Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

What's Old Is New Again

Technology is a wonderful thing. Here is another reminder, though, that most often it's what the tech can do for you in a human way that is more important than the tech itself.

For years, I've been complaining that my own children were the most photographed kids in world history and I was the least photographed. Regarding my kids, this is obviously an overstatement since my entire generation has probably over-photographed their kids in a monumental way. By the way, don't get me wrong -- I love having all those family photos. The point of my complaint was simply that I had maybe two or three photos from my own childhood. It felt lost to me.

My father passed away just over five years ago. While going through his things like kids have to do, I came across carousel after carousel of old color slides he'd taken. I guess I remembered that he'd done this, but I'd forgotten. Well, a couple of weeks ago, my brother Alan got a hold of these and started scanning them into his iMac.

Suddenly, large yawning gaps of my past came back to me. In color! My brother's iPhoto folder was brimming with history, and he was photocasting it so I could grab it off the Internet to my own computer. Here's one of my favorites so far...

This whole experience has caused me to realize two important things:  1- My father did a much better job of this family history thing than I'd given him credit for; and 2- I really had the backward hat thing going on a long time before it became popular which makes me a real trendsetter!

WORLD AIDS DAY: Randy Shiltz, Mike Makela, Tom Cassidy, Gordon Hodgson, James Medina

December 1 is the 19th Annual WORLD AIDS DAY. There's plenty of news coverage to go around. Rather than add to that, I just want to take a moment to mention five people I've know in my life who are gone because of this damned disease. They'd probably be the first to argue they're not special (although the first one you've all heard of), but they were all special to me, and the point is by now we all have our own set of names belonging to people who were gone too soon.

RANDY SHILTZ
Most people know him as the author of And the Band Played On, the book about the disease that became the HBO film. I knew Randy as the candidate who convinced me to campaign for him to be University of Oregon student body president. Plus, he was the editor of our school paper, the Oregon Daily Emerald.

TOM CASSIDY
In Eugene, Oregon, Tom and I were competitors, each working for a different TV station as reporters. Later, we both ended up at CNN as correspondents. Tom went public with his disease, stayed on the air, and helped increase public awareness.

MIKE MAKELA
Mike and I worked together at KVAL-TV in Eugene, Oregon in the late 1970s. We were good friends, went on runs together, that kind of thing. At work, he was a true professional, but always full of humor and a positive attitude. He last worked in Phoenix before passing away in 1996.

GORDON HODGSON
Gordon was my brother Alan's best friend in high school. I remember playing lots of cards and board games together. Gordon went on to study at Gonzaga University and serve in the Army in Vietnam as a supply clerk before he died in the early 80s.

JAMES MEDINA (aka Jimmy Taggert)
Jimmy, as I knew him, was an actor I first met here in Hollywood when I cast him in a short scene I'd written and was staging at the Director's Guild. Later, we collaborated on a cookbook, Dude Food, where we cast him as the "Dude."

All of these men died in their 30s and 40s. All good men. All missed.

Stop AIDS. Keep the promise.

Thanksgiving the Saget Way

People who only know Bob Saget for playing clean-freak dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom "Full House" or as the charming host of "America's Funniest Home Videos" really have not experienced the man as he really sees himself.

I got that chance last Friday night in Las Vegas, catching his live comedy act as part of HBO's "Comedy Festival" just wrapping up. We went with friends who work with co-sponsor AEG (Anchutz Entertainment Group) and ended up in the front row. Fortunately, we were just far enough to the side that we didn't end up getting picked from the crowd for some of his material. I'm talking about a running joke that had to do with shaving a certain body part. Other than that close call, it was a good night, starting with Jamie Kennedy opening for his friend and a really funny bit about hitting turbulance on a plane bound for Tokyo. Maybe you've seen their hip-hop video on YouTube, "Rollin' with Saget." I'm not gonna lie to you -- I thought his contribution to "The Aristocrats" documentary about the dirtiest joke ever was just gross -- I mean the First Amendment certainly gives a comic the right to talk about whatever he wants, but it doesn't compel me to like it or to like him for doing it. I just wondered "Why?"

So I guess this means that Bob Saget's a complicated man, working on the dirty side of stand-up comedy, starring in the clean side of TV sit-comedy, telling jokes that would offend practically everybody, now developing an HBO series which will fuse the two worlds. The thing is -- with the exception of "The Aristocrats" joke -- I find him enormously likeable no matter what he does and, he'll probably hate hearing this, but I really, really liked his TV persona, even if he wasn't so wild about it. His comedy act seems carefully constructed to seem like stream-of-consciousness, delivered fast, a lot of sex jokes (a LOT), plenty of mocking of his public image and more sex jokes. Plus, a healthy lack of respect for Smiegel from "Lord of the Rings" who he repeatedly suggested should be killed.

Besides assassinating literary figures, we were there for another reason. Bob is one of 20 stars in The Hollywood Cookbook (launch party on Sunday, November 19, out in stores and on Amazon for the holidays). The charity he supports in the book is the Scleroderma Research Foundation (his sister Gay died of the disease). Anyway, my wife Jackie wrote that book with her friend Morgan Most and we were able to present Bob with a copy after the show, his first look at the finished product. I honestly think he was really moved by how it all came together. If you're a Saget fan, honestly, you probably do want to buy a copy of this book because A) he's a big part of it and B) you'll be supporting his favorite charity since $5 per book goes to the fund. Here's Saget's own endorsement that is on the back jacket of the book itself:

"This cookbook's a wonderful way to help great non-profits raise money and awareness, and at the same time, feed great recipes to the people we enjoy fattening up."

Bob's literary and culinary contribution is also timely in that he presents an entire Thanksgiving menu. And he talks about a special Thanksgiving where Rodney Dangerfield came to his house shortly before his death and was discovered by Saget's daughter smoking pot. Whatever you think of Saget's stand-up act, he probably could have made a fortune selling tickets to that meal!

Something else I learned while writing this post: he and I share the same birthday, May 17.

Finally, Bob is the November "Spotlight" celebrity on "The Hollywood Cookbook" website. You can check that page out by CLICKING HERE.

11/22: Another Generation's 9/11

After 9/11 we said that "everything changed." I'm not sure that's completely true anymore but I do know that 43 years ago, on the eve of another Thanksgiving, they really did. That, of course, was the day that President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. Where were you? It's no longer a universal question like it once was. Now, in 2006, probably more Americans weren't even born by November 22, 1963 than were.

I was in grade school, attending Peter Boscow Elementary in Hillsboro, Oregon. When we came into the lunchroom the TV was on and we'd heard that he was shot. Our entire class had to eat at the same table every day and our teacher, Mrs. Braden, was one of the toughest old birds in the educational system, so tough that she always forced us to eat our entire lunch, especially the vegetable, even if they included broccoli. On this day, however, she let us eat whatever we wanted and throw out what we didn't. She sat at the head of the table and cried. By the time lunch was over Kennedy was dead and Mrs. Braden looked like a really old broken woman. I had lived nearly three months in fear of her in the classroom and seeing her so weak and shaken shook me almost as much as Kennedy's death. Almost...

We went home early from school. My mother and father came home early, too. We turned on the TV, like everyone else in America, and cried some more. We cried all weekend, watched Lee Harvey Oswald get caught, saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV, and watched the funeral on Monday and cried some more. My father's name was Harvey and it really bothered me that the man who killed the President shared his name. What bothered me even more was that my middle name was Harvey. Bryce Harvey Zabel. Like that killer. Lee Harvey Oswald. I hated that name. I hated that if I ever did anything bad they'd use my middle name in the papers. So that, I expect, is why I've stayed on the right side of the law all these years.

I remember feeling about President Kennedy the way you'd feel if you had a really cool dad. When he was killed, it left me with just my own real father, who wasn't in the same universe of cool. My dad, the aforementioned Harvey Zabel, was incredibly reliable, honest, and a family man -- traits we assumed President Kennedy also had, although the facts as they've come out over the years have shown that not to be true. But cool, yeah, JFK had that down pat.

Six days after the assassination of President Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation on Thanksgiving Day, 1963. He announced that Florida's NASA Launch Operation Center would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center and he asked the public to remain "determined that from this midnight of tragedy we shall move toward a new American greatness."

I'm not sure, but I think our family drove up to my grandparent's home in Bingen, Washington. I do remember that the food was good but none of us were that hungry.

**********

• Click here to read all the Kennedy posts on the Instant History blog.
  

What's in a Name?

A few years ago, when I was the chairman of the TV Academy, some scoundrel in Romania bought my domain name, www.brycezabel.com, and turned it into an adult site. I’m not kidding! Later, the Romanian transferred the domain name to somebody else who sold household products and cosmetics on it. This led to a multi-year quest to reclaim my name so that, if for no other reason, my friends wouldn’t think I’d gone into the pornography business or had fallen on hard times and was now running internet scams.

It was identity theft, pure and simple. What made it even more maddening is that the domain "owners" actually used some of my TV and film credits on these sites to make it look like I was behind the whole thing. So, next to a link to a kitchen product web-page you'd find one called "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven" which would, surprisingly, also take you to the kitchen product web-page. Sigh...

It never sat right with me, but it seemed as if it would be too costly in time and/or money to prevail. I even offered to buy back my name at a premium and was turned down. Finally, this year, urged on by my friends Scott and Fred, I just said enough was enough. This led to some back-and-forth communications with the company which registered my name to these people. I explained that I was pretty damn sure there aren't a lot of people named "Bryce Zabel" out there and I was positive there was only one who wrote on "Mortal Kombat" and "Atlantis" and all the other credits which had been appropriated. I suggested after the first few e-mails that if they didn't facilitate turning this domain name over to me quickly they would stop hearing from me and start hearing from a lawyer.

I guess I must have sounded exasperated and persistant enough that, finally, a couple of weeks ago, they quietly transferred the domain name to me.

Then it was like Redford in "The Candidate" wondering what to do after you've won. I’m not entirely 100% sure about what should be on this new site, but at least it will have my blessing, whatever it turns out to be.

For now, while I'm debating that issue, it starts with links to my blogs in case people want to read them, biographical information in case anybody wants to see my credits, and portals to a few websites I’ve built for work projects. I’m sure there’s more to come, but that’s a good start.

It will not, however, sell you cleaning fluid or triple-X anything!

{{ Go to BryceZabel.com }}

The Hollywood Cookbook: A Holiday Win-Win for Charity

The first copies are back from the publishers and it will be in the major bookstores and Amazon.com will start shipping within the next week. I'm  talking about "The Hollywood Cookbook." It's the best win-win I've seen in a long-time. Really... think of it as Good Cooking, Great Causes...

Pre-Order Now for 2006 Holidays
Available Mid-November
$5 Per Book to Charity

To paraphrase Martin Landau's Bob Evans character from HBO's "Entourage" -- "If I told you there was a way to give somebody a modest gift for the holidays that they might actually like and, at the same time, give money to charities that help make the world a better place, would that be of interest to you?"

Regular readers of "For What It's Worth" know that I've never asked you to buy anything in all the time this blog has existed. This one just seems like such a great idea that I want to help.

The whole concept started a couple of years ago when my wife, Jackie, got this idea. She would find twenty celebrities, each one with a favorite charity, then ask them to supply their favorite recipes for a cookbook. Five bucks from each book would go into a pot to be distributed to the charities. She'd get the Entertainment Industry Foundation -- a group that has an outstanding reputation -- to divvy up the money. She'd sell the book, starting at the holidays, so that people could give it instead of a card saying "A donation has been made in your name." I mean, let's be honest, I'm always glad that a charity has gotten money in my name but it's a little disappointing. We'd like something tangible to go with it. Well, now you have the perfect compromise!

It's been a snowball effect of support. She's partnered with her good friend, Morgan Most, and together the two of them have practically willed this into existence. Celebrities like Ron Howard, Michael J. Fox, Jane Kaczmarek and Bradley Whitford immediately wanted to help. Charities were supportive and appreciative and put some of their key supporters in touch with the women of "Good Looking Cooking" (that's the name they came up with in order to publish the book). Later, as an added bonus, some very, very famous celebrity chefs also came aboard to offer some of their own special recipes. People like Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali (plus Mark Dacascos from "Iron Chef.")

The book is literally at the printer now, pre-orders are being taken, and it can end up in your hands before Thanksgiving, in plenty of time to wrap it, mail it and give it to friends and co-workers for the holidays.

Listen, I could go on and on about this idea. I work in Hollywood where so often everything is a problem and it's great to salute an idea where everything is a solution. You want to know what was the most significant problem to overcome? Figuring out how to get $5 guaranteed to charity, given all the costs that go into books these days. But Jackie and Morgan have been unyielding. $5 to charity. Not a penny less.

They have a superior web-site that explains the whole thing better than I can do in this blog. Check it out. Feel good this year about at least one of the gifts you give. Make a difference. You can see all the charities there and check out the links to their sites for yourself.

Let me put one other thought out there. After you've checked out http://www.thehollywoodcookbook.com, you'll probably agree it's a great idea, too. Now, let's do some math...

Say they sell 10-thousand books before Christmas. That means charities will get $50,000 to split. But if we can push that number up to 100-thousand books that would mean a $500,000 check going to charity in early 2007.

So, check out the site and if you catch "The Hollywood Cookbook" fever like I have, stick a link to it on your blog or website, write about it in your own words, send the URL to your local newspapers with a personal note of endorsement and send one of those e-mails to all your friends asking them to send it to all their friends. Even better, buy a book for everybody on your shopping list and be a force multiplier. Think of it this way: buy 10 books; give $50 to charity.

Let's go viral in support of a great cause! We're the Internet, dammit, this is easy!

Return to Germany

Guten Tag Meine Freunde!

150 years ago, my great-great-great grandparents left a town about 100 miles east of Berlin for a better life in the United States. Like a lot of Americans whose ancestors immigrated to this country, I never really gave much thought to where I came from. We're all about living in the present and moving on. When people asked where my family was from, my answer was always "Oregon."

Then I got invited to Germany last month to work with some outstanding German TV writers, producers and executives. And as I started packing, I started remembering. Hadn't my grandparents told me their parents spoke German? In fact, what's up with my last name -- Zabel -- isn't there a German bicyclist who spent years almost catching Lance Armstrong named Erik Zabel? Where was that book somebody had sent me years ago, something called "The Heritage of the Zabel Families in Germany & America"? Didn't it tell me that my grandfather who I always knew as John Zabel was actually Johannes?

So a casual trip to work with some other TV writers turned into something else for me. Not exactly a "roots tour" but something more than a one-week gig in a foreign country. 

As it turns out, the Zabels that my family came from started out in the mixed German-Polish village of Doelitz which was in Pommerania, an area that is now just barely in Poland but has also been Prussia or Germany, depending on who's drawing the borders. It lies along the Baltic Sea, a land that is very flat and considered only suitable as average farmland. The area was devastated three times: by the 30 Year's War in the 1600s, by Frederick the Great in the 1700s, and by Napoleon in the 1800s. So it's really no mystery why so many Pommeranians decided to pack their bags and seek a new life elsewhere. Many headed for the United States. Mine did in 1856.

Okay, enough history lesson. My wife, Jackie, came with me on this latest trip and airline schedules dictated we fly into Munich instead of Berlin. So we never got to see where all these relatives came from but we definitely got closer than I've ever been before.

Anyway, Jackie and I decided to add a little touring to the front and back of the work assignment. We got to Munich a few days after Oktoberfest, toured around the various "must-see" sights, went into the Alps for a day, then trained up to Cologne for the German TV work, then a final day or so in Frankfurt.

The Hills Were Alive
Neuschwanstein Castle

By the way, check out that weather. It was like we were still in Southern California when we arrived. Warm, clear, perfect. The unfortunate but enjoyable Upside of Global Warming! So we took advantage and went touristing to the Olympic Park, castles, museums, beer gardens, farmer's markets. Most of the time it was shirtsleeve weather. It cooled off a little when we got to Cologne.

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, we have left no international incidents in our wake, but on on our first night in Munich we almost started one. We got on a subway and when the doors closed we realized that virtually everyone else had just gotten off and we were the only passengers! At the next stop, we tried to get off, but the doors were locked! Then the train went into a dark tunnel and started to slow down. It was like the beginning to a horror film. I ended up pulling the emergency alarm and after a few minutes a man came back and told us to sit tight (well, actually, he said something else and it was in German and the way he shook his head made me suspect profanity was used). I guess the train was scheduled to turn around and everyone who takes the subway regularly knows this. It all turned out okay, but we definitely got smarter about things as we went on.

We actually liked the idea that for nearly two weeks we had no personal car and no need for one. We took the subway or a train everywhere we went, supplemented by a taxi here and there. It was a blast. We met a lot of locals that way and even a couple of Americans who were married to Germans who introduced themselves. The picture below is the closest I came to driving on the autobahn!

Outside the Olympic Park, Munich

Food-wise, Jackie loved all the pastries that are everywhere, and I liked the chance to start the morning with a bratwurst from a fast-food place. We also enjoyed getting hot chestnuts on the streets of Munich (which we initially surmised were round sausages!). Plus, I had an awesome goose dinner one night in Cologne. After I was done, a second plate was brought out with the rest of the goose that they'd been keeping hot until we were done with the first part of the meal.  And, of course, the Germans know how to brew a fine glass of beer, so there's always that.There also seems to be a lot of smoking going on in Germany, it's like the default has been reversed from the U.S. where smokers are segregated.

The work was very fun, working for a company that facilitates interaction between U.S. writers and international clients. The idea here was to share some of the tricks of the trade the U.S. television industry has learned in order to crank out orders of 22 episodes a season at a factory-like pace. More on that in future posts, I'd imagine. Let me just say that if anything is holding back German television it's not the energy, creativity or ideas of their writers but the structure of their system which doesn't allow them to work together often enough to achieve the greatness they're capable of. That seems to be changing. Everybody I met was extremely bright, talented and motivated to make a better product so the chances are they will, soon.

My bottom line is that Germany seems to be a place that is on the move -- intellectually, politically and even, it seems, in the world of TV and film. It works better than most European countries on many levels, the people I met were very friendly and warm, and it's a trip I'd be glad to have taken even if I didn't feel that family tree connection. Sehr gut.

Aufwiedersehen und bis bald!

9/11 Memories: Where Were You?

2,973 died that day. Let's never forget that.

Five years since 9/11. It's hard to believe, isn't it? A lot has happened, of course, but those images are seared into our brains. I had saved these into my computer back then and they rock me back on my heels as much today as then, maybe even more so.

Where were you? Do you remember how you felt? I think this is the ultimate "where were you day?" There are only a few others that get close: JFK's assassination for my generation, Pearl Harbor for my parents. In the positive memory category, there's the Moon Landing. Somewhere below all of these -- because they were less universal -- you have the O.J. verdict and the John Lennon murder.

{BTW, people have started to write their own personal experiences in the comments. They are all detailed and well-thought out. I urge you to read them and to add your own. We're collecting these as a kind of shared recollection on this anniversary. Your story, wherever you were and whatever you were doing, is important. Thanks. BZ}

I was on a morning walk/jog with my friend Zach. We go out early, around 6:00a, P.S.T. I remember when we started that Zach has driven to my place that day and he'd just heard something on the news about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. But what he'd heard was that it was a light plane, some kind of macabre accident. We shrugged it off and headed out.

About forty minutes later, we were on our way up the hill that leads to my house and my wife raced our car up. She said that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, that it was a big one. She usually doesn't give orders. This time she said, "Get in the car." We did.

Watching the news was awful. When somebody mentioned that people were jumping out of the Towers it seemed impossible. I remember literally shivering at that news. Jumping out of the World Trade Center! Jesus...

I simply was not prepared when the first Tower went down. Buildings don't fall down unless we dynamite them. This was impossible. Seeing the people running, covered in the white dust. It wasn't long before the second one came down. It felt like Armageddon. A memory that strikes me as completely odd and inappropriate now is that the school which our kids attended did not cancel classes but still asked that the kids come in. So we got our kids in, they watched TV in the classrooms until the first tower fell down and then we just went and got them and brought them home. Then we all watched TV together. My kids were pretty young and I don't think they quite got it or, if they did, they didn't want to think about it. I remember them giving my wife and me grief about "obsessing" about it. Even today, they don't seem disposed to talk at length about it.

I'll just say this straight out. When I saw what had happened, I didn't for a second think it was anything except something that had been masterminded by Islamic terrorists. I just knew. It was obvious. I also knew we were at war.

Nobody had to tell me this was like Pearl Harbor. We knew. But it was worse. It was on American soil and it was aimed specifically against innocent civilians.

Then the Pentagon got hit, too. And there was the news about United 93. When it crashed, my mind told me that we'd had to shoot it down. The true story of the heroism of the passengers wasn't obvious right away.

It was a terrible, awful, unforgettable day. Americans may disagree on the best method for fighting terrorism, but make no mistake we have to fight it. The kind of people who did this haven't given up. They're planning the next one, and they want it to be even bigger and bloodier. Al-Qaida's al-Zawahri recently said, according to a video aired on CNN, which appeared to be new:

"And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events, with Allah's permission and guidance."

Given the scope of 9/11, you can only imagine the nightmare that they are contemplating. It's a hard thing to accept but there are people in the world who simply want to see you and your family dead.

Please leave your own memories in the comment section. It's all way too important to forget and, with five years, maybe you have a different perspective now than you did then.

I'm really tired of the partisan bickering that defines the aftermath of this sad event, but for one day, can we all just remember this reality?

2,973 died. Let's never forget that.

{PHOTOS: I saved these at 9/11 and I don't remember where they came from. If anyone knows, please let me know so I can give proper credit to the photographer or news organization.}

MOVIE SMACKDOWN! | World Trade Center (2006) -vs- United 93 (2006)

The Smackdown. These are the two important 9/11 films released in the run-up to the five-year anniversary of the events of that terrible day. "World Trade Center" is out in the theaters now and "United 93" gets its DVD release on September 5. Critics keep wringing their hands about whether or not it's too early to tell these stories. It's not.

WORLD TRADE CENTER: We're here. Let's do our jobs.

The Challenger. It's hard to believe that this is an Oliver Stone directed film. There's no crazy conspiracy theory at its core and he's even included moments that are almost patriotically embarrassing. It's as if Stone decided that this story is best told without the hyper-emotionalism and manipulation of his earlier work -- except that, because it's about 9/11, the material, no matter how it's treated, is by definition hyper-emotional and manipulative. Still, given his background, he's chosen to tell it in a rather straight-forward way. He's concentrated on the characters and their problems and left his own baggage somewhere else.

UNITED 93: We're here. Let's roll.

The Defending Champion. "United 93" was my favorite film of the year when I saw it originally. I've seen it another time since. Its power is simply undeniable. We've all been on airplanes. It could happen to anyone. Today we all know the risks of terrorism. But these people never saw this coming and had mere minutes to decide to be heroes. Director Paul Greengrass tells this like a documentary and it is simply riveting.

The Scorecard. They're both powerful films that will make you feel the rage you felt on 9/11, the sadness at the losses, and the pride in Americans helping Americans. "World Trade Center" feels more like a movie than "United 93" -- it's got star casting all the way through it, starting with Nicholas Cage and working down, and so you are never completely transported. "United 93" has almost nobody in it that you'd recognize and that, combined with its directorial spareness, makes it a complete immersion into the feelings of 9/11. Another difference is that Stone's film is defined by seeing what's going on with the families of the trapped police officers, but Greengrass's film stays in the action, never going for the familial emotion, almost like that would be too easy. Both are meticulously reconstructed films.

The Decision. I was very moved by "World Trade Center" in all the ways that Stone intended. He's made a great movie. But "United 93" took me back so realistically I almost couldn't stand it. As I said in my earlier review, it's almost a holy film about that day. If you only have the emotional capacity for one 9/11 film on this five-year anniversary, rent the DVD and make it "United 93."

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Picking Fruit in the Media Orchard

I'm not 100 percent sure how you acknowledge someone who's got a great blog that you like who's written about you on that same blog without the whole thing looking like a Mobius strip of PR sleight-of-hand. Is there etiquette for this kind of thing? To do nothing just strikes me as not a very good option.

The blog in question is Media Orchard, sponsored by the PR team behind the Dallas company, Idea Grove. I could try to explain that further but they lay it out pretty succinctly themselves.

Media Orchard attempts to cultivate fresh thinking about the media, marketing and public relations in today's "spin eat spin" world. Media Orchard is the blog of the Idea Grove, a Dallas public relations firm.

Today they published an interview I did with the Idea Grove leader, Scott Baradell. It's a free-form shoot-out about media, screenwriting and blogging. I'll leave it to others to decide if the content itself is any good, but the presentation and the blog it's framed inside are both top-notch.

I've been following Idea Grove and Media Orchard since the beginning of the year and have really gotten hooked on the way they bring information out in the spin-me, spin-you world we live in.

I've learned a lot from this blog -- from how Technorati actually decides what blog outranks another to, well, Scott's rather unhealthy obsession with Tiffani Thiessen who's currently starring in mini-series I wrote with my wife called "Pandemic."

I know Media Grove has a lot of readers because a friend of mine who works the PR game in Oregon just wrote me about the interview almost immediately after it was posted and it's not like I alerted the media because, actually, alerting the media is what my friend and Idea Grove are supposed to be doing, right? It's all sort of confusing.

Blog me, blog you -- okay, my motives are suspect -- but check these guys out anyway. Jon Stewart promotes Stephen Colbert in his show, right, it's the world we live in...