PROXY VOTE? Democrats went outside the party...

PROXY VOTE? Democrats went outside the party for Saturday’s keynote speaker at their state convention in Anaheim. He’s UC Irvine writing teacher Thomas Keneally, who’s hot this year as author of “Schindler’s List,� the Holocaust novel made into the Steven Spielberg movie. . . . Keneally is politically active in his native Australia, but he’s not a U.S. citizen. Says his daughter Jane, however: “If my father could vote in the U.S., you can bet he’d be a Democrat.�

LONGER LOOK? That Continental Airlines pilot who skidded off the runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport complained on national TV about other airports with short runway problems. He cited among them: John Wayne Airport. . . . Airport spokeswoman Courtney Wiercioch responds that the county is studying runway extensions at both the north and south ends at the Federal Aviation Administration’s request. But she adds: “It’s the airlines’ responsibility� to assure runway lengths are adequate for aircraft assigned here.

MOMMY’S HELPER: A new monthly publication just moved to Newport Beach. And its publisher, Trish Kasey, got the idea for it from her baby daughter. It’s The Mommy Times newsletter, which circulates nationwide. Kasey started it on the East Coast in 1991 and devotes it exclusively to tips by moms. . . . “The best parenting advice I was getting was from other moms, not my pediatrician,� Kasey says.

NAME GAME: “Night and Her Stars,� which premieres tonight at South Coast Repertory (F31), takes its name from a phrase by Ralph Waldo Emerson. But its working title, “Ecstatic Air,� almost made the marquee instead. SCR wanted to use it. Playwright Richard Greenberg didn’t. . . . “I couldn’t wait to get rid of it,� he says. “It was totally pretentious. My definition of a working title is a title that doesn’t work.� The play dramatizes the TV quiz-show scandals of the ‘50s.