Year: 2008

…and all she got was a lousy t-shirt.
Well, not lousy; it is a perfectly serviceable shirt with a perfectly serviceable picture of Avril Lavigne on it. But it is not by any stretch a concert, and that is because there was none. The concert was canceled due to laryngitis. So although she wound up spending a perfectly decent weekend with her mother, she still shlepped two thousand miles for a non-event. And since she thought she was going to see Lavigne in Arizona, we made no effort to see her locally.
So Avril Lavigne, if you happen to be reading this, try and swing by Long Island next time, okay?
PAD

Since I knew I was going to be in LA during the week that Iron Man opened, I checked with my contacts at Marvel West to see if I could go to a screening. They came through.
What I didn’t realize was that this wasn’t simply an employee screening, as we have in New York. This was the formal premiere. We’re talking red carpet, banks of reporters, and a reception for cast and crew.

Continue Reading “The Iron Man Premiere” →

I’m out on the left coast working on trying to get an animated series up and running. These things are always long shots, so it’s far too early for me to go into any sort of detail. But you never get anywhere if you don’t at least try. So some producing partners and I are making the rounds of Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network and others and we’ll see if something comes of it.
Tonight I’m going to the premiere of “Iron Man.” So if you see some guy who looks like me walking in the background past Robert Downey Jr. on E! or something, there’s a possibility that it is, in fact, me. Or it could be Ðìçk Cheney…
PAD

I figure we could do another round of Ask the Wife to pass the time.
Please do understand that if I say I can’t answer a question or make a comment on something, it has not much to do with your question and probably more with agreements that we have signed with various companies and groups.
Don’t ask me where Peter is or what he is doing right now. Just think good thoughts for our leader.

Obama voiced dissatisfaction with the current format of the debate, claiming that the moderator focused on trivial issues for far too long. He had a valid point: In the most recent outing, the moderator claimed that the economy was the number one issue on peoples’ minds, yet didn’t frame a question about it until nearly an hour in.
Here’s the thing: Never identify a problem without posing a solution. Obama made the mistake of doing just that, and Clinton–hewing to her claim of being a problem solver–immediately presented one. She suggested a free-form, no-moderator debate, similar to the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Obama turned down the notion in short order. No surprise there: A front-runner, generally speaking, has nothing to gain from a debate and everything to lose. Unfortunately, it brings a truth into focus: There’s going to be any number of times when a world leader is in a challenging face-to-face and there’s no play book to follow. Obama puts forward the notion that he can win over ferocious opponents of the United States or bridge the gap between parties with his oratory and personal charm, but he balks at facing Clinton in a free-for-all?
Interestingly, the “West Wing” comparisons continue. In the seventh season debate episode, Santos faced Vinick in a debate and that time it was Vinick who suggested that debate rules be tossed aside. In that situation, Santos took him up on it. He welcomed it. As Obama should have.
PAD

I mentioned in passing playing ping pong with Seth Green, but the outing deserves a bit more expansion.
Kath and I wound up getting friendly with Seth and the Robot Chicken guys while hanging out in the convention green room (how appropriate). Consequently we were invited to hang out with them that evening at a nearby pub that had ping pong tables and pool tables in the lower floor.
We took them up on it, and for a while the group of us hung out, drank, played ping pong and were undisturbed. Then I heard a couple of guys at the pool table saying, “Is that Scott Evil?” I wasn’t the only one; Matt Senreich, Seth’s “Robot Chicken” co-creator, muttered, “We’ve been made.”
Over the next few minutes, word spread, and girls started leaving their dates to come over to Seth to talk to him or have their pictures taken with him. A guy sidled over to me while several girls were posing with Seth and he said, with obvious contempt for the girls’ brainpower, “They think he’s Seth Green.”
“Yeah, he gets that all the time,” I said.
The guy nodded, glad to have a voice of reason to talk to. “They don’t realize he’s just a lookalike.”
“Personally, I don’t see that much of a resemblance,” I said.
“Me neither.”
Tends to make one value one’s anonymity.
PAD

A number of you complained when the first volume of “The Hidden Earth” saw print that there were a number of typos. I am currently reading the galleys of the paperback edition, and would like to get it as right as possible.
So this is your big chance. If you remember any particularly egregious typos, you’ve got until Thursday noon EST to let me know.
PAD