I'm out of here in a few! Look forward to seeing all of you I'm seeing, and happy new year to the rest of you.

So, let's see, what's been going on lately? I present to you this itemized list, in completely no order except for whatever order I may remember it.

•I seem to be coming down with a sinus infection. This sucks ass.

•I got a haircut yesterday. It's fairly short. Brooke didn't like it, so it's currently spiked up on top of my head where it's less offensive. I'm fine with it either way, even though apparently I'm getting rid of the long hair just as it's coming into style.

•It's Hannukah! Happy Hannukah to all who celebrate it. I've had some good celebrations (and food) so far. I got some neat DVDs, some neat gifts and I'm lightin' candles. Life is good.

•I'm going to see TMBG this Friday as a holiday present from my boss. This will be the first rock concert I've attended since...well, the last TMBG show I was at. But that was a year and a half ago. Obviously I'm psyched.

•Sushi dinner tomorrow night!

•Last I heard, the good Captain Dolby O'Doobie is coming to visit this Friday. I look forward to it, and I hope we can show him a good time.

•Our Christmas tree is really pretty.

•Return of the King kicks ass. Brooke was able to come down to my work area on opening day so we could go with a group from work. Holy cow! It's funny, I had more quibbles with minor things like editing and pacing than I did with the other films, but I also enjoyed it a lot more than I enjoyed the others the first time I saw them. The battles were absolutely fantastic. Can't wait for the Extended DVD!

That's about it. Hope everyone has a really enjoyable holiday season. Seriously.

Not to knock my most popular post in a long while out of the top spot, but I thought that my BU peeps (and you know I know who you are) would like to see this.

I discovered a mysterious Mad Magazine at my mom's house that I can only assume was brought here by my brother. It was a special issue reprinting classic stories in color. One of the classics was Mad's parody of Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts". As you know, Howard Stern went to our beloved alma mater. So here's a background image from a scene set in Howard's college years:

In case you have trouble with the dots and all, the base reads "Our Beloved President".

And you thought Mad was never funny anymore.

So if no one claims the great 5,000 prize by Friday, the prize goes by default to Lee. She's good people, and she asked for it.

I swear, I had ideas about what to write about earlier. I'll muddle through, though. I haven't seen a movie in the longest damn time, and even TV has fallen by the wayside for a while, aside from my marathon 24 viewing I did last week (3 episodes. I have two more taped I need to watch to catch up now. Don't you dare tell me what happens).

I'm getting pretty psyched about the holidays...both of them. When I was a kid I was a little indignant about Christmas because, as a Jew, it was simply all around me, while Channukah got short shrift. Since entering into a new family that cleebrates it, however, I've been able to let some of that angst go. Everyone can have whatever celebrations they want, I say now. And I for one am looking forward to a nice meal and presents and a roaring fire and the whole nine yards.

I've actually been letting go of a lot of my youthful angst lately, I've come to realize. Take yesterday for example, when I came home from work and Brooke was listening to the Grateful Dead, whom I've always hated. And then I realized, hey, these guys aren't so bad. I really just hated them because they seemed mediocre and everyone seemed to love them so much. But now I've matured enough to the point that I don't give a rat's ass about that.

If he's reading this, I'd like to apologize to Joey. I may not be enjoying what you're doing, but at least you're trying something new. My journal's just limping along. Keep on keeping on, and I'm sorry it came out as an attack.

In fact, trying has been something I've had a hard time with lately. I haven't done any Daily Show writing in weeks and weeks. Frankly, I think i'm afraid of trying and failing. Hopefully this weekend I'll have the time to sit down and try and not fail. And then do my comic script, and any of the other number of things I put off because I'm afraid of doing them badly.

Incidentally, two unreturned emails and one unreturned phone call later, I think it's safe to share the world's worst-kept secret with you: What the hell I was so excited about a couple of months back. Ready? Here we go.

Through someone at work, I was put in touch with an executive at a fairly major Hollywood studio. In the course of conversation, I was able to ask him if I could pitch a couple ideas. He said yes. I pitched two ideas: my movie that I actually wrote in college, which, with some minor tweaking I think could be a huge hit; and an idea that i just had a very rough idea of. Guess which one he said he liked and would like to see a treatment for. Right.

So then I had one week to flesh out the story and write a treatment. I started with an outline, of which one of the bulleted points in act 2 was "Huge Hole Where Plot Should Go". I'm sure most Holloywood films never bother to remove those notations. Anyway, at the end of a week, with moments to go, I finished, registered with the WGA and sent it in.

And waited.

I never seriously expected anything to happen, but it would have been nice, at least to get some feedback. I did get some feedback from Wolf, who pointed out that I made some amateur mistakes, which now embarass me. Regardless, I think it was a pretty good story and would have made a good movie. Now I consider it a learning experience. Maybe I'll try to send it somewhere else.

So that's what I was reluctant to talk about. A tempest in a teapot, maybe, but it was pretty exciting at the time. Someday I will make a living purely as a writer, and not as a writer-slash-editor or slash anything, but that was not to be my ticket out.

Anyone need to buy a treatment?

Who is the mysterious Mr. 5,000? Is my counting correct and his IP address reads only "ANDREA"? What intolerably lame gift will he receive from me when he steps forwrad? Only the shadow knows.

Seriously. Who hit 5,000?

With all modesty, I consider myself at least a fairly intelligent person. But for some reason, every time I sit down to write a journal entry, I end up sounding like a moron. And yes, I know it. I think there are two reasons for this:
1) I'm never inspired to write when I'm doing journal entries.
2) I'm never able to do a journal entry when I'm inspired to write.

A harsh double-edged sword, to be sure. So I've never discussed something like my uncertainty regarding who I want to support in the Democratic primaries on here, but I've begged people to call me at least, oh, 89 times. No one has, by the way.

I just wanted to take a moment and apologize to you, the consumers, for not really having anything worthwhile to offer. I don't provide in-depth details of what's going on in my life like Deuce or Lee, I don't keep you up on trends like Tale of Two Cities (which, no offense to Deuce's former roommate, ends up irritating me more often than not. I fucking hate trends. And I've entirely grown out of the bitter, jaded irony that seems to define New York living. I like my irony light and silly, thank you). Heck, I don't even crash my computer like Livejournal sights have been doing lately. I just exist.

On the other hand, I have a tiny toy of Fizzgig on my desk. That's right, Fizzgig. Y'all are jealous now.

Anyway, please suggest directions you'd like to see this site take. In-depth personal information? Humorous observations? Unhumorous observations? We might be getting a redesign soon...let's get some new content to go along with the new look. I'm all ears.

Karl, you can feel free to suggest things, too.

So you're reading this in the future. As a result of a server upgrade, this message won't be readable until later today or tomorrow (it's now about 1 pm Tuesday). I hope the future's working out for you.

It's hard to type while you're eating a Twix.

Anyway, the race is on to 5,000 hits. You only get 5,000 once, so the first person to reach it (remember, your guest counter will say 4,999) gets a prize from me. Not anything cool, mind you, because I'm poor. Probably a greeting card of some sort. But it will certainly be amusing.

Thanksgiving weekend was pretty good overall. Highlights were quality time with the people I love and an astounding sushi dinner on Saturday. Lowlights were a slightly subpar Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant that didn't know how to prepare stuffing (the most important part of the meal) and wasting literally 8 hours on Saturday first starting and then canceling a new cell phone service. Note to those in the Orange County area: don't get T-Mobile. There's no signal anywhere. So I reupped with Sprint and got a keen new phone. Works for me!

I also spent a shocking amount of time at the mall and ran into a few high school type people, including the always-welcome Matty J, and Annmarie, who I haven't seen in a dog's age. Pretty cool. Last night was spent starting to decorate the tree. Tonight will be spent cleaning. A lot. But it's okay. It has to be done eventually.

Anyway, hope everyone had a good holiday. Starting the 11th my night minutes start at 8 pm Eastern, so there's even less reason not to call me. Sorry to pander so much. I just like phone calls.