My Plan for Making the World a Better Place : Hey! Wait a Minute! Come Back Here!

In Mark Stein’s “At Long Last Leo,” at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa through Dec. 1, a young, highly intelligent idealist spends 2 years writing a massive manifesto that will, he is convinced, cure the world’s ills.

Just one problem: He pretty much can’t get anybody to read it.

Anyone who has ever tried to share a college project with his parents will surely chuckle when Leo’s father picks up the 638-page masterwork, which he hasn’t had time to actually read, and praises him for the amount of work that obviously went into it. “Just the typing. . . ,” Dad says, shaking his head in amazement.

Soon Leo discovers that no one has time to remedy the world because everyone is too wrapped up in his or her own petty problems. (Dad, for instance, is a philanderer who’s got all he can do just to keep his well-ordered world from falling apart.)

It’s a lot of fun along the way, though, and I, for one, can identify with downtrodden Leo, who desperately wants to reconcile flighty human behavior with the more dependable laws of physics. But I left disappointed that we never hear much of his revolutionary tract.

“What if I really am the next Trotsky?” Leo wonders. “Or the next Moses? What if I really am?” What if he is? The playwright never lets us know. It’s like sitting through a monster movie that never shows you the monster. We hear all this stuff about a manifesto. What’s in it?

I’ve got no such qualms about sharing my own manifesto for reshaping the world--surely everyone has one?--and the best part is that mine takes considerably less than 638 pages (gotta leave some room in the paper for the comics).

Mine shares one fundamental truth with Leo’s: that everything is related--human behavior, subatomic physics, quantum mechanics, people with careers in apartment management. Look at the way external perception and internal values connect. My manifesto outlines a direct correlation between the number of hours the average person watches “Wheel of Fortune” and the size of insurance policy they’ll buy from Ed McMahon.

My all-encompassing theory-philosophy not only provides for better understanding of man’s inhumanity to man and a more harmonious relationship with the spiritual cosmos, but also would improve traffic flow. For instance, I’ve discovered that no matter where you drive, traffic will always be tied up because several men in orange vests are eating lunch in one lane.

Einstein said it’s physically impossible for matter to travel faster than the speed of light. But why? My treatise explains that it’s all because Steve P. Rados Inc. keeps plopping those portable concrete traffic barriers everywhere. Speed of light? We’re lucky to hit 55.

If my manifesto were implemented, that would change. I’d open car-pool lanes on freeways to single-driver vehicles. Then, all other lanes would be reserved for rapid transit buses and open-bed trucks transporting migrant farm workers to and from daywork. That way we’d never have more than one lane backed up.

Furthermore, I’d have all Southland freeways completely rebuilt by whoever designed the ones out in Lancaster that are never crowded.

Of course, there are more important world problems than traffic jams. My manifesto also would change the world immeasurably by:

-- Striking certain patently offensive words and phrases from the language, including “impacted,” “by way of,” “the bottom line,” “user friendly” (hah!) and “you may already be a winner.”

-- Adopting the accordion as the official musical instrument of the 1992 Olympics.

-- Requiring Dan Quayle to take up the violin so he’ll have something to do during press conferences (though that might open him to potshots like “Mr. Vice President, you’re no Jack Benny.”)

-- Permitting the filming of “Rambo V,” but only if the plot sends Stallone back to Hollywood to liberate credibility.

-- Commissioning Ted Turner to colorize George Bush’s mental picture of the world.

-- Imposing the death penalty on TV news anchors who begin stories with “Well, Tawny. . . “

-- Requiring that the President’s weekly radio addresses to the nation be hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady. (Now who do you think could have made you lie to the American people? Could it be ... SATAN?)

-- Drafting a constitutional amendment from Arthur C. Clarke’s proposal that anyone who seeks public office automatically be disqualified from holding one.

-- Amending Daylight Savings Time so that clocks would not be set ahead each spring, giving everyone an extra hour a day to catch up on reading.

Yes, the way I see it, it’s pretty easy to devise a blueprint for fixing the world. But . . . hey, is anybody out there listening?