It’s the belt buckle that’s sweeping the nation.
(thanks to Andrew, who found this!)

The original idea behind Just A Geek was to simply chronicle one year at WWdN. It was little more than a cut-n-paste job, intended to provide an “offline” version of this website. But the weblog entries looked weird on their own, so I wrote some “behind the scenes” narrative to tie them together, and and honest-to-goodness Journey emerged. Over the course of that year, I went from struggling actor, plagued by deamons of self-doubt to . . . well . . . Just A Geek, I guess. I’m up to page 70 on the current re-write (not bad for three days of work), and it’s going pretty well, so far. I removed some really awful passive-voice stuff from my narrative, and I cleaned up some sections that have bothered me for months. There’s still a long way for me to go, but I’ve cleared the first checkpoint.
The format of JAG is quite different from Dancing Barefoot. While Barefoot (heh. I LOVE calling it that!) is five short stories, Geek (double heh) is more of a documentary. While I’ve been working on JAG the past few days, I’ve given serious thought to re-writing the whole thing from the beginning, and making it less of a documentary, and more of a narrative. That would involve cutting up the weblog entries, though, and incorporating them into newly-written stuff . . . and would probably mean that the book wouldn’t be done for another several months.
I ran that idea past my editor, Andrew, and he thought that it was just a delaying tactic, because I’m so terrified about releasing this second book. I think he’s right, and for now I will leave the formatting alone, and focus on making it better.
I suffer from a tremendous lack of discipline, so if I’m ever going to finish this book, I have to give myself a very strict schedule and stick to it. I find that I can write for about three hours before I fall apart, so the schedule is currently: get up at 8, write until around 12, and spend two hours handling book orders and other administrative stuff for Monolith and WWdN. Then, before the kids get out of school, I “relax” by working on this apache server I’ve gotten to run on my desk over there. I even installed postnuke on it, and got it to work on the first try! I have no idea what I’ll do with it . . . but it’s there. Maybe I’ll get to work on qmail next.
Oh, some readers have pointed out to me that the formatting on this page is wonky at certain resolutions, and you have to side-scroll. Side-scrolling makes the baby Jesus cry, but I can’t figure out what I did to screw it up. If any of you htmlgods want to look at the source and point me to a solution, I’m sure a lot of people would thank you.
Update: I may have fixed it. Look at this. And in celebration of maybe fixxoring the stupid side-scrolling, I offer this.

I had such a great weekend! The kids were with their dad, so Anne and I got to have two “date nights” in a row.
Friday night, we went to old town for dinner at the recently-opened Pasadena Brewing Company. The service really needs work, but the food was awesome. I had this stuffed cheeseburger thing that was delicious. It’s hard to improve upon the basic cheeseburger model, but they have done a fine job over there.
During the day onSaturday, I spent some time handling book orders, and mowed the lawn. I have reached the conclusion that I love mowing my lawn. I put on my iPod, and I really take my time. It’s almost a meditation for me, to slowly push my lawnmower across the grass, as I cut my lawn to look like an outfield. Saturday night, Anne and I went out to Sixspace to see Shepard Fairey’s new show “This is Your God,” (it is AMAZING). We had to leave early, though, so we could make our dinner reservation at Amalfi, which is the new restaurant next door to ACME in Hollywood. After dinner, we went to the Bad Taste Show at ACME. I didn’t write for this current show, but after watching it, I’m totally writing for the next one. It is filled with sketches that we’re just not supposed to do: sketches that are really gross, heavily sexual, and incredibly offensive. If you’re even the tiniest bit twisted, you’ll love this show.
Sunday, we went to my brother’s new house for dinner. It was crazy, man, to stand in Jeremy’s living room, and think, My god. My little brother owns his own house! I’m really proud of him and his wife. They’ve made a fantastic life for themselves.

The Guinness joke made it to Fark, and the comments thread there is filled with some of the absolute best “a guy walks into a bar . . . ” jokes of all time. It could quite possibly be the finest collection of bar-related humor on the Internet.
Here’s one of my own, that I’m about to add to the list:

A guy sits alone at a bar, drinking his beer. From out of nowhere, he hears a voice say, “You look great, man! Have you lost weight?” He looks around, and confirms that the only other person in the bar is the bartender, who is all the way at the other end of the bar. He shrugs it off, and takes another drink of his beer.
“That’s a really nice suit. It looks good on you,” the voice says again.
The guy looks around, and before he can say anything, the voice says, “You have very nice eyes.”
The guy freaks out, and shouts, “Hey, bartender! Come here!”
As the bartender arrives, the voice speaks again. “That’s a nice haircut!”
“Who keeps talking to me?!” The guy asks the bartender.
“Oh, that?” The bartender says, “It’s the peanuts. They’re complimentary.”

Thank you, folks. Try the fish.

And now, comedy:

The leaders of the big beer companies meet for a drink. The president of Budweiser orders a Bud, the CEO of Miller gets a Miller, the head of Coors orders a Coors, and so on.