Bob Odenkirk may not be cranking out the best feature films lately (Let's Go To Prison? Meh. The Brothers Solomon? I heard it was awful). But at least he's making funny online shorts, including this one: Bob Pitches a Movie. Actually this water thing could be the best movie he's made in years...

Behold, the newest episode of Zootoo News. I think this one may be my favorite so far, thanks to the Russian commercial.

I've discovered that lately when I let my beard grow for a few days (I guess it's not technically a beard yet at that point... more like scruff), I get patches of silverish / whitish hair on the left and right side of my chin. I can't tell for sure what it is, as I don't let it grow for more than 4 days before shaving. So far my hair has remained grey-free (and attached to my scalp, thank G0d). But it's distressing. Is 28 the year my body starts its downfall? Is it stress-related? Hmm...

Sorry to disappear for a few days. I got hired on a show that has taken up almost every waking minute of my life... and as you know, I have many waking minutes these days. But I couldn't not share this excerpt from the NY Times review of Good Luck Chuck:
I’ve occasionally heard Dane Cook, one of the stars of “Good Luck Chuck,” described as a comedian. I find this confusing, since my understanding is that comedians are people who say and do things that are funny. Perhaps Mr. Cook is some new kind of conceptual satirist whose shtick is to behave in the manner of a person attempting to be funny without actually being, you know, funny. Or maybe he answered an ad in the back of a magazine and sent away for a mail-order license to practice comedy.

Day two of segment producing is over. Fortunately, no disasters to speak of. Chamillionaire, although arriving nail-bitingly close to show time, was quite easy to deal with. Efren Ramirez, not as much. He was nice and agreeable to everything we wanted to do, but... he came on a show that was co-hosted by Jessica Alba and Dane Cook, and apparently he's known Alba since they were 11, and we asked him to do a freestyle about Jessica Alba, and he rapped something along the lines of "Jessica stars in Good Luck Chuck, and I'd really like to give her a f..." He didn't actually say fuck, but came as close as possible without verbalizing it. To say that Alba was not amused would be a vast understatement. I think we even have to edit it out of the show. Tune in on Thursday to see if it makes it.

On an unrelated note, I'm not a fan of Tracy Morgan, but maybe I can learn to be if he keeps talking trash about Jimmy Fallon. I'm certain he's not the only one with this opinion.

And finally, here's some nice gossip about Hulk Hogan being a Mary Carey fan.

I'm back at TRL, albeit extremely temporarily. Two of their segment producers are out of the office this week, so they called me in to fill in, even though I had never before segment produced. I was given Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Chris Crocker (the guy behind the Leave Britney Alone video) today, and tomorrow I have Chamillionaire and recently-eliminated-from-Celebrity-Rap-Superstar Efren Ramirez. Segment producing is much more complicated than I had realized as a writer, but so far, so good. It didn't hurt to have The Rock as my first guest; he's totally up for anything, including braiding a Barbie doll's hair and showing off his ballet moves, as we had him do.

Speaking of nice guys, I went to a screening of Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Tour, and Vince himself was there. He made it a point to introduce himself, then sat next to me to talk for a few minutes about how much he enjoys coming on TRL. Too bad I won't be there the next time he does a walk-on.

Finally, this week's new Zootoo Pet News is out now. Check it out.

The freelance lifestyle is truly in high gear. In recent weeks, I've been working on a wide array of different projects simultaneously. One of them is a Weekend Update-type online show for a pet-centric website called Zootoo. They've done 8 of these "Funny Pet News" shows (among other random videos, all of which are gathered here), but the first one that I contributed material to was posted earlier this week. Check it out.
And yes, I know the top of the show teases a story that isn't actually in the show... you can check out that "lost story" here.

Got a bunch of links today:
- Deadspin calls this a prank of epic proportions. I'd have to agree
- The "In the Air Tonight" gorilla also rocks out to "Sussuddio" (and here's Phil's reaction)
- Tommy Lee gives his take on the Kid Rock VMA fight
- Bill Murray + Kristen Schaal (+ a banana) = funny

Well I knew this would happen... or at least I had a strong inkling: I've gotten sick due to my lack of sleep. Nothing serious, just sort of a head cold. But that threw a decision at me: break my sleep cycle and let my body recover, or stay on the sleep cycle and hope the cold would go away on its own. Surprisingly, I chose the former. In a major regression, I took a NyQuil at 10pm last night and stayed in bed for about 12 hours. While I do feel somewhat better this morning, now I'm nervous that I completely negated the past weeks of sleep deprivation. And oh, did I forget how great it feels to have a good night's sleep.

Also great is the fact that today is the first NFL Sunday of the 2007 season and the season premiere of Curb. I'll probably also check out the VMA's, as I'm curious to see if it lives up to the hype.

Subterranean Late Night Blues
This pretty much sums up how I feel right now...

Quadruple Fault
I'm in the middle of watching U.S. Open (Venus vs. Jankovic), and just watched one of the worst interviews I've ever seen. Correspondent Michael Barkan was sent to talk to Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, who are in the crowd (Larry David was also at the Yankee game last night, along with Jeff Garlin. Who knew he was such a sports nut?). The ensuing exchange contained the following:
- Barkan asking them what they've been laughing at, and when Jerry said "we've been making jokes," Barkan asked Jerry if he'll be using any of them in his act.
- After an awkward discussion about the Seinfeld episode when Kramer became a Ballman, Barkan asked Larry if he'd even been a Ballman, since he's Kramer.
- Barkan then asking if Larry was at least the one who wrote that plotline into the episode.
- Barkan asking Jerry what he's doing, and when Jerry said he has Bee Movie coming out, Barkan said "Really? A b-movie?"
Not to mention the fact that the entire interview was conducted during exciting play, in which Venus broke to get back on serve.
Do you research next time.

After riding an hour to the Bronx and sitting an hour in the waiting room, I spent all of 4 minutes with the sleep clinic doc. She told me to continue my current schedule for at least another week, then I can add 15 minutes of sleep time, try that for 4 days, and if it works, add another 15 minutes. If I suddenly start taking more than an hour to fall back to sleep, I have to go back to the 2-8 schedule. In response to me telling her that I have headaches when I wake up and around 4pm, she said I should start going to the gym at those times. I don't see that happening... I can barely raise my eyelids at 8am, so I don't see how I'd be able to raise 200 pounds on a barbell.

And in some hometown news, I grew up a few doors down from this guy and used to play streetball with him in the neighborhood. He may have surpassed Mary Carey in terms of Coral Springs infamy.

And finally, I'm very late on this, but now that I'm watching it, I'm loving The Michael Showalter Showalter. I bet you will too.

In 9 hours I have my first follow-up appointment at the sleep clinic. I plan on telling the doc that I have been following her instructions precisely (although on Friday night I did have one beer after 11pm), that I am insanely tired, that I fall asleep faster now but have only been getting about 5 hours of sleep a night, and that I get headaches every day around 4pm. Hopefully she'll say I'm cured and don't need to continue for the remaining weeks (or months). Yeah, right.

This experiment couldn't have come at a worse time, as my roommate's mom crashed at our apartment this weekend. Again. And she was annoying. Again. Only this time I couldn't sleep away the morning, hoping they'd be gone for the day by the time I got up. No, since I was up at the crack of dawn, she decided to take me to brunch... where she got into an argument with my roommate about how he's not allowed to put her in a home if she gets sick. It also meant that, since she was sleeping in my roommate's bedroom and therefore he was sleeping in the living room, I had to keep him awake until 2am since I'm not allowed to be in my bedroom the hour before bedtime. I would feel more guilty, but I consider it payback for him forgetting my birthday.

On the subject of my roommate, yesterday he had the audacity to tell me that the most recent song he downloaded from iTunes was Cowboy Junkies' "Sweet Jane." When I rolled my eyes, he asked why I didn't like the Cowboy Junkies. I told him that it's a Velvet Underground song, and he responded, "Who?" Later when I played him the original version, he complained that it was too upbeat.

Went to the Yankee game tonight, snuck down to excellent seats on the lower level right behind home plate, and of course the Jumbotron cameraman came right up to my row to tape two elementary-school kids dancing in the seats right next to me. I buried my head in my hands and didn't look up to see if I actually appeared on the Jumbotron, but the way my friend was laughing, I can only assume I was.

Sunday night I went with the same friend to Highline Ballroom to see Beatallica. Hard to find a better way to spend $5.98, at least in NYC. If you haven't heard of them, it's a group that combines the Beatles and Metallica, obviously. It's almost scary how much the singer sounds like James Hetfield... although not as scary as the group of aging, balding, fattening, leather-wearing dudes (and their biker-chick girlfriends) that made up the majority of the audience. Here's a clip of them doing "The Thing That Should Not Let It Be" to give you a sense of their live show.

Sorry for the rambling.