1. 1.I've gotta work on the Penske file. The old man is breaking my ass, and if I don't put in some serious 14 hour days, I'm never gonna make partner and Penelope Ann's gonna leave me for the heir to the Gortex fortune that her damn parents are always pushing. "You've got to think about your future...that slacker boyfriend of yours is going nowhere, his fantasy baseball team is barely in contention with his almost unnatural need to keep starting Edwin Encarnacion...and that Gortex boy comes from such fine stock, with his regal cheekbones and his ripe buttocks, Penelope, listen to your father, if there's one thing I know it's the pleasure of a ripe Gortex buttocks..."
   
2. 2.4 words: Digital Underground In Concert! Whipass~ It might be 2K6, but I still like my beats funky and my oatmeal lumpy, and if you've never known the pleasure of getting busy in a Burger King bathroom, I just feel badly for you.
   
   
3. 3.They want me to buy a ticket to see my own play.
   
   Seriously. A lot of the stuff I've written about in this blog is worked (carny term, I'm way inside) but this is clearly 100% true.
   
   No, even I can't say that with a straight face—I mean, given the hundreds of hours I've spent just on the promotion of the thing (not to mention, you know, the writing of the play itself) the degree of travel, the incredible odds against our ever turning a profit on Spoons—and that I wouldn't be coming to see the play as an audience member, but to take feverish notes in order to rewrite—there's no way in the world they'd ask me for 11 bucks to go see it. I mean, that would be crazy. Seriously. Kirk's gonna consider deleting this; he's given me free reign with the sexual references and my opposition to all things religious (it's really not just a Christian thing; they're just the only ones in the way of stem cell research—but I'm not one of those progressives who want to embrace the mainstream Muslim either. I'm tired of all of you guy in the sky folks who want to put your stuff on my face), but Kirk thinks that such a ridiculous, bald faced, possibly defamatory lie such as this...
   
   ...that despite our laying out more for promotion than we're going to make from the show, despite the intense amount of work we've put in from page to stage, including building perhaps the most advanced, professional, content-rich web site in the history of previously unproduced playwrights, the people in Lima want to charge us to see our own play...
   
   Kirk thinks that's unfair, counter-productive, and more importantly completely unbelievable. I need at least a veneer of believability to keep my credibility with you, my fabulous reader, and saying something like "they want me to fly a thousand miles, stay at the Comfort Inn, and then give them 11 bucks" is just impossible to believe for right thinking people.
   
   Impossible.
   
   Seriously.
   
   
4. 4.I need to analyze the following picture of Jeremy Piven's 41st birthday.
   
   

1. I'm thinking that, in the way scholars have often debated why it was the Mona Lisa smiled, future generations will have to grapple with the reason for the Piv's sadness as he stares so balefully at his birthday cake.
3. I'm going with—'cause dude is hungry and he can't have any cake. Come on—you know the Piv ain't eating cake—he's a 41 year old actor, there's never an Entourage that doesn't involve him working out in some way—he's already had the hair plug thing done—no fucking way Jeremy Piven's eating him some chocolate cake—and he's wondering right now if it's all worth it, since, for some unknowable reason, he can't win an Emmy.
5. Fuck the Emmys, by the way. Lauren Graham, not nominated. Jason Bateman, not nominated. James By God Gandolfini, not nominated. Charlie Sheen and Kevin James...totally nominated. Embarrassing.
7. Incidentally, if you're reading this sometime beyond say, the first week of August, 2006, and the picture of Piven staring at the cake has been replaced with, I don't know—just a picture of Piven or just a picture of cake or maybe that super creepy USC man scrum from a couple blogs back—that's because Piven's lawyers sent us a letter.
9. And if you're Piven's lawyers reading this—sure, go ahead and send the letter and we'll totally take it down. One, I don't need the trouble. Two, I really like Jeremy Piven—he and Cusack are boys and while I don't like Cusack the way my librarian buddy Boxen likes Cusack—I like Cusack a lot and have seen Say Anything 37 times. If you don't think I've said, "my assault on the world begins now" without a trace of irony more than once since 1989, you really aren't paying attention.
11. Lloyd, Lloyd, all null and void. Man, that's good stuff. I'll never write anything that good. Maybe I should give these people my 11 bucks.

5. 5.'Cause Ohio just don't get my sexy.