Playing Catch Up

Yes, yes, I know. I promised to blog every day and I haven't which means I lied and so now I'm going to Hell when I die, but at least I've been promised a room with a view. Oh, and a heated pool.

Seriously, gang, it's been a strange few weeks. About fourteen days ago, I got offered an incredibly cool new Top Secret gig that required me spending most of last week up in the Bay area, working in the good offices of said Top Secret project, so I wasn't really in any position to blog, even though I finally bought a brand-spanking-new laptop iBook so I could work on the road. The iBook has wi-fi, so in theory at least I should be able to blog while I'm out of town and the next time I have to go back up north to meet with the fine folks I'm working with, I promise I'll try that.

In the meanwhile, the renovation of the kitchen is finally moving along apace. The new cabinets are in place, the new sink countertop will supposedly arrive tomorrow, the doors for said cabinets are due to be added in a matter of days, and then the painting will begin. It seems there is light at the end of the tunnel at last. So when will our kitchen finally be finished? Well, as Rick Blaine once so famously put it, "Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but soon, and for the rest of our lives."

Last Saturday, my lovely wife Christine and I got to see the first fifteen minutes of the new Disney/Pixar animated feature Ratatouille. Yep, just the first fifteen minutes, since that's when all the alarms in the the local mighty mega-multiplex (all 21 screens worth) went off and several thousand people had to evacuate the theater because of a popcorn fire at the concession stand. Now, I can understand the pseudo-butter catching fire, but the popcorn itself? What's the stuff made of ? As far as I'm concerned, I'm eating nothing but Raisinets from now on. Hopefully, I'll be able to find some time in my currently-insane schedule to catch the rest of the film at some point soon. What I saw was absolutely terrific.

Sunday night, as if things around here aren't already crazy enough, I was back on the panel of What's My Line? - Live On Stage, which I've been mentioning here repeatedly of late. The other members of the panel were Suzy Nakamura (currently on screen in Evan Almighty), former Mighty Carson Art Player and TeaTime Lady Teresa Ganzel, and my new friend, eight-time Jeopardy! champion and author of the terrific book Prisoner of Trebekistan, Bob Harris. But as wonderful as we all were, this was the first time I felt the group of challengers was generally more famous than we on the panel were. The contestants included a lovely young lady whose line is cleaning birds that have fallen victim to oil spills and such, multi-talented actor Dorian Harewood, who also teaches Blackjack as a sideline, ventriloquist Mallory Lewis, daughter of the legendary Shari Lewis, who brought along Lamb Chop to entertain the audience, and our Mystery Guest, Oscar-nominated actor (for Jackie Brown) Robert Forster. You can click here to check out who's gonna be on this week's show. Rumor has it that What's My Line? is being extended through the end of the month and I may be back on the panel the Sunday before Comicon. If so, I'll let you all know.

Let's see. Anything else going on right now? Yeah, probably. But I've got to save something for my next post. If I'm a little infrequent here for the next few weeks, chalk it up to the Top Secret project. It's not that I don't love you. You know what you mean to me.