The Fright Before Christmas.

My Lifetime movie, Her Secret Family Killer, is airing again today on Lifetime Movie Network at 4 p.m. It’ll be the most violent Christmas Eve experience next to shopping at Kohl’s.

Look Into My Childhood.

Peeing in the snow makes me thankful they taught cursive in school. 

My trip here always takes me way back, to sleeping in my old bedroom with the ground covered in snow. When I was a kid, I’d wake up and could tell something was different – the sound outside was muffled – and I’d jump out of bed, look out the very same window and know school was cancelled. 

Then it was on. I grew up next to a golf course, with a steep decline on the ninth hole that was perfect for sledding. It included a treacherous area we referred to as “Suicide Hill.” 

The stretch in the middle is the ninth hole. Upper right corner dropping into the sand traps: Suicide Hill. Mess you up.

Warm Welcome.

If you arrive home, it’s not a holiday, and the driveway is full of family member’s cars, keep going – it’s an intervention. 

Well, it is a holiday, and there are no cars, so bullet dodged. Good to be back.

Cleared For Takeoff.

If you’re going to a medical facility to get the COVID vaccine, make sure you bring a valid form of ID along with a printout of your pro basketball stats. 

The rest of us must still get tested, especially if we’re traveling to New York, which I am tomorrow. My rapid test was negative, and I will now spend the next 12 days back east. 

While I won’t enjoy my traditional holiday in New York (Broadway and bars are shut down), it’ll be nice to change up my routine again. I got a taste of it Thanksgiving week in Dallas, and I’m hooked. 

I’ll miss Ricky. His head’s been inexplicably smelling like McDonald’s table syrup lately, and I can’t stop kissing it. He gets to go to his happy place – the fancy kennel – tonight. And for me, there’s already 10 inches of snow on the ground in New York. A white Christmas without the burden of shoveling. See you there.

A Testimonial.

Whenever I do a Zoom chat with a woman I’m dating, I’ll dare her to show me hers if I show her mine. Then we both lower our cams to see each other’s dogs. 

But since the quarantine began, my dog, and me, for that matter, looked murky at best. I tried every light source I could blind myself with, but nothing worked. Then it hit me: it’s not the lighting – it’s the camera inside my MacBook that’s shit. You can’t fool me for more than nine months. 

I researched like crazy and found an external camera for 54 bucks that is literally the difference between night and day. The NexiGo FHD. Simply plug in and play. 

I will say the dark and blurriness did have its advantages. I can no longer secretly each bowls of macaroni and cheese during calls. Four out of five stars.

Somebody’s Been Nice.

I always felt like Hello Kitty should be a brand of condoms. 

Or a kickass gift. On line at FedEx yesterday, I noticed someone was shipping what I presume was a giant Hello Kitty head. Which means this Christmas, some little girl is going to be very happy. Or some little boy very confused.

Leave Your Mark.

I never feel like a bigger failure than when my dog re-scratches something I just scratched for him. 

But Ricky got in an admirable scratch on my nephew’s leg, and with that little shit’s mouth, Ricky earned himself a well-deserved low-five.

Pay No Attention To What’s In Front Of That Curtain.

The virus. Zero stars. Would not recommend. 

Show business shut down for six months – not great for auditioning – but luckily it’s back and mostly cooking. So I attended a workshop with a casting director from “General Hospital” over the weekend, only it took place on Zoom because we’re still quarantining. 

Because I use Zoom on my laptop and not my phone, I couldn’t use a tripod, but an actor is trained to use the space around him. I jerry-rigged a chair on top of an end table on top of a coffee table and it worked my-tee-fine. 

This is what the casting director saw. Don’t tell her I was in shorts and flip-flops in this business casual scene, please.

20 Days.

I was in Newport Beach yesterday and drove past the heliport from which Kobe Bryant took off before he and his daughter crashed and died in January. 

This was a shit year before it officially got shitty. Almost done.

An Excerpt.

If my life ever flashes before my eyes, it’ll probably be 70% me watching “The Office.” 

And now I’m reading about it, in Andy Green’s anthology “The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s.” It’s over 400 pages of thorough stories, including two from the first season, in which NBC dragged its heels renewing the show after greenlighting only six episodes. First from Kate Flannery, who played Meredith: 

I kept my restaurant job through the first season. I was a waitress at Kate Mantilini in Beverly Hills. Sometimes showrunner Greg Daniels would come in to talk to me. I’d be holding a tray of food and he’d be like, “I’ve got to talk to you about saying the word vagina. We’re going back and forth with the network on that, but really want to keep it.” 

And Jason Kessler, production assistant: 

My job that season was to drive around town and drop people’s scripts off at their houses. I very specifically remember going to John’s apartment in West Hollywood and he was playing video games with a friend. He invited me in to play. Normally, I would drop a script off at the door or I’d knock on the door and hand it to him, and someone would say, “Oh, thank you very much,” and just go into their house. John’s the only person who ever invited me in.

A Blue Christmas Without You.

Halfway through the movie, I brought some popcorn downstairs for the niece and nephew and realized I brought over the wrong Adventures in Babysitting DVD. 

That was a few years back, and luckily DVDs are now mostly a thing of the past. The only ones I watch these days are SAG Award screeners. Well, these days have been delayed. But because of this upside-down year, the awards have been moved from January to March, and even then they’ll be severely lacking entries. 

But at least we’re shut in with nothing but time. Happy holidays.

Parental Guidance.

Warning to my nephew: the life you are about to lead as a teenager contains strong language, adult situations and nudity. 

It was his idea when he recently visited to watch the HBO movie Seven Days in Hell, starring Andy Samberg. 

Let’s just say there’s a skosh of full-front male nudity, which made my nephew take full advantage of his hoodie. If there’s a better film endorsement, I’d like to see it.

Here’s What I Think Happened.

If I found out I had six months to live, I would get fat enough to shut down a water slide. 

I was driving in Dallas and saw a giant funnel-shaped structure outside something called Great Wolf Lodge. I guessed it was a satellite dish attached to a hunting lodge and had to investigate. 

I was way off. It’s an amazing indoor water park. The structure outside is part of a slide that runs outside the building. Kids ran amok, having the time of their young lives. Ultra cool.

On my way home, colorful stitches of clothing were scattered on the road, and here’s what I think happened: a parent who brought his/her kids and several of their friends to Great Wolf Lodge finally wrangled them after a long, overwhelming afternoon, and in his/her haste, got the hell out of Dodge but left a bag of wet bathing suits on top of the car. A bonehead move but understandable. Any one of us would have run toward daylight.

Pretty, Pretty Good.

When we were really young, my mom used to tell people my brothers and I taught frat boys how to trash houses. 

It was our destiny. I joined the TEΦ house at the University of Maryland,  the same fraternity of which Larry David was president in the late 60s. Most frats loose their actual houses early and often thanks to misbehavior, but Maryland TEΦ miraculously managed to get kicked out and win it back in the 90s. 

Today, the frat is going strong in the same place Larry David and I were brothers. Hanging on the wall is some wise advice from Larry: 

To my TEΦ brothers –

Enjoy what will undoubtedly be the best years of your lives. 

-Larry David 

Tau Beta 857 (I think!) 

Tau Beta is our chapter number. Larry was the 857th (or so) member. I was 1467th.

Texas Leftovers.

I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one. 

Thanks to its low taxes and central location, many companies are headquartered in Dallas. Which means lots of meetings and conferences take place there, and thus business hotels have the shit beat of them. Case in point, the Hyatt Place in which I stayed needed a makeover, badly, starting with the missing H out front. My friend Ariel kept asking me how the “Yatt” Hotel was. My response was a tribute to Defending Your Life, in which Albert Brooks, staying in a modest place in Judgement City, is jealous of Meryl Streep’s five-star hotel. When she asks where he’s staying, he replies, “I’m at the Continental. Come over one day; we’ll paint it.” 

Grapevine, TX, just north of Dallas, was a real wild-west town back in the day (Bonnie and Clyde killed a cop there), so the city commissioned its first town jail be built in 1910. They called it “The Calaboose,” and many bad, drunken dudes spent frigid evenings in it all the way into the 1950s. These days, it’s on display on Main Street. The same-sized space would fetch 5k a month in Manhattan. 

AT&T Stadium, where the Cowboys play, felt like the biggest building I’ve ever been in. The stands are steep and massive. To class up the joint, the wife of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones commissioned 25 artists to create pieces displayed inside and out. Most are not football-themed, but this one, from a 60s hippie artist’s series of “Thesaurus Paintings,” is. You know those medieval paintings in which the artists had never seen an elephant, but they’d read a description of one and were certain they got the gist of it? Anyway…

Happy Belated.

I miss one of Ricky’s birthdays, and he’s acting like I’ve missed the last seven. 

He turned nine last Wednesday while I was in Dallas and he was in the fancy kennel, and I’m making up for it now. 

Nine is not young for a big dog. I imagine when I get to be the equivalent of his age, I’ll no longer need erectile softeners. 

Happy birthday, sir.

Table-ish Read.

Whenever my dog interrupts a Zoom meeting, I say “Oh, that’s just the intern.” 

He luckily refrained from howling at firetrucks yesterday afternoon as I participated in an online table read for my friend Ed Gine’s superbly-written sci-fi thriller script. I got to play Commander Vincent Cain, a man as badass as his name. I got into it and then some. Ed texted me afterward: “ Dude, you really brought it today. Awesome job.” 

Thanks, Ed. Love your movie. Cain would greenlight the shit out of it.