I’ve just learned that, Bret Harte, a friend of mine in the local theatrical community, was killed in a car crash. A little more than a year ago, Bret directed me in a community theatre production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. He was an extremely affable guy, remarkably mature for his years, and he knew how to get a versimilitudinous performance even from my flamboyant ass. What mortifies me is that he was so young. Younger than me. Probably nicer than me.

In fact, Bret was one of the people who inspired me to write and direct Wrestling an Alligator.

Bret’s death reminds me again just how goddam cruel the universe is. He didn’t have to go like this. Didn’t deserve to go like this. So if you’ll excuse me if I refrain from posting for at least half a day, while I get over this, I hope you can understand.

El Segundo has once again demonstrated that it is one of the most ridiculous places on the planet. As David Kipen reports on KCRW’s Overbooked, the El Segundo City Council has rejected a request from the library to name two meeting rooms after Agatha Christie and Jack London. The reasons? Christie isn’t American and London, by way of being a socialist, isn’t American enough.

Councilman John Gaines was the man who made the first objection. Mayor Kelly McDowell was the whiz kid who considered Jack London too politically charged. “I don’t want to make a political statement by naming a room, period,” said Gaines. “I don’t want to use one whose politics, in my view, weren’t in line with American ideals.”

Well, if foreigners are unacceptable, why is one area of the library named the Matsui International, Inc. Meeting Room? Matsui International, Inc. was founded in 1911, a subsidiary of Matsui Shikiso Chemical Co., Ltd., which is located at Address 64, Kamikazan, Sakuradani-cho, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto 607, Japan.

(via Moby Lives)

Norman Spinrad has demonstrated a remarkable senility with his latest column in Asimov’s, claiming that the only reason that a “socialist novel” like The Iron Council was published in the States was because it was Book Three in a trilogy. (Never mind the American coverage from Michael Dirda in the Washington Post or Gerald Jonas in the New York Times that might have had a hand in the novel’s awareness.) Fortunately, The Mumpsimus is there to call him on his whiny, self-serving horseshit.

All right. We admit it. Against our better judgment, we’ve been taken in by Battlestar Galactica. We dig the gritty feel. But, most importantly, we welcome a speculative fiction environment that has authoritative female presidents (played by Mary McDonnell, no less!), female fighter pilots who play by their own rules without coming across as token aggro-chicks and, from our inveterate male perspective, two very hot Cylon chicks. How often do we see developed women in these shows that aren’t horrible Katharine Hepburn clones? Not much, we’d say. We also like the executive officer — a raging alcoholic that’s an interesting cross between James Carville and Dick Cheney. The people on board this ship drink, smoke, have sex, and even jerk off (and are even caught with their pants down). In other words, unlike the bland folks in the Star Trek universe spouting off technobabble, they’re actually human. They even make bad command decisions. Plus, there’s interesting little design elements such as the paper with its edges cropped off, a general set motif of cramped physicality favored over glitzy computers, special effects shots that have a jerky documentary feel (a first, I think, on television), and some pretty cool Cylon Centurions (complete with a menacing mechanized gait reminiscent of Phil Tippett’s animation).

Even so, we’re mystified by the following gaping holes:

• If the Cylons have a finite number of models, many of them reproducing themselves repeatedly over the 5,000 or so humans that are left, why is a Cylon detector even needed? Would it not make better sense to take a head count and track the duplicates?
• Despite the “real” people portrayed, I’ve yet to see a fat person on board or someone with bad hygiene. Why does everyone on board Galactica seem so eminently fuckable, with their flawless teeth and perfectly coiffed hair? Further, would not the lack of sunshine or the outdoors make one antsy when confined aboard a cramped spacecraft? Wouldn’t the notion of the human race almost completely exterminated lead to widespread trauma, depression, and mental illness (so far unseen)?
• In a recent episode, Starbuck was stranded on a planet for something like 30 hours. While her oxygen was depleting, hunger apparently was not an issue and her strength remained unwavering, allowing her to escape.
• I haven’t kept count, but if there are only about ten to fifteen fighters on board Galactica, if two or three get destroyed every week, then some fanboy needs to do the math.

We’ll weigh in, dammit, for the following reasons:

1) We were mortified by wrestling in high school, largely because the idea of clutching another scrawny teenager in a full-Nelson struck us as vaguely Roman (near the decline of the empire) and homoerotic at the time, and it also meant having to shower with said opponent. You do the math, whiz kid. Twelve years later, free from the shackles of a needlessly Puritanical upbringing and readily indulging in fellatio jokes before breakfast (even in our thirties), we have very little problems with male anatomy and sexuality in general. The important thing is that we are no longer afraid of penises, whether it be our own or another. Although we infinitely prefer lightly wrestling certain lady friends in intimate situations, moments that we would never dare share on this blog, because we recognize the TMI principle. Thus, we’ve earned the right to “weigh in.” To hell with the philological consequences.

2) Our one and only encounter with Ms. Waldman occurred last year, when we offered our hand and said, “Hey. How’s it going?” in lieu of the genteel fawning at the 2004 Northern California Book Awards. We suggested then that it might have been a mistake to introduce ourselves to Berkeley literary royalty this way. However, in light of recent events, we take our original assessment back, recalling the ashen expression on Ms. Waldman’s face, and her unnerving sense that she was encountering some literary huckster there only to talk with other authors and drink free merlot (partly true) and that this, as written in her frown and her dilated eyes, was in some sense a damning crime against the human race. Frankly, we’ve committed greater misdemeanors, many of which you’ll never hear about and many of which are ably recorded in private. We learned a thing or two about exhibitionism after about five years of blogging, hell even in the first few months of blogging. And back then, we were in our mid-twenties.

Which leads us to this and, more specifically, this, which in turn lead to this and this. Scout’s honor.

Still with me?

Okay.

1. It seems to me that Waldman’s lead sentence is the mark of a clear sensationalist. And if she does indeed suffer from a milder form of bipolar disorder (Self-diagnosed! We should again point out that the diagnosis comes solely from Waldman and not a clinical psychologist. Waldman herself, last I checked, was not a shrink.), then I put forth to the peanut gallery that this is a very good way to get attention, that indeed we may very well have been conned into being titilated by another author’s neuroses (a Salon specialty, or had you all forgotten about last year’s Jane Austen Doe stunt?), perhaps another post-modern game to be played between husband and wife. (Note also that we have two clear links to the dynamic duo’s respective sites in the first two sentences. Whether this was a decision from Waldman or the Salon editors, self-promotion, even in the form of such apologia, has never seen such flagrant horn-tooting, even with that damn near unreadable He Who Shall Remain Unnamed novel-in-progress from last year.)

2. I’ve been in relationships, but I’ve never been married. But it would seem to me from a matrimonial standpoint that one would discuss suicidal feelings and bad juju with one’s spouse before exposing it all online, let alone to one’s kids. Or perhaps the key is to write it all down in a private journal. In fact, it strikes me as an altogether shitty thing to not even bother to call one’s loved one, one’s circle of friends or pretty much anyone who gives a damn about you after penning such confessional hijinks, particularly if you are a published author regularly writing and understanding that your words do indeed have power.

3. All this is not to make light of Ms. Waldman’s mental state, which is apparently quite imperious. We should point out that at least Waldman did the right thing in discovering her own personal limits about what to reveal. Even so, commenting upon this publicly in a major online outlet suggests not only a continuation of the very problem (which has earned considerable wrath from readers) but what Dana Stevens has recently referred to as “mental-health porn,” taking a cue from Elizabeth Wurtzel. What is most troubling is that Waldman is doing this to herself, and that this is not some nutty Norwegian director who may or may not be in on the joke.

4. Concerning the question of whether Waldman’s kids are harmed, this too is a disingenuous defense. The very idea that her kids will be “furious with [Waldman] for having stolen their lives and humiliated at the extent to which I have laid open my own” again resorts to a certain solipsism (also referenced by “occasionaly failing,” as if the idea of falling flat on one’s face was anathema to existence). It all suggests that Ms. Waldman can’t say no. Beyond this, if the kids did find out, surely such a revelation could be talked out, rather than worrying about the what-if wrath of a reverse Laurence Olivier moment with the offspring shrieking “I hef no mom!”

5. We should not forget that it is Salon’s editors who are exploiting Ayelet Waldman. Damn Waldman if you must, but never forget that they are the ones encouraging this. And, no, Ms. Smiley, it’s not a question of Waldman’s honesty, but what the reading public has clearly seen between the lines. It may not be easy to see when you’re blinded by bucolic glens and horses, but mental illness is a veritable powder keg. 54 million Americans suffer from it, but only 8 million seek treatment. I’m glad to see that Salon’s readers, at least, aren’t dismissing it as some pedantic overreaction.