Let's begin with my usual apology for taking so long between weblog entries... Sorry. I was blah blah blah and I didn't have time to blah blah. But I promise, from now on, that i will blah blah blippity blah.

The smoke is finally clearling from the shooting of my pilot "Saint Louie". We finished it on Thursday of last week and I have since been recovering from the draining emotional rollercoaster, fighting off post-partem depression. At first, I was doing this by continuing to work out. I ran 6 miles a day for about 3 days in a row and took a strenuous Yoga class from a serene guy named Jason. But now I've been hit with some kind of stomache flu that my wife and baby had. It's amazing how we just keep passing sickness back and forth between the three of us.

So the pilot taping went great. The whole two weeks leading up to it was VERY intense. rehearsing and running through the show all day and night, while at the same time honing and developing the script, getting ready for the all-or-nothing taping on April 1st. The good part was that, the day before the big audience taping, we shot the show without an audience in it's entirety, so we went into April 1st knowing we had it in the can. Very comforting for a first time actor.

I can't say a lot about the taping or the process until it's all over but what I will say is that the experience was unbelievably exhilarating. I had never experienced anything that measures up to the feeling I get on stage but this sure came close and even beat it in some ways on that night. Pretty much all the jokes got great response and the other cast members were phenomenal.

The thing that made this such a singular experience was that I starred in and wrote this show. We (Bruce Rassmussen, Bruce Helford and I) have been pounding this script into shape since September, all that time thinking of it in the abstract, just reading it off the page and putting it together in our minds, hoping that some day it would sound good coming out of people's mouths. I had gotten very used to thinking of each scene as it's own separate entity and not so much about the story as a whole. So once we started shooting it in front of an audience, I realized that I'd climbed into my own script and was living it now as kind of a reality in front of other people. very weird feeling.

The whole thing took about 5 hours to shoot which, believe it or not, is very quick for a pilot taping. It seemed to me to be more like 2 hours. When it was over, I was stunned. I started to go around to thank everyone, half expecting that we'd all go out and have a party somewhere, only to find that everyone was pulling on their coats and getting the hell home. Before I knew it, it was down to me and my manager. We went to a bar and I drank a beer, a burbon and smoked a cigarette.

Not having eaten any dinner or even lunch, I got very fucked up very fast. My manager and good friend listened dutifully and patiently as I excitedly recounted the night's events and the whole year of preperation that led up to it. I think I was talking fast and drinking to drown out the reality that was beginning to roar in my ears: That it was over. All I had worked for the past year for was finished. It finished great, mission accomplished, but it was finished. Now all I could do is wait for a MONTH to find out if we fit CBS's formula for the fall schedule.

As my manager and I walked out of the bar, onto Ventura Boulevard, I was saying goodbye to him and getting in my truck, when I saw a look of horror in his face. I turned to look behind me just in time to see a huge white pickup truck race by doing, I swear, 100 miles per hour. It missed me by an inch or less. I could feel the wake of it on my nose. One inch in the wrong direction and it would have creamed me. I swear, that truck was so huge and it was going so fast that if it hit me I would have dissintegrated. My manager and I stood there and laughed for about 5 minutes as we realized how hilariously horrible that would have been, for me to die so suddenly, right after finally coming to the end of such a long and intense road and feeling so full of hope and all.

Anyway, my job is done for now. I'm going to return to NYC to do more standup comedy and spend time with my family. Oh, and I'll have way more time for weblogging, and for trying to get my CD and DVD back in stock.

That's all for now, my friends...

Thanks for reading,