Yesterday, after spending a horrible 22 Minutes at CBS pitching a TV show idea I've had for awhile, I decided I needed some inspiration.

I grabbed a book off the shelf at a bookstore on Larchmont without opening my eyes. Random. Spread it open to the first page that felt right. It said:

"There is only one type of story in the world---- Your story."

Ray Bradbury said that.

It was odd that THAT was the first thing I read.

Last night, I found an mp3 of an old radio show from the 50's called "Dimension X" and the episode was Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles". It was real good, in that it contained, I think four stories from the book all in thirty minutes of radio drama.

It was also odd that it was Ray Bradbury because to me him and LA are inseparable. I think of him standing outside of the radio station waiting for Jack Benny to show up so Ray can sell him some jokes.

I think of Ray everytime I pass the Bradbury Building even though I don't believe they are connected other than by name. But because the building is in "Blade Runner" which really IS about LA, I can't separate them either.

I think of Ray as a kid... still, who is very singleminded. I mean that he really has done the same thing over and over and that is he sits and writes. That's hard!

At CBS, the secretary was reading The Hollywood Reporter and mentioned to a Security Guard, who had just been talking about a new episode of The Simpsons, that Michael Moore's Sept. 11th film is being made. I had never even heard this.

Now, what makes this even stranger, is the title for the film.

"Fahrenheit 911"

The Oscar-winning documentarian is making the film about the September 11 attacks and it of course criticizes George W.

"Fahrenheit 911", which refers to the date of the hijackings and "Fahrenheit 451", Ray Bradbury's dystopian tale of book burning, will look at the United States in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and alleged links between the families of Bush and Osama bin Laden, the Muslim militant accused of coordinating the hijackings on that date.

Moore used the "Fahrenheit 911" title for a February 2002 e-mail to fans in which he said publisher HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp., hesitated in the aftermath of the hijackings to publish his book, "Stupid White Men," because of its criticism of Bush.

I remember Moore's Academy Award acceptance speech clearly, because I was under attack by my friend's cat at that very moment. It left me with scars, the speech that is... The Award was for his previous film, "Bowling for Columbine" as an opportunity to criticize Bush, whom he called a "fictitious president."

Miramax took over after actor Mel Gibson's Icon Productions withdrew backing for the production.

And it was "Fahrenheit 451" that I thought Mel Gibson was making, but I guess not.

All this was weird today.

I sat in my car thinking of Ray and Hollywood and the Writer. I pictured Ray with roller-skates on moving across sidewalks. I thought of how Hollywood treats the creative. I thought of Mel Gibson and I thought of his appearance on The Simpsons. As I thought this I looked up and realized that I was in front of the Parva Sed Apartments on Ivar, where Nathaneal West lived and wrote The Day of the Locust while 1930's Hollywood was slowly chewing him up.

Oh yeah, the protagonist of that great book was none other than one...

Homer Simpson.