I was up 'til four or five A.M. — at that time o' day, an hour one way or the other doesn't matter — and now I'm back at the computer, determined to get a script done before four or five P.M. One of the benefits of writing comedy when you should be in bed is that after about 3:30 in the morning, everything is funny…then. After a few hours of sleep, you may look back at it and wonder, "Why did I think that was amusing?" But at least for a while there, you wrote the funniest joke in the world. If I could only get everyone who reads this manuscript to read it at four in the morning.
So for the next hour or two, I won't be writing. I'll be rewriting.
Speaking of things that aren't funny: I'm not going to link to one but I've noticed that YouTube is suddenly full of videos that are based on the idea, "Let's find some beautiful women who will let us shove pies in their faces!" And then in some, they hit them with a second pie and a third pie and sometimes a dozen and then they dump various colors of slime on them. Hitting someone in the face with a pie for comedic reasons usually involves the target being surprised or at least pretending to be surprised…but there seems to be a market out there that doesn't care about the comedic element. They just want to see attractive ladies covered in real or simulated food. This is another in the never-ending series of Things Mark Doesn't Understand.
That ever-expanding series of course now includes wondering why any female in this country would vote Republican, especially if they aren't really wealthy. But I think I'm going to have one of those "Don't think too much about politics" weeks.
Some time ago here, we posted some items about the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, a venerable institution in downtown L.A. carrying on the work of the late Bob Baker. It was such a happy place, inexorably linked to so many childhoods, that there was a battle to keep it from being demolished so someone could build a new Burger King or something equally necessary. In 2009, it seemed the battle was won when it was designated a historical cultural landmark but now it seems historical cultural landmark status ain't what it used to be. It's being torn down and the theater will reportedly relocate in some as-yet-undetermined location. I hope it actually does.
If you're thinking of attending the November 7 screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, get your tickets now. They're almost gone. 11/7 will be 55 years since my favorite movie debuted at the Dome…and 55 years since the Dome opened. I just started to type "and it'll be the 55th time I've seen it" but I must have passed that milestone long ago.
And now, I have to go write. No, I have to go rewrite. (See? I'm even rewriting this paragraph!)