Let me get this straight: First the guy crashes that Staten Island ferry? Then he runs home but has to break in because he forgot his keys? Then he tries to commit suicide by slashing both wrists and shooting himself with a pellet gun? Twice? And he lives?

Can’t this guy get anything right???

I have a confession to make that is so shocking and out of character that I felt a responsibility to document it for future generations and anyone who claims I’m negative about everything:

I’ve been stuck in training sessions for the last three days … and I’m enjoying it.

Well, okay, maybe “enjoying” is too strong a word, but I’m definitely getting something out of it. This is honestly the first training I’ve ever received at any job anywhere that I actually feel is time well spent from start to finish. This is actually going to help me do my job better. Zut alors!

I do have a gripe, of course. I have to do something to offset that annoying positivity up there! The woman training the session has a few verbal quirks: her overused phrase “in any way, shape, or fashion” and pronouncing “especially” as exspecially are starting to grate. But aside from that it’s all high marks from me.

I had something good to say. About work, even. And the earth continues to spin…

Do you know this man? Are you this man? Derek Raser, where are you? E-mail me.

Being a big Seal fan, Beth had to run right out and buy his new CD. Seal was a major component of the soundtrack of our lives when we were first starting out together, so it’s nice to have new stuff from him to listen to.

But there is one sour note. It’s a shallow one, but it’s there nonetheless. The cover of his new CD Seal IV is embossed. His facial scars, specifically.

Ew.

On my way over to pick Zoe up at school today, I glanced in my mirrors to find an Acura right up in my ass — it couldn’t have been five feet off my rear tire. I twisted around in the saddle to eyeball the driver, which usually wakes them up and backs them off, but this time the car stayed right on my ass.

I have a little fantasy I play out in my mind when this happens. At the next red light we get stopped at, I heel my bike over on its kickstand and walk back to confront the cager. I lean in the window, cock a fist back, and ask “Can you stop me before I hit you?” When they admit they can’t (because it’s my fantasy, so of course they can’t) I blast ’em one and say “You couldn’t stop before you hit me, either. Fortunately, you’re going to survive.”

So when nipplehead wouldn’t back off, I immediately flashed on my fantasy. But then I realized I was carrying Zoe’s helmet on my left arm, so I improved on it: I would walk back and save time by simply smashing in his windshield. You know, since it was getting in the way and keeping this clown from noticing he was running down a motorcyclist.

Except this wasn’t fantasy, I was seriously going to do it. I don’t know why this time was different from any other, but I was furious at this guy. I wanted to hurt him and destroy his car and teach him a lesson he’d never forget. I was mad as hell and I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

But then he turned out to be a she, and my momma raised me to know it’s not nice to brutalize women. But then she turned out to be a ****, which turned it back around again.

As she pulled up next to me — passing me in my lane to make a right at the next intersection — I yelled, “What the fuck are you doing?” And the bitch gave me the finger! First on my ass, now in my lane, and she has the balls to flip me off! Oh, it was on!

But… It’s not nice to brutalize women, even when they deserve it. So I gave her a pass, and instead just yelled after her, “Back off, you stupid ****!”

And the bitch gave me the finger again.

I almost went after her anyway. The only thing that stopped me was knowing that Zoe was waiting for me and it was her helmet that would be doing the damage. So I let her go and I’m kicking myself for it now.

Yeah, yeah, I know: I’m a heathen, a chauvenist, a pig. I’m also lucky to be alive after the way that sow was driving. She put me at risk with her driving, and then had the stones to flip me off over it. That’s no lady, so the rules don’t apply. If you’re gonna play it like a man, you’d better expect to get beat down like one.

I’m deep in the throes of a tattoo dilemma. I just got home from pussing-out on having a tattoo done. I can’t decide what I want.

It started with this, the original design for the tattoo; it was done by an artist in Dallas who didn’t want to make any changes at all to his original sketch. I had paid him a deposit for the tattoo he never did, so I kept the sketch and moved on.

This is where it is now after I found an artist who I could work with: Dano at Art To The Bone in Sherman Oaks. I made a few minor changes to the design myself and Danno inked it. I like it … but it needs more.

This is the design Dano came up with to add as a background.

…and this is the tattoo I just pussed out on after Dano had drawn it on and was about to start with the needle. He went ahead and colored it in with marker so I can see sort of the final product and think about it and live with it for a few days.

I like it … and I don’t like it. It depends on which 5 minute period you ask me. I can’t make up my mind. My original thought was to have some kind of rays, like sunlight, coming from behind to highlight it, but then that started to seem too cheesy. I liked Dano’s first design with the clouds, but I don’t like how dark he wanted to do them — it seems like it takes away from the heart and makes it seem darker. I want something that will enhance it, not overpower it. On the one hand I think less is more, on the other hand I like the idea of the negative space in the cloud design.

I welcome any comments you readers care to make. Make my decision for me, won’t you, please?

One of the more popular pages in the ever-popular deadpan.net domain is my Sitcom Format 101 page. That’s where I make like the Oracle and give examples of proper script format and advice on getting started writing for sitcoms. (Given my lack of success to date in that endeavor this advice might be suspect, but some of it actually is pretty solid.) It’s this advice that generates more email than anything else on the entire site, more than even the Mojave Phone Booth page ever did, and that was a Cool Site of the Year nominee. The thing is that almost all of this email reveals that aspiring writers are extremely fooking stoopid.

The highlights from the advice I give are:

1. Move to LA if you want to write for TV.
2. Do not send your spec scripts to the shows they’re written for.
3. Do not write a pilot as a spec.

I think it’s pretty straightforward advice and I think I wrote it pretty clearly. When I read it over, as I do almost every time I get a stoopid fooking email, I just can’t see why there’s any confusion. And yet there must be, because I am asked the same questions over and over and over and over again:

1. Do I really have to move to LA to write for TV?
2. So you’re saying I shouldn’t send The Simpsons my Simpsons spec?
3. I’ve got a great idea for a pilot. Should I write it?

Those are the top three. I also get a lot of “I’m not a writer and I don’t want to be one, but I have a great idea for a sitcom. How can I get someone to write it for me?” and “Do you have any samples of sitcom format?” but those are the most frequent. I understand now why it’s so hard to get a script to anyone in this town: writers are fooking stoopid.

Here’s the latest submission, received just this morning:

Hello,
I was just perusing your page, and I have a question about specs.
>>>>Don’t send your “Friends” to “Friends”…or your “Ellen” to “Ellen,”

I have written a script for Law and Order: Criminal Intent, but you’re saying that I should not send it to that show?

Fooking. Stoopid.

She actually copy and pasted from my page to ask me the question and answered herself as she did it — and still asked the question. And she went downstairs to the sub-sub-subgenius basement in asking me this question in the first place since my page is clearly about sitcoms and she’s asking me about a 1-hour drama!

Fooking. Stoopid.

I used to politely answer these idiots, but I quickly ran out of patience with that. I’m still struggling to be the Nice Guy and just delete them unanswered. But one of these days I’m going to give in to my primal urge. One of these days I’m going to answer them:

1. Do I really have to move to LA to write for TV?

Oh no, you don’t, I meant everyone else. You are such a natural talent that you’ll be able to work from anywhere in the world. You’ll be hired sight (and spec) unseen and will be able to work a deal where you can be teleconferenced in on table reads and brainstorming sessions and rehearsals and all the other bullshit that most writers have to actually be present for. You can break into Hollywood from the comfort of Bumfuck, IA, so don’t even think about inconveniencing yourself for a career many people would kill for.

2. So you’re saying I shouldn’t send The Simpsons my Simpsons spec?

Did I say that? Shit, I’m sorry, that was a typo. I meant you should definitely send your specs to the show they’re written for. That part where I said the show’s producers don’t want to see it because they know they can’t be impartial and would rather see something from a different show was just a joke. You should definitely send it in. Yours will be different; they’ll love it.

3. I’ve got a great idea for a pilot. Should I write it?

Yes. Immediately. Tell me what network and night you want it to be on and I’ll start working my contacts while you’re writing so we can lock it into the lineup. It’s sure to be pure fucking genius, so there’s not a moment to waste. This will be the show that changes the world, I can just feel it.

If I’ve learned one thing from this webpage, it’s this: No good deed goes unpunished.

As part of the ongoing lemon juice dripping into an eye with a scratched cornea torture that is Customer Service Week here at work, the “motivated Customer Support staff” is running around the office recognizing each department for their contributions to our general all-around fabulousness. I happened to witness our Product and Documentation departments being recognized together yesterday.

Picture a peaceful, quiet office. People are working silently in their cubes and the only sound heard is the clicking of keyboards and distant conversations from around the corner. Then They arrive: the “motivated Customer Support staff.”

With one person holding a large sign reading Product! & Documentation! over his head, a group of eight people round the corner and descend on the aisle linking the Product and Developement cube farms. The Customer Support Supervisor starts ringing the schoolmarm-type brass bell she’s carrying: Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang! The “motivated Customer Support staff” begin a cheer: “Yay, Product and Documentation! Woo, go Product and Documentation! Product and Documentation! Yeah!” And they begin clapping and whistling.

It takes about 30 seconds for everyone in the vicinity to recover from the shock of being so noisily invaded, and then someone speaks up to state the obvious:

“Um… Product and Documentation aren’t here. They’re all in a meeting.”

And so they were. Our “motivated Customer Support staff,” not being the sharpest knives in the drawer, have just motivated a group of empty cubicles.

Today is the last day of this. I only have to make it through six more hours. The longest six hours of my life. I hope I can find the motivation to do it.

Today is Wear Your (Software Product Name) Shirt Day! Please do not forget to wear your (Software Product Name) shirt.

So says today’s agenda in the ongoing torture known as Customer Service Week here at the company dedicated to sucking the will to live out of its employees. Customer Service Week is a particularly diabolical way of grinding us down, because it accomplishes that goal even as it claims to be designed to lift us up! They’re geniuses, I tell you, pure evil geniuses! Wile E. Coyote has nothing on them.

I wanted to join in the fun today on Wear Your Company Shirt Day … but mine is in a bucket at home, caked with carnuba wax. So I wore my anti-company shirt instead. Hey, it’s what motivates me.

Well, it looks like the recall is passing and Schwarzenegger is winning. The Republican leadership plotted and financed this recall, fanned by the flames of an energy crisis a Republican governor created, fueled by the anger at a car tax the same Republican governor left behind like a hand grenade, and now they’ve succeeded in stealing an office they couldn’t win (twice) in a legitimate election.

Un-fucking-believable. I’m embarrassed to be a Californian. That my fellow citizens can be so blind as to be manipulated into throwing out the guy they elected barely a year ago and replacing him with a puppet who has no plan, no experience, no qualifications and no class, is just flat out embarrassing. The electorate truly is a gang of mindless sheep who can be led by the nose.

The last time we put an actor into office out here, we wound up with the Republican party’s Great White Dope, Reagan, king of “Spend and spend” government. I hope we don’t see a repeat of that, because Zoe’s going to be busy enough already paying off Bush’s deficit when she grows up. I don’t think she’ll be able to afford another Reagan.

But I guess we’re getting the government we deserve. My only consolation is that I didn’t choose it.