Freak Angels

As I circle in on the Issus stuff Bill is talking about , a reminder that Warren Ellis is doing free on-the-internet comic craftmanship.

Class Act

That clean-cut "Barry" over middle-right in the lineup -- I remember when you were part of a magic comedy trio, mister. Doooon't get cocky. And the other clean cut guy, Tom, was the one for whom we invented the dialogue internal (AS IF TO CHIMP). One of "The Three Seamus's" on the COSBY staff -- myself; my co-creator on LEVERAGE, Chris Downey; and Tom. At one point Bill would want a writer on the set, and as we were interchangeable Irish guys, he would say [COSBY VOICE] "Send in one of the Seamus's!" [/COSBY VOICE]

Actually, there's a couple "kids" in there who I remember as young comics. Man, they managed their career MUCH better than I did.

Seriously though, it's nice to see your friends do well. I'm literally sitting here grinning. Good to have you back and on the side of frikkin' justice. Because Colbert is, in the end, our Paladin.

... and I Could Move the World

The main reason for the silence has been this --

TNT has given the greenlight to the thrilling, action-packed drama series LEVERAGE, starring Oscar(R) winner Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, Nero Wolfe) and executive-produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day, TNT's The Librarian) and John Rogers (Cosby). The series follows a team of thieves, hackers and grifters who act as modern-day Robin Hoods, taking revenge against those who use power and wealth to victimize others. TNT has ordered 13 episodes of LEVERAGE, which comes to the network from Devlin's Electric Entertainment. Devlin makes his directorial debut on the pilot, which was written by Rogers (Transformers) and Chris Downey (The King of Queens). LEVERAGE is slated to premiere on TNT later this year.

Not that I could work on it until the strike was over ("Hey John, we finished the final cut and we're going to testing! If you could see it, you'd love it!" " ... thanks.") but I knew the pickup was coming, and I was getting my shit in order so I could haul back to LA at the end of this week. Back to the day job.

Which, ironically, means more updates here, because I tend to blog-write when stuck on other writing -- writing I didn't do during the Strike but for the stabs at the Doomed Pulp novel. So come Sat/Sunday, some thoughts on the Strike resolution, some new media presentation software, and how the XBOX will be your home entertainment system instead of Apple TV. Also, I'll finish up my set reports from shooting the pilot, despite losing all the pics. Pity I couldn't do a behind the scenes on the pilot cutting and testing, but hey, Strikesylvania.

The tone of the show, by the way, is a bit lighter than it comes across in the promo announcement. We were very specifically aiming for a Rockford Files/Ocean's 11 vibe. We'll see what you think once we come up with 12 more impossible crimes and heists. Oy.