tuppence a bag

The kids found a hummingbird, trying to fly with damaged wings and stuck in a bush, after what looked like a fight to the finish with one of the cats that hang around outside. Dizzy and totally freaked out, the tiny guy looked like he might not make it, but he became a Memorial Day weekend project. We had some hummingbird food and fed it to him from a spoon, and he ate like a linebacker, regaining his wits and his strength, sitting on a tree branch for quite a while before he finally took off, ready for another go at life. Ha. In your face, cat.
May we all spend this weekend regaining strength, sipping sugar water, sitting on a branch for a while, and getting ready to go out there and fight the next cat.

Standup Stonehenge

The Improv in Hollywood is still the foundation of what has become the standup comedy industry, and performing there is always like going to comedy Stonehenge, walking among the tables and muttering in awe "Andy Kaufman yelled at me while wearing a fake beard, denying he was Andy Kaufman right over there!" "Jay Leno used to park his motorcycle right there, smoking a pipe at the bar when it was legal!" "Robin Williams stole another bit that I did standing right here!" Thanks to everybody at the Improv, as always, for the warm welcome and a great weekend.
No, the painting has nothing to do with the Improv. I just finished it and thought I would put it up here. It looks better than the piece of wall at the Improv that Robin Williams leaned on when he watched my show ever so carefully.

Decatur, Illinois!

I just returned from Decatur, where we're filming a movie called "The Informant." Steven Soderbergh is directing it, and Matt Damon is in it, and I think that what the studio is doing is they've decided to promote the Steven Soderbergh/Matt Damon thing in a much more prominent way than they're promoting me being in it. Okay, whatever. I guess somebody just doesn't look at blogs... but they're nice guys and we're having a good time.
Decatur is farmland. Flat flatty flat flat, with corn, soybeans, and a few trees planted around farmhouses to block the wind. And what country house would be complete without a cement deer out in front? My Dad loved this stuff, but since we lived in the city and didn't have room for deer, he put a cement dog in front of our house. Brown and white paint with a couple of black spots sprayed on, until the rain finally washed off the paint and the cement started to crack. He loved that dog, though, and wouldn't get rid of it even when the tail became a dangerous re-bar spike jutting out of the lump of plaster that we had to avoid while playing wiffle ball or someone might get impaled by a decorative beagle. We finally moved out of the city to the suburbs, and a bigger lawn. What did Dad do? He went out and got a brand new dog, a clone of the original. Even when he had room for a deer, Dad decided that loyalty to a cement dog trumped the antlers of the nouveau riche.