Thanksgiving Should Make Your Sides Hurt!

Here's a great way to spend Black Friday, instead of rising at 3:00 a.m. to freeze your ass off, survive seven near-fistfights with desperate people who need those whorishly trendy "must-haves" just a little more than you do, and wait patiently while your child gets his or her turn sitting on Cthulu's lap and telling him all that their greedy little dark hearts crave.

Spend it laughing!

Not just laughing at what everyone else fills their diapers over, but what the great comedians themselves laugh at – or rather, whom.

Try a helping of IN THEIR FACES: COMEDY BEYOND THE BOX, UP TO LENNY BRUCE

As a life-long lover and student of comedy, I've put together a few pungently poignant essays about that very subject. Some will make you smile, some will make you sit and contemplate why you're smiling.

Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, The Firesign Theater and the Martin Luther of Political Incorrectness himself, W.C. Fields are among the iconoclasts highlighted in this journey among many – though not all – great "Comedians' Comedians!"

After the stuffing, pile on a heap of comic dressing and a ladle of laughter. You might just forget to nap, but remember, there's pie!

In paperback and e-reader format.

My Back Pages, Sort Of

I just don't promote this book often, because it's about me. As if anything I've ever lived through warranted a book.

At one point, I followed the logic that I needed to keep a blog that served basically as a glorified diary (that the whole world could read.)

At another point, I decided that my personal inflection and experience weren't meant to be so public, so I switched the focus of said blog to record only my career episodes that were ironic in some not-so-boring or comical way.

What resulted was a documented journey through the maze that consumes itself like a snake devouring its own tail – Hollywood, and the self-torture of trying to fit in it… and the even grander, odds-defying act of becoming relevant there.

Hardly worth mentioning (but I will anyway) – the resulting book I molded from it, HOLLYWOODN'T: THE MAD MARCH TO STARDUMB, came out a bit shorter than I'd originally envisioned. But it doesn't short-change on the funny!

If you love to laugh at failures – that's what comedy is, afterall; someone else's tragedy – your sides will hurt reading this!

It's about me, that's why it's so cheap, in paperback or e-reader format!

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Get it while it still has this cover – it may become a collectors' item.

You'll Never Fall Again!

I haven't promo'd this one in a while, so it's about time we spoke up here for a good ol' romantic comedy, perhaps with an edge.

Funny, pithy, punchy and proud of it, is JUST LOVELY.

It's pretty common faire, up to a point. There are tons of stage and movie comedies about the computer-dating scene and the wackiness of the match-dot-com set, but few that address the real problem; the fact that "wacky" is actually the politest term for these people.

Here's a play script that directly pulls their disconnectedness into the spotlight, over their "adorable quirks" and their obligatory "meet-cutes!" Two psychos are a bit too perfectly matched by the Cyberverse of Love, find the sizzle turns quickly into a sobering affair, and attempt to disengage with a shred of dignity left. That is, until meddling friends with the best of intentions coerce them back onto a collision course – and they must endure one more weekend under the microscope.

It's almost the Cabin In The Woods of light romance!

It may hit too close to home if you've spent any time online looking for love, but some dreads and regrets are liberating head-on. As Dante told us, Hell's exit is at its center, not its furthest point out. Welcome to the Dating Inferno… perhaps a redundant term.

Available in paperback or e-reader format.

Beware The Author's Views

That's what one "critic" recently warned, pertaining to my book WHEN SILENCE WAS GOLDEN.

A book born solely out of my intense love for the great clowns of the early cinema, drew the most negative remark I've ever endured. Scolded by a purist who'd already read so many seemingly similar books, that nothing could possibly appear new or original to his jaded old eyes.

That's the petty, unfunny world out into which we authors send our brave little works, to earn a modest dollar.

Though on no best-seller list you're likely to find, this one is nevertheless my best-seller, not to mention one of my personal favorites.

If you have a funnybone at all, or an inkling of a desire to explore the early comedic cinema – from a lens not necessarily focused upon obvious talking points, like Chaplin – then may I recommend this, in either paperback or e-book format.

It doesn't start at the beginning, nor take you directly to the end, of the pre-talkie era. It does take a road less traveled, however, to present a differently aimed view of the not-nearly-as-great clowns of yesteryear – a view that you've been warned to beware.

Smile at your own risk!