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You buy a ticket to fly on Saturday night, a red-eye across the country no less, and you can assume you'll have an empty flight, right? Make that Valentine's Day night, a day deep into a three day weekend- what kind of loser would be on an airplane that night?

Me. And a plane full of fellow losers.

There is nothing worse than a sold-out red-eye, because it is physically impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep if you can't lean across two seats- ideally, three across. Add to that the incessant blather of the people in the seats behind me and an incredibly short flight- not much more than 4 hours, amazingly- and you can understand my incoherence today. I showed up in Florida at 4:30 am, way too early for any business, way too early to check in at the hotel, way too early to be driving while sleep-deprived up I-95 looking for someplace to have breakfast, way too early for even the Original Pancake House. And that's why God made Denny's- "and on the seventeenth day, the Lord said there shall be a place where drowsy travelers can kill time dawdling over French toast and hash browns while paging through the Sun-Sentinel and Herald, and the Lord sayeth 'Let there be Denny's, and Waffle House, and the Melrose Diner,' and they were good."

And now, sleepless for most of the last 38 hours, I've reached my maximum level of incoherence. Maybe I'll make more sense tomorrow.

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Still in Florida. This was a good day for reasons I am not at liberty to discuss but which, well, you take the good when you can. So I will.

The roads, the stores, the restaurants are choked full of seniors, and I've had my fill of oblivious drivers turning right from the left lane of a FOUR-LANE ROAD (actually witnessed TWICE on the same 1/4 mile stretch of road while meeting an arriving flight at Palm Beach airport) or driving 25 in a 50 zone. Every single stereotype about the elderly is here on parade: the driving, the Early Bird Specials, everything. And I'm glad there's someplace where seniors can go and have all of their needs met. But it'll be good to be back home in L.A. soon, where there aren't as many bad senior drivers. No, we have bad YOUNG drivers.

But I do like Florida. There's an undefinable feel to it- the humidity, the scent of the vegetation, the pinks and teals and greens all over everything- that you don't get anywhere else. Now, if only someone could do something about the radio here...

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It's not the same when you're not at home. You read every paper, you listen to the radio, you even watch the cable news channels, but nothing sinks in. I've been away for three days and been writing the usual columns all the way through, but I'm not retaining anything.

I don't know why it is. I'm not on vacation, so it's not like I've willingly put my brain in another gear. But it is, and I don' know nuthin'.

Which is why I'll shut up now. I should be better when I get back to California. That should be tomorrow.

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Would I shirk the responsibility of writing more insightful essays on world events just because I've been up since 12:30 am Pacific- 19 hours straight so far- and flying and driving and working all day? You're damn right I would.

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It dawned on me today that after a drowsy perusal of the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald on Sunday morning, I haven't read any newspapers all week.

That's not to say I didn't read any news stories- I did the usual rampage through web sites for AllAccess.com, after all- but I usually read a minimum of two hard-copy dead-tree papers every day, and more when I can get my hands on them. This week, I bought the papers on Monday and didn't read them. I didn't even bother buying the papers on Tuesday or Wednesday, although the L.A. Times and Daily Breeze were waiting for me when I got back to California- and I didn't read them. Oh, and I DID buy the New York Post on Wednesday for the full-color A-Rod fold-over front -and-back page overkill, but it's stillsitting on my desk, unread. Skipped Thursday's, too.

This is one man's experience, but I could never imagine going without a paper not too long ago. In fact, at some points in my adulthood, I was doing seven or eight papers a day- for example, back in my New Jersey 101.5 days, I hacked through the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Trenton Times, Trentonian, Asbury Park Press, Bucks County Courier-Times, New York Post and Daily News... yeah, that's eight, all right. I dropped down to two in the last few years only because that's all we can easily get here- the New York Post is expensive at a buck a day, the Orange County Register doesn't deliver here anymore, you'd have to drive a while to get the L.A. Daily (Valley) News, and there's nothing ever in the Long Beach Press-Telewasteofpaper. But lately, the Times and Breeze just sit there, stacking up neatly, waiting to be taken directly to the recycle bin. And I do subscribe to an "exactly-as-the-print-version" digital Miami Herald, but I haven't even been reading that lately.

There's nothing new or unique about the idea that newspapers' place in this age is shrinking, so I'll spare you the trite analysis. But I will note that the papers seem oblivious to the problem. They appear to be making it impossible to find what you want by moving things around, placing them where they don't belong, loading on useless graphics and tables. The L.A. Times has political commentary in the arts section, the Orange County Register has a truly hideous, wide short-item thing on the front page with color-coding nobody will ever figure out, the Daily Breeze puts the comics on the back of the second section except when they feel like burying it in the middle of a section... they're all about as user-unfriendly as, well, as their web sites.

Is it too much to ask for L.A. to get a Post-like tabloid, or something like the Philly News? If we had one, I'd read it- hell, I'd write for it, maybe for free. I miss the screaming, hilarious headlines, the for-the-people angles, the attitude (in Philly, that's atty-tood). You can plow through the Post in 10 minutes or less and feel satisfied and amused. The L.A. Times takes longer and "satisfied and amused" have nothing to do with it. (The Daily Breeze takes 30 seconds and leaves you wondering how a paper with a monopoly on a populous suburban swath can't find more than three or four pages' worth of local news, or why it can't find a better local columnist than a guy who lives an hour's drive away and seems to fill every other column with reader e-mails) I just wish we had a paper with guts, enterprise, and a sense of humor. We don't.

Unless the Times' carrying Robert Scheer is meant as a joke. But I think they're serious.

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Is THAT what I sound like?

That's all I can think right now. Such is the hazard of reading too many other people's blogs. I happened upon one- no names, please- that was all about, well, writing a blog, and it was self-referential, self-indulgent...

...and the same can probably be said about this one.

Writing for public consumption is a presumption that anyone would care about what you think. Writing about YOURSELF for same public consumption adds a certain amount of raging egotism to the mix. And I DO write about myself a lot.

My trouble may be self-consciousness. I probably should aspire to the self-awareness of William Hung- that is to say, no self-awareness at all. William is, of course, the "American Idol" contestant from Cal-Berkeley who got up and tunelessly sang "She Bangs" in a thick accent while dancing- no, more like twitching in an apparent allergic reaction. It was brilliant in a way William, from all accounts a very smart student, could never understand, because he was not self-conscious enough to prevent himself from getting up in front of Simon Cowell AND millions of people across the country and doing THAT. And now, he's being offered TV and record deals, he has fans, his every appearance in public is a celebration.

But I can't be William Hung. I get easily embarrassed, and no way in hell would I allow myself to be videotaped dancing. (You don't want to see that anyway.) And now, after reading one too many blogs of the alternate-day personal-political type, I've become harshly critical of my own work, which is trouble. One of my most saleable abilities has been to crank out decent copy under deadline at breakneck speed, and that means editing on the fly. Now, I sit there with a column 3/4 finished and think, man, this isn't working, because the echoes of those other blogs resonates in my mind and I'm thinking I must be just like them.

And that would not be good.

One of the tributes recently printed about a columnist who died- don't ask me who, I can't think right now- said that one of the deceased's great virtues was that his columns never used the word "I." He wrote about topics, not himself. I- there it is again- can't do that. Will that consign me to the same pile as those blogs of indulgence? I hope not. But I can't think that way. This is what I do, and I guess I have to trust my own judgement that it's good- at least I know I have plenty of readers, and I get good feedback, so I really need to get back to just writing without thinking. Thoughtless prose. Yeah, I'm all about the thoughtless prose. If there's anything I'm good at, it's not thinking.

8:30 pm on a Friday night? Good time to stop thinking. So I will.

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The table next to ours at dinner tonight was occupied by four guys talking politics. We were at the Blue Coyote in Palm Springs- rain be damned, it was Fran's birthday (!) and we were going to go to the desert come hell or high water, literally- and quietly enjoying the meal while the boys at the next table were all about "Bush is stupid" and "who would EVER vote for HIM" and "did you know he knew about 9/11 in advance?" and your general left-wing alternative-paper talking points. They were also aghast that he's against gay marriages, a major issue in Palm Springs- "didn't he ever read the Bill of Rights?," one of the diners indignantly asked his friends.

Well, uh, that's interesting, I thought, but you guys are so bent on hating the guy that you're missing the big picture. And I started to argue with them in my mind until it dawned on me how pointless it would be to actually try and engage them in conversation. And that in turn reminded me how pointless it feels to talk about politics at all.

That's a problem insofar as this is what I basically do for a living.

I've been feeling this way lately (see yesterday's entry), and I'm not sure what the outcome will be. It's an election year, which should excite me- I should be all over this, ready to spar over defense and the economy and health care and gay marriages and all that, yet I'm finding that a) I preach to the converted, b) the unconverted aren't interested in converting, and c) deep down, I'm finding it hard to care. Kerry v. Bush? I'm more interested in Kings v. Spurs.

I suspect I'm not alone. If I think a lot about political issues- the increasing lack of cojones to fight the war on terrorism, the insane anti-"indecency" maneuverings by politicians mistakenly convinced that's how to get re-elected, the inordinate and hysterical attention paid (by both sides) to matters that affect a tiny fraction of the population, the brazen attempt by California Democrats and unions to get carte blanche to jack up taxes to pay themselves- I get aggravated, but instead of pouring it out in writing, I'm finding myself thinking "can't solve that, nobody's listening, I'm tired, what's on TV?" And I'll bet that the vast majority of Americans are feeling this, too. We're disconnected from the process not because we don't care, but because nothing changes and it appears not to matter if we get an ulcer over it or not. Rant, rave, jump up and down all you want, and see the boat sail without you.

That's not to say I'm abandoning talking about politics, not by a long shot. But in a time where what seems like hundreds of thousands of pundits are issuing a flood of analysis, discussion, and Great Thoughts From On High, I'm just getting the feeling it's a waste of time, a dumpster full of words from people who like to hear themselves think out loud. Right now, that's not working for me. As I continue to struggle for punch lines in my comedy writing, I've realized that I probably have to take a break once in a while. I'm finding that the political and serious stuff's overwhelming the part of me that laughs. I don't like that.

So the guys at the next table didn't get a haranguing from me. And, after a brief "did you HEAR those guys?" on the way up 111, I left the whole thing in Palm Springs. By the time we hit the 10 West, I was feeling a lot better, even as the rain got worse and the sky turned black. I'm taking a mental vacation from the dark side.

Let's see how long this lasts.

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