Myself. A website called LA Bitter Lemons published an online article last week which describes a highly unpleasant dispute I had a few years back with a couple of fellows who I allowed to produce a piece of my writing which they later claimed that they owned the copyright to because ... well, I never really did understand why they felt that way which is why it became an unpleasant dispute. I had no desire to unearth this long-forgotten nightmare were it not that I been contacted by a fellow writer with whom I share mutual acquaintances and who is currently going through his own battle with the same group in a situation that has some disturbingly similar buzz words, and he asked me to go public with my story. What I remember the most about the ordeal was how my mind snapped during the thick of it and how it was the only thing I wanted to talk about to anyone who came within half a mile of me. Everyone who encountered this insane version of me shared the same bemusement over why I was transforming into Captain Ahab over the fate of a script for a fun little 99-seat theatre production which would likely never see the light of day again. I guess, like most creative folks, I think of my work as my babies and I'm just as protective of the savagely deformed ones (anyone who has read my play The Lipstick Lesbian will have no wonder why it was never produced by anybody) as the ones people actually want to see. So when I felt like the county orphanage was trying to tear my babe from my nurturing tete, part of my brain exploded. I realize that because when working with the correspondent who wrote the article, I suddenly transformed into the same obsessive lunatic who was impossible for anyone to be around in that terrible Autumn of 2010. After the story went live, I wrote the writer "I have been carrying the bitterness of that experience for four years and maybe it's time to get it out in the open so it can finally fly away."And I suppose that ultimately letting your babies go is the whole point of creation in the first place. Everybody tells me that the lesson of my story is to always get a written contract before you start any work, but to me the biggest lesson was learning who I could rely on even when I was agonizing over something seemingly trivial that made me an impossible pain in the neck. Anyone who put up with me while I went through that excruciating tribulation ... and they know who they are ... has my undying gratitude for helping me through one of the most distressing periods of my life. And now that I've released my baby to fly free on her own, I'm going to try and be a sane man from now on. After all, this is going to save me a fortune in breast pumps.
Karen Sheeler, who commented on an online article about a family who was stranded in a foreign country when their four year-old used the father's passport as a coloring book, adding that as a child she drew beards, eyeglasses and mustaches all over the pictures in a morning newspaper only to discover that her father's photo was featured in the issue. Personally, I think that any family that leaves a passport in the reaching distance of a four year-old probably shouldn't be allowed to leave their county's borders anyway, but there are ways of getting around it. The very reason that I style myself the way I do is to beat any little wise-ass with ideas of defacing a portrait of me to the punch. Feel like drawing a mustache on me? Too late. Maybe an idiotic Mary Worth supporting player type of beard? Beat you to it. Glasses? Check. How about a tattoo? I suggest that you don't get a glimpse of what's already decorating my butt cheeks. My point is that anybody who's freaked out by the idea of a kid with a Sharpie in his mitts improving on a photo of them should know better than to present the kid with a blank canvas. So I hope Ms. Sheeler's dad wasn't too hard on her and instead looked on the bright side when he discovered her artistic handiwork. For most people, it's the only way to find out how they'll look in a Fu Manchu.
The always irritating Amy Ball, who sent a group of her buddies (which inexplicably included me) a private Facebook message consisting simply of "Ec."I didn't know what it meant at first and assumed that Ms. Ball was one of those lunatics who had invented her own language before climbing atop a bell tower with a high-powered rifle to thin out humanity of a few of the brutal monsters who refused to understand her (probably because she communicated in words like "ec" from her own private language). Alas, my closet fantasies of Ms. Ball being a violent sociopath turned out to be fruitless when she sent a follow-up message that the mysterious missive was the result of her accidentally "butt-dialing" some of her Facebook friends. In retrospect, my receiving a "butt-dial" from Ms. Ball makes perfect sense. For as long as I've known her, she has always been talking out of her ass.
Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who recently filmed an appearance on the new sitcom Schitt's Creek in Toronto. I was on the verge of finally giving up on my long campaign to win Ms. Marini's heart, having determined that she'd never be interested in a bespectacled geek like myself. That was until I got a glimpse of this picture of her canoodling with series star Eugene Levy, an even bigger geek than I am who wears even bigger glasses than I do. Only after seeing this photo did I realize my mistake in trying to compete with the granite-jawed Neanderthals who strive for her attention on the shores of Muscle Beach. No, my rivals for Ms. Marini's attention are guys like Eugene Levy; men whose astigmatism and lack of social graces are the keys to winning her heart. So my strategy is clear. I have to be an even bigger geek with even bigger glasses to finally win the object of my desire. My problem hasn't been that I've been too overbearing; it's that I haven't been overbearing enough. No longer will I camp out in the grassy knoll outside her bathroom window until the police come. Now, I will camp out in her bathroom until the police come. And Ms. Marini will no longer receive screenshots in the mail of my nether regions taken from Web Chat Roulette. Instead, she can look forward to getting chunks of my wang delivered by UPS to her front door. It may seem like a heavy price to pay, but I'll need to take my game up a notch to compete with Macho Men like Eugene Levy. I'd say Ms. Marini has something to look forward to.
Tom Ashworth, who is facilitating my return to acting after a five-year self-exile by casting me in a play he is directing titled Three Really Offensive Scenes About the Founding Fathers, part of an evening of one-act plays produced by the Eclectic Theatre in North Hollywood. I play a decidedly nontraditional depiction of Thomas Jefferson in the piece; a role that I had never expected to be cast in which therefore makes me wonder what exactly Mr. Ashworth is up to. So I did some research about Mr. Jefferson and found that (contrary to popular legend that portrays him as a champion of human rights) he was a materialistic douchebag who had no issue with purchasing human beings and then fucking them. It's not legal to own people nowadays so to research my role, I went down to the Pleasure Chest and bought a rubber donut that I've named Sally Hemmings. I have no idea if the rubber donut has any emotions or independent thought since I only bought it to satisfy my carnal desire and then toss into a drawer when I wasn't using it. It's actually quite a convenient system for me and I can see why so many of the founding fathers were behind it. Maybe if all of them had a sex slave like Jefferson, they wouldn't have done such a bad job of vaguely wording things like the second amendment. I know a lot of people don't agree and think of the second amendment as Holy Gospel, which makes me wonder if God had his own personal sex slave like Thomas Jefferson did when He was writing the Bible. If He didn't, He should have. He probably wouldn't have been so uptight during the Old Testament.
Myself. A website called 
Karen Sheeler, who commented on an 
The always irritating Amy Ball, who sent a group of her buddies (which inexplicably included me) a private Facebook message consisting simply of "Ec."I didn't know what it meant at first and assumed that Ms. Ball was one of those lunatics who had invented her own language before climbing atop a bell tower with a high-powered rifle to thin out humanity of a few of the brutal monsters who refused to understand her (probably because she communicated in words like "ec" from her own private language). Alas, my closet fantasies of Ms. Ball being a violent sociopath turned out to be fruitless when she sent a follow-up message that the mysterious missive was the result of her accidentally "butt-dialing" some of her Facebook friends. In retrospect, my receiving a "butt-dial" from Ms. Ball makes perfect sense. For as long as I've known her, she has always been talking out of her ass. 
Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who recently filmed an appearance on the new sitcom Schitt's Creek in Toronto. I was on the verge of finally giving up on my long campaign to win Ms. Marini's heart, having determined that she'd never be interested in a bespectacled geek like myself. That was until I got a glimpse of this picture of her canoodling with series star Eugene Levy, an even bigger geek than I am who wears even bigger glasses than I do. Only after seeing this photo did I realize my mistake in trying to compete with the granite-jawed Neanderthals who strive for her attention on the shores of Muscle Beach. No, my rivals for Ms. Marini's attention are guys like Eugene Levy; men whose astigmatism and lack of social graces are the keys to winning her heart. So my strategy is clear. I have to be an even bigger geek with even bigger glasses to finally win the object of my desire. My problem hasn't been that I've been too overbearing; it's that I haven't been overbearing enough. No longer will I camp out in the grassy knoll outside her bathroom window until the police come. Now, I will camp out in her bathroom until the police come. And Ms. Marini will no longer receive screenshots in the mail of my nether regions taken from Web Chat Roulette. Instead, she can look forward to getting chunks of my wang delivered by UPS to her front door. It may seem like a heavy price to pay, but I'll need to take my game up a notch to compete with Macho Men like Eugene Levy. I'd say Ms. Marini has something to look forward to. 
Tom Ashworth, who is facilitating my return to acting after a five-year self-exile by casting me in a play he is directing titled Three Really Offensive Scenes About the Founding Fathers, part of an evening of one-act plays produced by the Eclectic Theatre in North Hollywood. I play a decidedly nontraditional depiction of Thomas Jefferson in the piece; a role that I had never expected to be cast in which therefore makes me wonder what exactly Mr. Ashworth is up to. So I did some research about Mr. Jefferson and found that (contrary to popular legend that portrays him as a champion of human rights) he was a materialistic douchebag who had no issue with purchasing human beings and then fucking them. It's not legal to own people nowadays so to research my role, I went down to the Pleasure Chest and bought a rubber donut that I've named Sally Hemmings. I have no idea if the rubber donut has any emotions or independent thought since I only bought it to satisfy my carnal desire and then toss into a drawer when I wasn't using it. It's actually quite a convenient system for me and I can see why so many of the founding fathers were behind it. Maybe if all of them had a sex slave like Jefferson, they wouldn't have done such a bad job of vaguely wording things like the second amendment. I know a lot of people don't agree and think of the second amendment as Holy Gospel, which makes me wonder if God had his own personal sex slave like Thomas Jefferson did when He was writing the Bible. If He didn't, He should have. He probably wouldn't have been so uptight during the Old Testament.