it’s a big hat. it’s funny.

Ryan was home for Thanksgiving, and he just kept walking up to me and saying, “It’s a big hat, it’s funny.” He mimed the chewing of the gum and everything, and we just started randomly saying it to each other all weekend.

I mention that so you have some context for this:

Of all the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches on SNL, this one is my all-time favorite. Norm MacDonald is just perfect.

Here’s an alternate link to funny or die for those of you who are outside the US.

(And as long as I’m linking to SNL videos: Extreme Challenge. I was “meh” on this at first, but it gets funnier every time I watch it.)

happiest days of our lives only available from me until friday december 5

Holy shit, it’s already December 2nd! How did that happen?

(I know, Earth rotates, time marches on, etc. It was a rhetorical question. Jeeze.)

Why do you care? Well, most of you reading this probably don’t, but if you want to get a copy of The Happiest Days of Our Lives from Monolith Press, and have it arrive in time for the holidays, you have until this Friday to place your order.

I’m not sure how many copies are left, but I think it’s less than 100. I’m not sure if there are even that many potential sales in the universe at this very moment, but if I run out of books before Friday, I’ll update this post. Either way, after Friday, it’s probably gone forever because I’ll be working on something new.

The special expanded edition from Subterranean Press is still available for order, and will ship sometime early next year.

Edited to add: This afterthought is for people who are interested in the audio version. It is damn close to being done, and will probably be out VERY soon. Like, very, very soon, if you get my drift. I mention this today so you don’t think I’m pulling one of those “buy this now but guess what here’s something else hahaha I got your money like a Whammy on Press Your Luck” moves that are so popular with jerkfaces who have the face of a jerk these days.

super fun happy slide!

This week’s contribution to the LA Daily is now online, and ready to send you screaming gleefully down a super fun happy slide into a waiting mob of vampires with overbites:

I spent the first two thirds of my life working as a full-time actor, but about five years ago, my primary focus shifted from acting to writing. A funny thing happened on my way to being a full-time writer, though: I started working a lot as an actor, both on camera (CSI, Criminal Minds) and with my voice (Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes). This has lead to a pretty standard question when I do interviews: “What do you like more, acting or writing?”

“It’s a lot like asking a parent which child they love more,” goes my standard response, “the truth for me is that I love both of my children for different reasons, and I don’t think it’s possible for me to love one more than the other. However, it is impossible for me to imagine my life without them in it.”

My acting career has spanned just a few months shy of thirty years. During it, I’ve worked with awesome people, complete douchebags, famous people who were intimidating, famous people who were gracious, famous people who were on their way down, and soon-to-be famous people who were on their way up. This week, I thought it would be fun to combine my actor side with my writer side, and tell a story about one of those people.

Totally unrelated to this week’s column: I made a cameo appearance in Something Positive yesterday. It’s pretty awesome.

(Comments are closed on this post, to encourage commenting at the Weekly.)

on the importance of maintaining one’s grip on reality

Tim Kring speaks:

In any case, “Heroes” creator Tim Kring said Monday that “there is nothing in the works for him at this point – although a bunch of us over here are big fans of his and would love nothing more than to find some part for him.”

So there’s 10 ways to look at this:

0) It ain’t gonna happen.

1) It may happen in the mysterious future.

As I’ve gotten e-mails and comments about this all day, something’s come up that I want to make painfully clear: It’s really important to me is that this is not misunderstood as some pathetic, desperate attempt to land a role on a show that I’ve had two chances to audition for and totally tanked both times because I wanted it so badly. That’s not how I operate, and I can’t imagine that it would ever have the desired result if it was.

Instead, I hope that this whole thing will be seen the way I’ve seen it: as something cool that happened thanks to Twitter, and as an example of how profoundly our lives have been changed by the technological advances of just the last few years – we really are living in the future, you know.