Mid-week misc-takes

Thanks to those websites who linked to my Aaron Sorkin parody. For you new readers, what you’ll find here are humor pieces, inside industry stuff, anecdotes, advice to writers, goofy travelogues, award show reviews, script samples, and once every five years a political piece.

A couple more prime time game shows are premiering, cutting out even more slots for scripted shows. I think in the next WGA contract they should insist that writers be contestants so at least we can win our money for the year.

The NBA season begins. I think they should just give each team 100 points and let them play for five minutes. As it is now there are 82 exhibition games until the playoffs.

On whatever the OUTDOOR NETWORK is now called there is a great show where BBQ chefs compete for $75,000. You can almost feel the grease coming out of your TV screen. One of the events is having them cook unfamiliar dishes. These good ol’ boys are stymied. “Lobster? Wha’ the fuck is lobster?” Then you see them flip it around and around looking for the ass to shove a jalapeño pepper in.

Rumors abound that STUDIO 60 will soon be cancelled. Darn. And I was so looking forward to that full page ad in the trades: “For your consideration: Sarah Paulson, best actress in a comedy.”

PRISON BREAK: Michael sets up this elaborate system of clues that even the Navajos couldn’t decipher to rendezvous with Sarah and he expects her to be there? I might’ve just sent a text message. But then, if my brother were on death row and I knew the floor plan of the prison, instead of going to prison myself to spring him I might merely phone and say, “Okay, bro, there’s a passageway under the laundry room. That takes you to a vent near the chapel. Climb up that vent for fifty feet then turn right…” etc.

HEROES: Save the cheerleader, save the network.

Note to movie theaters: Okay, I surrender. You can play commercials. Just don’t show the CATCH A FIRE trailer ever again. I’ve seen it sixty-five times. Please. I’ll even sit through the “Movie Fone” ad.

No comedy writer should be without the SGT. BILKO box set. The episode where Bilko gets a monkey processed and sworn into the army is worth the price of the DVD’s alone.

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! To the greatest show on earth! If there’s anyone who loves a circus more than kids, Twyla Tharp thinks it’s aged baby boomers. Her new Broadway show, THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’, the juke box musical of Bob Dylan hits (or, as my daughter Annie calls the genre – a “re-usical”) is inexplicably set under the big top. I guess the jugglers and the clowns will do their tricks for you. I despise circuses anyway (sad clowns are even worse than the CATCH A FIRE trailer) so I can’t imagine anything more horrible. To sit through this, truly, everybody must get stoned.

I love Elizabeth Mitchell. Even if she’s an “other”. To join the cast of LOST do you now have to take a breathalyzer test?

Fox is preparing a TSA action-drama, focusing on those brave men and women who make you put your computer in a separate bin.

I just saw ten minutes of MARIE ANTOINETTE (I ducked into another theater during a certain trailer) so it’s not really fair to comment. But what I saw looked like Romy & Michele with wigs.

Keith Urban checked himself into a substance abuse treatment center four months after marrying Nicole Kidman. Draw your own conclusions.

And finally…can you believe it’s November already??