan Broms. (He’s the young guy in the scarf.) Brendan and I have been doing theatre together for 15 years now. (And we’re now trying to get a new play up — if I can just write the damn thing.) Here’s that version, with Brendan, but in the meantime, I’m wondering how many other friends are in other versions of “Hello.”

In my circle of friends (and with readers of this blog), my antipathy for “The Descendants” is well-known. So, of course, I got an email from a sympathizer aghast that “The Descendants” won a Golden Globe tonight for “Best Picture.”

Here’s what I think:

It’s good to bear in mind that “Citizen Kane” lost the Oscar to “How Green Was My Valley” (a film now more obscure than Charles Foster Kane’s sled).

And it’s also good to know that one year, the Nobel committee was tied between giving the prize for Literature to Beckett or Ionesco — until finally one guy just switched his vote to Beckett so they could go home.

I once won an award for a play that I wasn’t sure was the best in the festival; the following year, in the same festival, I lost, when I know I had the best play.

Awards:  meaningless.

Except as marketing.

And “The Descendants” still stinks.

I have a new play, “Dead Battery,” in next month’s iteration of “The Car Plays,” produced by Moving Arts in conjunction with the La Jolla Playhouse down in San Diego. Here’s a nice bit of press we just got from the San Diego Union Tribune (with a focus, naturally, on the San Diego-affiliated talent). I’m thrilled to have Paul Stein (I knew him when he was Paul Nicolai Stein) directing one of my pieces again; he’s a gifted director, and someone I always learn something from. (I’m always on the lookout for talented people I can learn from.) And I’m very proud of the ongoing success of the little theatre company that some of us founded back in 1992. We didn’t know it would be our legacy — we just wanted to do new plays — but when you’ve hit your 20th anniversary, I guess that’s what it is. I’m grateful to Paul for the car plays concept, and to everybody at Moving Arts who keeps our engine humming.

My friend Jason Neulander, a director and writer in Austin, shares two of my great passions:  comics and theatre. Here’s the latest very cool thing that Jason has done:  turned his radio play “Intergalactic Nemesis” into a graphic novel, which he then turned into — a live theatre piece combining elements of a stageplay, foley sound effects akin to radio drama, and visuals from the graphic novel.

In the 1990’s, I got to work with a “non-radio radio” group called Smugly Absurd several times, producing their shows at my theatre, Moving Arts; they were (and are) amazing actors, able to do numerous voices, ably accompanied by our late friend David Krebs, a premiere foley artist who could sonically convince you that you were boarding a train, scuffling in the dirt, taming a horse, or otherwise sharing in the adventures. I just wish we’d thought to produce a graphic novel and build that into it, too.

I’ve been to many a political celebration (or “meet-and-greet,” as with my Congressman, last Sunday) and there’s usually alcohol, and sometimes cigars. Which begs the question, what’s camp Romney been doing about this, given the Mormon sanction against such vices. I was especially interested in this, given that I have some Mormon friends. So I found this explainer from Slate especially illuminating.

If “you” were digitized into something more beautiful and completely false.

Praise the demiurge, this infographic has been updated. Thank you, sci-ence.org.

When you haven’t won a contest yet, and a recent poll now has you running behind a fictional character, you might want to drop out.  That means you, Jon Huntsman.

As of this moment, Rick Perry has .7% of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary. I didn’t even run, and I’ve probably got .6%.