christmas

christmas weekend was so fun! although it started off tenous when my sister got into a car accident on 53rd and 10th ave on friday night and my fam and i spent the night at St. lukes roosevelt hospital up the street while she got x-rayed and stuff to check out her spine and neck. some jerk hit a cab that hit the cab my sister was in. everyone got out of their cars, but then my sister said "we need to call the cops" and the guy who hit her got in his car and took off. they got his license plate, no surprise he was from JERSEY. the only thing good to come out of jersey is my sister in law. anyway, on sat. morn we went to philly and got there just in time to go to the 4pm Lutheran church my sister in law goes to and my nephew liam was sheppard #1 in the nativity play. the sheppard head wear he had kept slipping down over his eyes and he had a big crook and it kept taking out the heads of his neighbors. my sister and my friend jenny and i could not stop laughing it was the cutest!

HOT FOR TEACHER!

okay so yesterday was a first for me. My friend cathy toolan asked me to come teach about t.v. writing to her 8th grade english class at rye neck middle school. I thought this was going to be a total breeze. boy was i misinformed!! TEACHING IS REALLY HARD!! I have a whole new found respect for teachers. not that i didn't think it was hard, most jobs are hard, but phew, i wanted to go to sleep at 2:45 after teaching 3 classes!! the students were really nice, although i was bummed to see all the girls too embarrassed to participate. middle school is when studies say they are outshined by the boys because girls are embarrassed to be smart. thankfully i wasn't smart so i never had that insecurity. but i digress. I show up and teach one class which was fun, but i was a little nervous and not really sure what to talk about, FYI you should probably prepare when you do one of these things, not talk extemporaneously! then i got into the groove during the 2nd class and then after that, i was utterly exhausted at the start of the 3rd class. i was like "I have to do this again??????????" however, they were my favorite class and asked really smart questions not like "which celebrities do i know." Each class told me funny stories that happened to them and we tried to come up with a t.v. episode based on their ideas, i plan to steal some of these ideas because soem of them were better than what the writing staff comes up with. although a fair amount of them had to do with setting things on fire or blowing things up... ahhh to be a middle school boy again! wait a minute...

my friends story about TRANSIT STRIKE 2005

THIS IS MY FRIEND AMY'S STORY ABOUT HOW SHE GOT TO WORK YESTERDAY MORNING THE FIRST DAY OF THE STRIKE. AMY LIVES IN ASTORIA, QUEENS AND COMMUTES TO WORK BY SUBWAY INTO MID-TOWN MANHATTAN...

so i have to share my ridicul-dog tale of getting into the city this morning during the strike

i walk out to 31st st. in astoria, intending to walk over the bridge and this lady in a shitty looking nissan held together by duct tape yells out - hey do you want a free ride into manhattan so i'm like sure and jump in. she was an african american woman, the guy in the front seat was this older indian man and i was in the back with this south-american-y looking man. all that was missing was a samurai in a kimono and we would have had a benennton ad.

the driver - the lady - was really stressed out and her dad kept calling her on her cell phone and she was like - dad! i can't talk right now. (i
gathered from the convo that she had just broke up w/ someone or something) and then this giant white VAN tried to merge into our lane. and she was
like - fuck that shit. and she just IGNORED HIM., and let him plow into her car. total fender bender. and then the van driver got out and started
shouting at her and she rolled down her window and acted all innocent and was like - "didn't you see me?" and he was screaming at her and then she changed her tune and was like "i don't have time for your crap" and sped off. and i turned around and saw him standing in the middle of lane, shaking his fists above his head. then she was like "whatever, my uncle is a body mechanic and he'll fix my car for free" i wanted to be like "um, is your other uncle a plastic surgeon for when we all get disfigured in another car accident!!!!"

she was very nice though. i waved when she dropped me off on 5th and 50th and watched her drive away with her side headlight dangling by a few
sparking wires.

riddle me this

on friday night, will and i met up with my friend bernadette at her company's christmas party. it was well into the evening as i had been working late on my tv show taping. so we show up and berna is well into a few drinks and is kinda drunk, FYI we're not!! so she goes into the kareokee room (they had a number of diff. rooms including a snow room and an x box room) anyway, she was insisting that i kareoke with her and i was like no thanks, i dont feel like it and then she's going on and on and on and on and on and on and on ( you know how drunk people can be) about how i always kareoke and how much i must like will (yes in front of him) since i'm not kareoke-ing. now will is not one for kareoke, and has told me as much only days before in fact he gets embarrassed when other people karoeke, i'm not familiar with this affliction, but am sympathetic to it. anyway, now i'm totally embarrassed because of berna's behavior and want to tell her!!! i mean, she was totally embarrassing. And my friends wonder why i don't introduce them to the guys i'm dating until well into the 3rd month! BECAUSE THEY'RE SO FUCKING EMBARRASSING THATS WHY. now it's gonna be well into the 4th month with the next guy i date!

mta strike 2005

my best guy friend has been in town since saturday from denver. His name is jamie and we've been hanging out non stop. yesterday we walked for about 6 hours straight all over manhattan shopping and meeting up with friends for coffee, dinner, drinks. i'm exhausted. last night i had dinner with my friend bryan who i used to date who is in NYC producing a new TV show for CBS called "Love Monkey" premiering in january. I hope it's good because i want to write for it next season which would mean i get to live in NY, even though it's freezing here, i think i can handle it. we had dinner at a great french restaurant in chelsea, it was AMAZING!! i had a great time.

rip taylor

WHO IS HE? i'm still asking myself that, but i think he's some famous comedian from the 70s who is toatlly gay ( i think, don't sue me rip) and is famous for throwing confetti every time he's on camera. ( i think on the gong show!) anyway, he was at my friends' chris and bryans Christmas party last weekend, and here are the pics with me and him and will and him!!!

secret santa

today was secret santa at our show and we go overboard. being t.v. sitcom writers there's always a joke gifts and then an over the top expensive gift. my joke gift was a bib that says "suck it," which is what i always say to people and in the writers room if people dont' like my pitch. and becuase i always spill food on myself. then i got SERIUS SATELLITE RADIO!! it was hidden in the men's room cause i went into the mens room once while the women's room was being cleaned during a taping while everyone was on stage... turns out not everyone was on stage, rob, our exec. prod. came up stairs to use the bathroom too!! alan dybner also got a bib cause we call him the baby in the writers room, so here's a pic of us with both our bibs. also i'm wearing my christmas sweater again, i'm starting to like it a bit too much!

endoscopy

got an endoscopy yesterday. man, has this stomach thing really cost a lot for my insurance!! this year alone I've had a colonoscopy, ultra sound, countless blood tests, an endoscopy, barium x-ray!! anyway yesterday morning i got up early to be put out for like an hour while they stuck a camera down my throat. they took a bunch of biopsies and i will get the results back at the end of the week!! i wish i had a video of my insides!!

cookie swap

last night was girls night cookie swap! there were supposed to be 8 of us, but only 6 could come and it was really fun. i had to show up late cause I was working late, but only 3 more days of work until i have 2 weeks off!! YAHOO!! anyway, i made chocolate chocolate chip cookies with a hershey kiss on top!! monique made these peanut butter thingys, amy made italian wedding cookies, bernsie made chocolate chip cookies with cnady canes in them, janae made some sort of cornflake thing dyed green and shaped like a wreath and erika made popcorn ball thingys. I don't know the real names of these things. anyway, after the swap I immediately drove to Will's to unload all the cookies on him and his roomate in order to avoid getting enormous over the holidays. don't worry i saved a few cookies for me!!

long beach christmas

when you hear long beach, california, you think snoop dogg and gang warfare... and you wouldn't be wrong, but last night i found out that this town is more than just that. kristin had a party where we walked along the canals of long beach to take in the holiay lights, it was really nice. bernadette and i got matching holiday sweaters at kmart to make the experience whole!

holiday weekend

i'm really looking forward to this weekend. i have a great party on sat. night at 2 of the writers house and these guys are insane in their decorating, the guys i went to the christmas village show a few weeks ago when they spent over $1400 on various christmas items. they can decorate their house insanely and would put the white house to shame. also theyr'e going to have a great caterer! and i'm going to know almost everyone as this party, so i'm psyched. then on sunday night my friend kristen is having a party in long beach where they apparently have canals people decorate for christmas, so we're meeting at her parents house and then walking along the canals, taking in lights and ending up at her friend paula's house for dessert and coffee!! i'm so psyched. i also have to make 4 dzn cookies at some point for cookie swap girls night on monday!! i can't wait for christmas!!! yahoo!! i leave in a week for NYC but not that excited since I was just there 2 weeks ago and travevlling is a big pain in the ass, but i will get to see my niece and nephew!! that's fun!

NY knicks

last night will and i went to the Knicks/Clippers game at staples center. It was very fun with the exception of the loss, which sucked big time!! We were winning the entire game and then in the 4 mins. the knicks sucked it! I'm also very against the new knicks uniforms, i couldn't find a picture but believe me, not so cool. we met up with one of the cast members of my show and had a cigarette, his seats were better than ours. all in all a great night...

another day in hollywood

I was leaving the gym this morning and saw jeff goldblum on his way in. Whenever I see people coming into the gym as i'm exiting, i think "sucker!" i already had an awesome workout and you haven't even started yet! I would've liked to see what he does when he works out though. Carmen electra and dave navarro work out there and she usually takes classes and he's on the eliptical machine. also I started drinking this stuff called Green magma" which is basically powdered barley grass. Yum! (not really)

late nights at the office

yesterday we all came in early to re-break this weeks episode. we sat around, came up with all new stories and then each writer was assigned a scene to write and we went off, wrote our individual scenes and two hours later we had a script. it's what we in the t.v. writing business refer to as a "gang-banged script." then we were here until 1 a.m. re-writing that script. and then i got up this a.m. to work out cause i ate a lot of junk food while sitting for 18 hours yesterday! what a day!

the weekend

this weekend went by so fast I almost can't believe it's monday. On saturday I slept in and then went shopping for a Christmas tree with bernadette. We then went to my friend/FOX exec. Yvette's jewelry party. It was for holiday gifts, but I only bought something for myself. then later I went to yoga and picked up my friend christie who was in town on buisness for nike and who had been at the USC/UCLA game and had been drinking all day. She planned to stay with me for the night to hang before she went back to portland. we got a great sushi dinner at Sushi roku and then hit a few parties. AT my friend Tal's party, christie was sexually assaulted by numerous fellas who pinched and felt her up. then we went to kristin's party where christie was soooo tired from drinking all day that she asked to get my keys and go to sleep in my car which i was not going to allow so even though will wanted to meet up with us, i couldnt see him due to christie needing sleep. we got up the next day had b'fast, went to Nike town for the discount baby and I took her to the airport, a quick trip indeed. I then went to spa mystique for my friend's bday party and i got a massage and then we all met up and had cake and champagne! what a day! I then came home and watched grey's anatomy, i freakin' love that show and that patrick dempsey.

wednesday

last night i had drinks with my agents tom and rich. they're very funny to hang out with. we went to this cheesy mexican bar, they got margaritas but I went with sierra nevada beer, mucho mexicano! anyway, as promised here are pics of my niece and i and tina at our tea party. also, one with ro ro (the cutest kid EVER!!) holding tina's emmy award! (she'll have her own some day.... some day!!)