Category: blog

We are in Santa Barbara. It is November, and Anne and I are here for our anniversary, walking back to our hotel after the first romantic dinner we’ve enjoyed in months.
Though it is Saturday night, this normally crowded street is nearly deserted, because it is pouring rain. A cold, relentless rain that soaks into my shoes and clings to my body. The cold cuts straight through me, numbing my hands and feet.
The few people who have chosen to brave the storm are huddled in doorways and under awnings. Anne and I share a too-small umbrella in a futile attempt to stay dry.
It has been a wonderful evening, ending a wonderful day. We haven’t gotten to spend much time just enjoying each other’s company, just being together for several weeks, and I am cherishing every rain-soaked moment.
The storm intensifies as we hurry back to our hotel, turning downspouts to waterfalls, and the street into a small stream. Normally, the urge to stomp in puddles is irresistible to me, but the numbness is creeping up my legs now, and I need little encouragement to leave the puddles alone.
After a few blocks, the cold and rain is too much for me, and I suggest that we stop, and hail a cab.
Anne stops, and looks at me, her blue eyes gleaming. She says they’re green, but they’re blue…I see them whenever my mind wanders, so I know.
She steps out of the small shelter our umbrella is providing, and stands unprotected in the rain.
“I want to walk in the rain!” She declares.
“But it’s 40 degrees!” I remind her, shivering. A few passersby look at us as if we’re having a fight, and I chuckle to myself. They couldn’t be more wrong.
“I don’t care,” she tells me, her hair falling down and clinging to the sides of her face, her jacket darkening as it absorbs the storm. “Someday, I’m going to want to walk in the cold rain, and feel it on my face, and I’m not going to be able to. So I’m going to do it now.”
She reaches out and touches my cheek, and pulls my face to her. She leans towards me, kisses my nose, and walks away, her face cast upwards, her palms turned up to receive the rain.
She stomps into a puddle, and turns around.
“C’mon, you weenie! Walk with me!”
She is so beautiful, so joyous. The storm threatens to draw a curtain of rain around her, obscuring her from my view. Though she is twenty feet from me, I can see her beaming and feel her joy. She positively loves this.
I watch her, happily standing in the rain. In this moment I know why I married her. I know why she is the other half of my heartbeat.
But it’s 40 degrees. There’s no way I’m giving up this umbrella.
I lean against the rain, and close the distance between us. When I draw near her, she reaches out and knocks the umbrella out of my hand.
As it falls to the ground, she takes me in her arms. She pulls me to her, and kisses me.
“I love you,” she says, rain dripping off her nose onto my face.
She does love me. It’s one thing to say it, and one thing to hear it, but it’s another thing to feel it.
“I love you too,” I reply.
We stand there in the rain for a moment, looking at each other. We are soaking wet, freezing cold, and desperately in love.

So the poison oak I got while geocaching two weeks ago is finally on the way out, leaving behind some spectacular scarring on my arm.
The best thing? I was using this Caladryl lotion the last few days to really dry it up and stop the itching, which it did…unfortunately irritating the hell out of the rest of my skin, and causing a rash which itches just as badly as the poison oak ever did.
Adding insult to injury, my geocaching log notifier sent me a notice yesterday that someone logged the cache I was trying to find. I wonder if they got the bonus poison oak? =]
So I went to the doctor this morning, and he put me on prednisone for a week, and gave me an ointment to calm the rash.
Oy. Vey.
Put up the Christmas lights last night, and have a great story to go with it. Working on it now.
I think it’s going to be a really wonderful holiday season this year.
Very astute readers will notice that I’ve moved the sale info up to the top of the page, so I can keep writing and keep people informed about those exciting holiday gift opportunities. =]
I sent the first 30 8x10s this morning, to places like Austin, the UK, Germany, Puerto Rico, and the far off hamlet of Burbank!
I’m running out of Iron Maiden shots, but there are still Stand By Me and Red space Suit pictures left.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen the entire Special Edition of Fellowship of the Ring, you simply must get offline NOW and go watch it.

I really like Thanksgiving.
I love gathering with my family, spending the day with people I don’t get to see very often, and sitting down for a massive dinner that I didn’t have to cook.
Is there a better time for a List Of Seven?
Today, I am thankful for:

1. Creative energy, used to bring Joy into the world.
2. Seeing my cousin Dustin today.
3. My invitation to the Cast and Crew screening of Trek X
4. Finally looking back on my teenage years with more joy than regret.
5. My wife cuddling me because she loves me…not because she’s trying to stay warm.
6. Ferris, when she looks at me and says, “What?”
7. I am thankful for this website, and the readers who have come together from around the world to share in my stupid life, riding the roller coaster of success and failure, triumph and despair. I know for a fact that I never would have grown from struggling actor-slash-has-been to aspiring writer-slash-actor.

Our extended Thought For Today comes from Bob in Iowa, Katie’s father:

What I Am Thankful For
———————-
I am thankful that my daughter’s surgery went smoothly and successfully. Her kidneys will not develop horrible problems later in life, and a small scar is indeed an easy price to pay for her health.
I am thankful for the skill of the pediatric urology surgeon and the team that worked on my daughter. Their skill has proved in her case, as in many others I’m sure, that disciplined modern medicine is something that we should all be glad for. I am thankful for whoever the person or team was that invented the careful system of moving around and passing instruments in the modern surgery room. I am thankful for whoever the person or team was that sterilizes those instruments at the University of Iowa Hospital, and indeed in all hospitals.
I am thankful that my daughter’s recovery has been as impressive as the surgery itself. She is home now, running around like a precocious 16-month-old should, and she will be able to enjoy a Thanksgiving Dinner with her family.
I am thankful that my daughter is running around like a precocious 16-month-old, and I will try to remember that the next time she gets into something that she knows she shouldn’t or knocks something over. I am thankful that she will continue to grow up healthy. I am thankful that I have a daughter.
I am thankful to Wil Wheaton, who responded to an email I wrote at a time when I was at my worst, my most desperate. That simple request, which was fulfilled despite Wil’s having absolutely no obligation to, lead to an outpouring of love that not only affected me very deeply and helped my daughter in a very real way, it seems to have affected everyone involved in some way.
I am thankful to the complete strangers who, upon reading the entry in Wil Wheaton’s blog, made a simple choice to take a moment from their day and send some love my daughter’s way. I swear to God that I felt it, and I believe in my heart that it helped both with the surgery and with the swift recovery. I just wish there was another word to describe a person whom I have never met besides “stranger”, because that name is so ill-fitting to the people who took the time to help my daughter.
But most of all, I am thankful that despite the horrible things that we see every day on television and read about every day in newspapers, there is enough love in the world to selflessly help a little girl in need of love, and that we really are a loving and caring race. More often than not, we seem to forget what we really are. I am thankful that this opportunity arose to remind us all.
Thank you all for your compassion and kindness. Katie is recovering wonderfully, and I don’t doubt for a second that all of your goodwill and love is a MAJOR reason for that. I really cannot thank any of you enough, other than to say, “Thank you.” May you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by family and friends.
– Bob Roth, WWDN fan

It’s so windy here in Pasadena today, it’s snowing leaves. There is this large area of a hillside in Burbank where there was a massive fire a few months ago, and a huge cloud of dust hovers over it, like a sandstorm.
The Santa Ana Winds are in full effect, and my dry skin, nose and throat are a small price to pay for clear blue skies and warm temperatures in November.
So here’s something unexpected: I did a voice today on this new show for the Kids WB! The call came on Friday, and here’s the cool thing: the director, a wonderful woman named Andrea Romano, who has won seven emmy’s called my agent and requested me, based on my work with her last year on “The Zeta Project.”
I can’t say what voice I did, but I was told when I left today that they were so happy, I would probably be asked back to do the role again in the next thirteen episodes.
The episode I did was written by this really nice guy named Marv Wolfman, who co-created and wrote “Teen Titans” for sixteen years, created “Blade,” and was just an all-around cool guy. We spent some time geeking out about comic books today…it just killed me that he was referring to Alan Moore as “Alan.”
Animation is really fun, because it’s really quick work (usually less than 4 hours for an episode), and the people who do it are all really cool…but it’s also very hard to break into the animation world, because the community is extremely small, and very protective. Being asked by a very respected director to come back, based on her previous experience with me, is just HUGE, and it makes me feel really good, and it may signal my entry into the world of animation.
A few months ago, I made this major decision in my life: I would stop applying a singular focus to getting work as an actor. I would continue to accept auditions as they came along, but I wasn’t going to break my back, or sacrifice time with my friends and family to play Hollywood’s game.
Since I made that choice, stopped caring so much about acting, and started focusing on writing, and being a husband and father, I’ve gotten two jobs almost immediately.
So I guess I’m going to have to start calling myself “Writer-Slash-Actor.”
You’ll note that I did not say “Actor-Slash-Writer.” This is a very important distinction.

Ferris is playing this game:
1. She picks up the soggy remains of her rawhide bone, and drops it on the ground.
2. She backs up, tail wagging, and stares at it.
3. She growls at it, then lunges forward, picking it up as she runs around the living room.
4. She brings it to me, and drops it in my lap.
5. I say, “that’s really interesting, Ferris,” and drop it on the floor, where she picks it up, and takes it back to the middle of the room.
Then she goes and does the whole thing again.
See, Anne went up to Oregon this weekend, and the kids are with their dad, so it’s just me and Ferris hanging out. This is how we entertain ourselves in the absence of any real responsible people around.
It’s actually a good weekend for me to take a break, because I’ve been writing and re-writing pretty much non-stop since last Friday –dramatic pause– and I finished my first draft of my book on Thursday. It went off to my editor yesterday morning, and I’m anticipating doing some rewrites next week.
I’m really excited about it, and I hope to have a limited first printing ready in time for Xmas. I’ll post details when I get it all worked out.
The weekend so far:
I went with some friends to see Die Another Day last night at the Arclight. I’m not an action movie guy at all, but I love James Bond, and this is easily the best Bond picture I’ve seen in maybe five years, aside from some inexcusably terrible miniature and FX work, the script is fun, paying tribute to some of the my favorite Bond pictures.
This morning, I went on a hike with my brother and my friend Mykal. We were hoping to find the Dawn Mine Geocache, but we couldn’t even get on the right trail to the damn mine before we ran out of time and had to get back to the car. We went up to a beautiful waterfall, though.
Oh, and last week, when I took the kids to find the Geocache at Rubio? Yeah. I walked RIGHT. FUCKING. THROUGH. Poison oak. It is all over my right forearm, my left bicep, my forehead, on my left knee, my neck, and my right ankle. I think I qualify for some sort of “complete dumbass” award for not seeing it.
Lame.
The really cool thing, though, is that I sort of look like one of those guys in “Scanners” right before they blow up. And kind of like pictures of the moon. And also sort of like an alligator…but a scary X-files mutant alligator from hell who shoots death beams out of his eyes and creeps out of your bathtub at night to suck your skin off, and sing Copacabana in your living room.
I read somewhere that massive itching can make one go a little batty…but I don’t believe it.