This is an entry entirely about beer.
Though I’ve always been a stout drinking kind of guy, over the last year or so I’ve gradually moved toward hoppy pale ales and IPAs for my beer drinking enjoyment.
I’ve discovered that Stone Brewing Company, out of North San Diego County, makes my favorite hoppy beers: The Stone Pale Ale, The Arrogant Bastard Ale, and the Stone IPA.
I like their beer so much, I decided yesterday that I’d call their marketing department and see if it was cool for me to link to them. I got the phone number from their website, and while I was there, I decided to sign up for their newsletter, so I could find out if they were coming to any microbrew fests near Pasadena, and stuff like that. (That’s important, and it pays off in a second, so stay with me here.)
I called them up, and talked to a guy in marketing. I basically said, “I’ve got this website that a few people read. I really like your beer, and if it’s cool with you, I’d like to link to your website, and give you some free advertising, as my way of saying ‘thank you’ for killing off so many of my slower brain cells.”
He told me that Stone doesn’t really do advertising, but if I wanted to link to them, that would be cool. I told him that I’d e-mail him the address of my site, so he could see what my blog is all about, and that was that.
This afternoon, I got an e-mail back from him. Guess what? When I signed up for the newsletter, I was subscriber number ten thousand! I don’t think I win anything, but I thought it was random, and funny, and cool.
I’m totally putting “Number 10,000” on my resume. Take that, 1950s society!

Each week, when I sit down to write my The Games of our Lives column for The Onion AV Club, I have several “I can’t believe I get to do this!” moments when I giggle, spin around in my chair, and hope that nobody saw me.
Anyway, I’m particularly proud of this week’s effort, which is about a fantastic Atari 2600 game called Alien. Check out my column, and then try to get your hands on a copy of the game. It’s really fun.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) I’ll be performing with the Liquid Radio Players down at the ACME.
Liquid Radio is an improvised 1940s-style radio show, complete with live foley sound effects and a wonderful cast in swell vintage costumes.
Most of the comedy shows I do are decidedly not appropriate for children, but because Liquid Radio is set in the 1940s, the show is totally acceptable for teenagers, and middle-schoolers who can sit quietly through an entire show.
Details about the show and the cast are here. You can also buy tickets online.

I just got home from ACME rehearsal. It takes me at least an hour to unwind, and my favorite way to do that is to grab a Stone Pale Ale, let Sketch hop up into my lap, and check out my friend’s blogs.
I just discovered that my friend Shane has a positively brilliant entry at his equally brilliant blog. It’s about an audition he just had.
Shane says:

“I had an audition today.
Normally, that statement wouldn’t mean very much because normally, I am an actor.
Today, however, I had my first audition since August.

On the business side, we who act all know that we’re going to miss more than we hit. If we were baseball players, most of us would be batting .095, and we’d be thrilled. I’ve had about six auditions in the last twelve months, and I think four of them have come in the last eight weeks. It’s not a big deal, because I’m currently able to support my family by writing, and I get to act once a week at ACME. Like Shane, I’ve found other priorities in my life . . . but there’s this thing in my brain that demands I get on a stage and perform for people. If you’re a creative person, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever gotten paid for it, you know how good that feels, too.
Shane’s been working as a Supervising Producer on a show for several months, so he hasn’t put on his Actor’s Shoes in a long time. I could really relate to his story, because I’ve been wearing my Writer’s Shoes for at least a year. Even when I did CSI, I had a hard time focusing on the acting . . . there were a ton of great stories going on all around me, and I wanted to tell them all.
One more excerpt from Shane, and then you’ll have to go hit his blog to read the rest:

I showed up at CBS Radford about a half an hour early and read through it a few more times in my car. The audition was at 3:30. At 3:15, I walked over to Bungalow 15. Walking through the lot felt strange. I felt like an interloper, certain that everyone who saw me could tell that I didn’t belong there…at least, not in THAT capacity. I had to remind myself that I’ve been an actor for 15 years and a producer for only 8 months. This should feel natural. I entered the Bungalow and looked for the sign-in sheet.
“I don’t have one,” the assistant behind the desk said with a smile.
“Was I that obvious?” I asked her.
“You had that look in your eye,” she said with another smile. She brought over some water, as if pre-emptively answering the typical actor’s next question and I smiled.
“Are you trying to stay one question in front of us?” I asked her.
She laughed: “Uh-huh. Also, the bathroom is down the hall and to the right.”
It felt good to be back in this world. Actors are often looked down upon here as a necessary evil, but I had forgotten how much I enjoy filling those shoes.

As an actor, I can so relate to Shane’s story. I’ve been in that room at least a thousand times. I bet that it’s got drab grey carpet, particle-board furniture, and the ever-present copy machine whirr Ka-chunk!-ing its way through hundreds of script pages. As a writer, I totally admire his ability to put into words some of the things we actors go through when we do that thing we do.
Please visit Shane’s site and read Old Shoes Fill Easy.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to make some changes and updates to WWdN. (After I finish my Slashdot interview. Put down your pitchforks.)
Most of the changes will be at the code-level, so I can make my site more compliant and hopefully faster, but I’m also going to update some of the static pages that haven’t been touched in years. For example, the about and FAQ pages are so many years out of date, they don’t even mention any of my writing gigs. Oops. I also hope to add some sort of backend that will let me update my READ LISTEN WATCH links and my appearances page more frequently and more easily. Looks like I have to actually learn more php and MySQL. I believe the emoticon for that is =:o
Yesterday, I switched my RSS feed over to Feedburner, and added a few easy subscription buttons over on the left side of the page. I did this because I have noticed that actual site visits have dropped off significantly since I went to full feeds, and Feedburner gives me subscriber stats that are useful to me when I talk to the press, or try to impress my friends. (For some reason, “About 7500 people subscribe to my feed” just sounds cooler than “I think a bunch of people read my feed.”) I’m also using Feedburner to jam some Amazon DVD links into every 3rd entry in the feed. Click ’em if you want, ignore ’em if you don’t.
I used .htaccess to automatically update existing subscribers, but new subscribers can easily add my site’s feed to My Yahoo!, My MSN, and Newsgator. Hooray!
I’ve also switched my audioblog feed to Feedburner, and it should now support Podcasting. Hooray hooray!