The Second Great Film Of The Year.

NEPHEW: “Do you like Minecraft?”
ME [trying to seem cool]: “I am interested in how mines are built, yes.”

It ain’t easy connecting with kids today. Even more difficult: being a kid. It was always tricky to feel like you fit in, but now Instagram has taken it into the stratosphere. See what you’re missing and feel left out in real time.

Eighth Grade is sad and cringeworthy and funny in the right places (you don’t need a superhero plot to keep you on the edge of your seat), and you’ll leave the theater a more compassionate adult – and that’s a very good thing these days.

Earlier in the day I saw the film, I offered condolences to my 19-year-old cashier at Trader Joe’s, whose co-worker had been killed by a stray police bullet last week. “This is the world we live in,” he said. Heart-breaking grownup cynicism, and unfortunately true. There are duck-and-cover drill scenes in Eighth Grade.

The movie is written and directed by Bo Burnham, one of my favorite comedians, who came out of nowhere as a scary-talented young genius who funded his own first special on YouTube. His standup style is loud and energetic, but always thoughtful, and his first film follows suit. Extra special for me: I saw Eighth Grade in the same spot – theater #7 at ArcLight Hollywood – I saw Ex Machina a few years ago, sitting behind Bo in the audience.

Can’t recommend this enough. See it, and bring along your kids. It’s a beautiful film.

I’m On TV Tomorrow.

For a month, I sat on a secret big enough that just the tip would be enough.

But now CBS is allowing me to share that I will be on “The Bold and the Beautiful” tomorrow.

It was so much fun to shoot. I’ll talk more about it after it airs.

Two scenes. Tuesday at 12:30 p.m.

@mattshevin books role on #BB #BoldandBeautifulhttps://t.co/bdap7Kzrdh

— Soap Opera News (@SoapOperaNewss) July 27, 2018

The Unmitigated Gall To Bring In-N-Out Into This Place.

A Lesson In Sleep.

If you think about it, any bag is a sleeping bag if you have narcolepsy. And you’re in a bag. 

I can nap with the best of them. I’m a total uncle that way – every time I visit my niece and nephew, I pass out on their couch.

Not my most productive side, and this is made all the more evident in The Third Door, the book I’m currently reading. It’s the first-person story of a college student who went on a mission to interview some of the most successful people in the world and discover their secrets.

Here’s a passage I love:

Qi Lu grew up in a rural village outside of Shanghai China, with no running water or electricity. The village was so poor that people suffered deformities from malnutrition. At age 27, Qi was making the most money he’d ever earned – seven dollars a month. Fast forward twenty years, he’s president of online services at Microsoft.  

How did he do it? In college at Fudan University in Shanghai, he had a realization that changed his life.  

He began thinking about time. Particularly, the amount of time he felt he wasted in bed. He was sleeping eight hours a night, but then he realized that one thing in life doesn’t change: whether you’re a rice farmer or the president of the United States, you only get twenty-four hours in a day.  

He read about notable people who’d reengineered their sleep patterns, and set out to create his own system. First, he cut out one hour of sleep, then another. And another. At one point, he was down to a single hour a night. He forced himself awake with ice-cold showers, but he wasn’t able to sustain it. Eventually, he found that the least sleep he could optimally function on was four hours a night.  

I saw it less as a quirky experiment and more as a means of survival. Think about it. With so many brilliant college students in China, how else could Qi have found an edge to break through? If you cut 8 hours of sleep down to 4, then multiply the time saved by days, that equals, 1,460 extra hours – or 2 additional months of productivity per year.

Repurposed.

I was really proud of my new cooler (it holds 84 cans!) that I purchased for my upcoming pilot shoot, but then I learned the studio in which we’re shooting prefers you use only use their fridges for drinks. Bummer.

And then I realized that if you put the right stickers on a cooler and walk as fast as you can, they’ll let you into any part of a hospital you want. Keeping it.

In Which I Visit I Visit The Orange County Fair. Part II.

Every time a woman sees two-day old piglets, I have to talk their ovaries down like a hostage negotiator.

You wouldn’t think an orange-chicken burrito would work, but it doesn’t.

If by “crunches” you mean the sound homemade potato chips make when you chew them, then yes, I do crunches.

The weather for the fair is always sweltering, so much respect for the carnies who installed AC units into every car on the ferris wheel.

In Which I Visit I Visit The Orange County Fair. Part I.

Life truly is like a roller coaster; there are ups and downs, you often feel like vomiting, and afterward, weird pictures of you surface online.

We hit the fair on Saturday, which allowed me to make like Henry VIII. (Turkey-leg eating; not wife head chopping off.)

Much respect to this guy for trying to get rid of the “please don’t feed this animal” sign one nibble at a time.

My nephew and his best friend loved the water flume so much, I’m going to start throwing cups of water in their faces when they least expect it.

Cut back on carbs by putting ramen noodles inside the burrito.

What would Jesus do? Infringe NBA copyright laws.