Gotta read Thinner again.

A pro-gun Texas actor I was in grad school with reckoned with his opinions and changed to loudly pro-gun-control after this (and a few months earlier there had been a professor shooting in a classroom in our building, while were upstairs. One of only two folks I’ve seen change sides in my sphere.

Very excited to reveal the cover for my next book, Serling: A Journey Into The Twilight Zone with TV’s First Visionary. The book will be published by Grand Central on October 13 of this year, and pre-orders are open now: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/alan-...

My day job is with a cannabis company and lemme just tell you that today is something else from this angle.

BREAKING: Eight children were killed in an "extensive" mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, police say. The suspected shooter is also dead.

FAULT, by Scooter Pietsch, is funny as hell. At Chicago Shakespeare Theater (now in previews at Navy Pier) with a fantastic cast led by Enrico Colantoni (from everything) and starring Rebecca Spence (The Madison) and Nick Marini (Cobra Kai). Jason Alexander directed and lucky me stunt coordinator’d.

Pop’s side is Very Irish and I look like I was spawned in a coal mine in Leitrim. Ma’s side is Very Scottish and I’m just getting to know the history a little. I’ve just found an ancestor named Grace Maudlin who married into the Bells and Jardines along the border. Grace Maudlin is a fantastic name.

Super fun Hart Buchner (also great in Terror Train, Bulworth, Breaking Away and he’s the Director of PCU and High School High which makes him Stoner Royalty for my micro generation). His pop, Lloyd, was one of my pop’s favorites. (Check Lloyd out in Point Blank and as Mayor Hill in Batman TAS.)

AI chuds will lie that actually cars or the internet also had to be pushed this hard and: No they didn't. That isn't true.

The best way to teach an actor the falling down stairs stunt is to start with watching Tim Conway do it in slow motion.

This story is crazy! The Jim Dolan had a Knicks fan obsessively monitored at games just because she was trans.

whoever this is, they are amazing

As another show is about to open featuring my fights and stunts (FAULT, by Scooter Pietsch, dir Jason Alexander at Chicago Shakespeare Theater), I can’t show you those pieces of violence but I can show you this favorite one from Hamlet, more than 25y ago. Rehearsed this ~100 hrs. Laertes vs Hamlet.

If you’re gonna name names or something equally terrible the least you could do is follow Sterling Hayden’s example, who called himself a piece of shit in public for the rest of his life.

Fore-warned is fore-armed. But fore-armed is Popeye.

Need a bit of good news?

Fuck this straight to hell, my god

Got out of rehearsal and Navy Pier was closed for the night and covered in fog and that may have been the coolest walk I’ve ever taken in Chicago.

Now go watch The Big Knife (1955), Panic in the Streets (1950), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1957) and Comtempt (1963). For the definition of a non-chameleon actor, the dude was somehow still versatile as fuck.

Brando’s understudy (and replacement) in the original Broadway Streetcar Named Desire was an unknown actor and former boxer named Jack Palance. He once beat the shit out of Brando backstage because MB demanded a sparring bout to warm up. Wish there was footage.

First day as an infrastructure engineer at Bluesky. They let me put a piece of bologna in the CD drive and nothing bad has happened so far

Murderers Row of the folks that everyone in Hollywood has toxic stories about. Gen AI attracts a defined type.

Just a reminder that Four Weddings and a Funeral Director is out in the US on Tuesday! You should be able to find it wherever you get your books. www.harpercollins.com/products/fou...

It’s a brilliant tax because when they say “but the billionaires will leave” you get to say “they already don’t live there”

He’s gonna turn me from an atheist lapsed Catholic back into an atheist active Catholic who still hates 50% of their dogma about love and gender and yearns for actual consequences for the church’s own worst sinners.

📌Pope Leo XIV TODAY: “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants. Blessed are the peacemakers, but woe to those who manipulate religion and the name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” He is NOT backing down.

Everything on tv right now is Still the Beaver (1983-89 somehow).

On the Beach

I’m just going to say this. But it’s been pretty clear for a while that those who think AI can do all this are not people who ever had high standards or much of a work ethic to start with. So when they see a computer operate on the same level of their own hack work, they’re impressed.

Booked the next fight/stunt coordinator gig! Big pretend-violence year so far, this next one at another theatre I’ve wanted to work with for decades.

Tech week on the Navy Pier in Chicago. What a great dang town.

In 1959, Pynchon tried to write an opera of Bester’s The Demolished Man but couldn’t get funding, so I can’t have nice things.

Yiiiiiiikes

Absolutely love Lanford Wilson’s Three Sisters translation. Got to play Tuzenbach in that one long ago, just an incredible time onstage.

The entire Devil monologue from Broadcast News has been proven wrong. He looks and sounds exactly like Aaron said he wouldn’t.

A lapsed Catholic could do a much better take down of this religion than this tourist.

It has finally reached the older actors. One MUST care about bullshit to be Serious About Career.

sick of these catholic converts showing up and saying "well I have a different interpretation of the scripture" no you don't. that's protestantism and a heresy. don't like it there's the (incredibly beautiful and heavily ornamented with precious metals) door

the republican playbook since reagan has been "make the government terrible, then campaign on telling people how bad the government is"

JUST IN: Governor Abigail Spanberger last night returned this bill to lawmakers with an amendment request (rather than signing it). Her amendment would clarify that sheriffs/jails are allowed to honor ICE detainers, i.e. warrantless ICE requests to keep someone in jail beyond their release.

Parachuting into Chicago for three days to teach and tech some stage violence.

Watching just about every actor pivot to attempt influencing (because of the absolute realities of the business) is not fun.

Someone mentioned Dragonslayer (1981), and dammit Matthew Robbins I gotta watch that wonderful thing again.

No one has ever been a better actor. Excited for this.

Haven’t gotten a high school movie as unhinged and fun as My Science Project (1985) since My Science Project (1985). Great double-feature w The Manhattan Project (1986).

Definitely thought NOTHING BUT TROUBLE was a fever dream until I was in college.

Newest episode of Re:Engage covering one of the most hated of all TNG episodes, Sub Rosa. I hosted this hilarious one and will miss my fellow cultural bridge officers when we finish our 178-episode run in a few weeks. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

Eric is funny. Go see his plays. You’ll laugh and your life will improve.

My U2 cover band, Rock Papist Sinners, now missing only a drummer, bassist and Edgy guitarist.

It seems like maybe the way to get a properly functioning Congress is to ask everyone if they have the desire to be a Congressperson, if it's something they really truly desire, deep down, and then disqualify all of those people and go find 535 other people