Humor flies from unlikely sources

JOSEPH N. BELL

The Newport Beach Library Foundation’s Distinguished Speakers series

offered up a bonus last Friday.

David Brooks is an oxymoron -- a New York Times columnist who

represents the conservative position in a weekly debate on the PBS

Lehrer News Hour. Since I have commented in this space on two earlier

speakers who might loosely be identified as liberal, I figured I

should cover this one, too, in the interests of balance.

Brooks was introduced to a standing-room audience as “the

conservative the liberals love.” That hit me as quite accurate during

the body of his talk when he was discussing the new American

demographics but a little over the top when he turned to answering

mostly political questions from the audience. I loved him

selectively.

But one thing is certain. Brooks was, by a country mile, the

funniest speaker I’ve heard on this series. He was on hand to push

his new book, just published, called “On Paradise Drive: How We Live

Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.” If that title sounds

convoluted, read the book and you’ll understand. His thesis is the

new nature and structure of the demographics in this country, and

that is mostly what he talked about. For 45 minutes he gave us a

trenchant, wonderfully funny and painfully accurate look at

ourselves.

All of us who heard him will think twice -- and then probably go

anyway -- before heading to Costco to buy “30 pounds of Tater Tots in

order to save money.” In hard-core suburbia, Brooks said, “the

smaller the woman, the larger the car she is driving. And golf is a

spiritual experience in which living at a well-organized par is the

goal.” He described Newport Beach as a community of “organic grocery

stores, natural hair coloring, Trader Joes and bathroom towels that

match.”

He sees the whole nation as gravitating to locales -- good, bad or

indifferent -- where we can be comfortable with our neighbors and our

surroundings. This has resulted in fast-growing communities full of

soul-mates but without a core, “with no center, no main street. Mesa,

Ariz., for example, now has more people than St. Louis or

Cincinnati.” The impact on politics, he said, is profound. “The

number of American counties where one political party dominates

strongly has doubled in a generation, resulting in a sharp drop in

swing voters. At the same time, the United States has steadily become

more polarized. Politics have become the Yankees against the Red Sox.

Bitter polarization. Crush the other side.”

He said it is time to remember that this is still one country,

whose citizens share a powerful common quality of high energy.

“Nationality matters. Being American shapes our personality. What

still unites us is the American dream that allows us to say, ‘Yes, I

control my life.’ We’ve always had the future mentality, idealists

working on matter.”

I suspect such optimism would play a lot better in Mesa than in

East Los Angeles or the south side of Chicago. But it was delivered

with such high style and humor that cavils seem downright

wrong-headed.

*

Last night, the work of my stepson, Erik Patterson, was on display

on both coasts. While his new play, “Red Light, Green Light” was

selling out at the Theatre of Note in Los Angeles, Erik was in New

York to take part in a staged reading before an audience of his

peers. And I’m feeling too much pride to let it pass without

recognition here.

Erik is seven years out of Newport Harbor High School and three

years out of Occidental College. He switched from acting to

playwriting in his senior year at Oxy, and he has worked assiduously

at his craft in a brutally competitive field whenever and however he

could squeeze time from a series of marginal jobs that paid his rent

and bought gas for his ancient car. The New York trip is a powerful

sign that his work is attracting high-level attention.

His reading took place at the Lark Play Development Center, which

sponsors an annual festival of “new plays and new voices.” Hundreds

of plays are submitted for this competition, 40 are winnowed out by

staff, and a panel of noted professionals select six for a staged

reading. The winning playwrights are flown to New York and work for

several days with professional directors and New York actors who will

bring their plays to life. The exposure to the movers and shakers of

New York theater is priceless. Meanwhile, the same play --

well-reviewed by local critics -- is halfway through its run in Los

Angeles, Thursdays through Sundays.

His mother and I got a close look at Erik’s commitment to his

craft last week when he came home to do his laundry and got a call

that his leading man in Los Angeles was suddenly and seriously ill

and couldn’t go on the following night. Erik shut himself in a room

and memorized the lines in a single day, then did three flawless

performances until the stand-in was ready to take over.

His mother is representing the family in New York this week, and

I’m following events -- by choice -- vicariously by phone and e-mail.

I’ve seen the play here, of course, and I marvel at the uncanny ear

for dialogue and depth and substance that Erik has somehow acquired

in just 26 years. And I wonder at what the years ahead are going to

produce.

Erik’s vision is much darker than that of David Brooks, but they

share one powerful leavening agent: humor, mined from the frequent

absurdities of human behavior. No matter which pole it comes from,

humor can offer a safe and useful bridge to connect segments of a

polarized society.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.