Pooping at Paramount on the Picket Line!

We are back in Hollywood...just in time for the writer's strike. The whole of Hollywood has shut down but I don't care. It just means that my people can't work so now they have to hang around with us all the time.

They came home one day before the strike and all their friends are saying it's going to last 9 or 10 months--all because the producers don't want to pay them residuals from the Internet. Dad tells all his WGA (Writer's Guild of America) comedy writer friends why he came home at a time like this.

Dad: "I want to be here when everybody else is out of work too!"

But I'm glad about being back in Hollywood. I got my Lamby back! (In case you don't remember, Mom was fostering a foofy-looking dog that got scraped off the road and sent to death row a few months ago with some very, very bad crushed footies--he was going to be a double amputee but he's almost all better now.)

We are in a love triangle...the good kind-- the Euro kind-- where my wife Finley doesn't mind if I spend the day loving my white fluff boy-doll. It's BrokeBark Mountain all over again. It's cool and foggy, perfect hump-o-rama weather. Me and Finn take turns getting on top of him.

Dad is even madder than he was in Nice, France Europe. Mom is mad too and both of them are slamming doors and yelling a lot because not only are they not working, but all the important human stuff in the house isn't working.

Here's a list of what's driving Mom and Dad crazy:

1) Termites are eating up the house from underground. Cost: 4000 bones or about 5000 Euro-bones.

Dad: (yelling at the Orkin termite guy on the phone) "What do you MEAN, we're not covered for LARVA?! I paid you $4000 to come up here and get rid of this problem. You mean to tell me you only cover termites once they reach the adult stage?"

Mom: "This is outrageous. Did you read the small print in the contract? Where is the contract? Is it in one of your junk piles?"

2) The roof has to be replaced because the insurance company won't insure Mom and Dad with wood shingles. Cost: probably some 20,000 bones. (So what? They just call a roofy guy and he comes over and does a new one. I want him to make it real slippery so the squirrels will slide down and we can scare them a little for fun.)

3) The toilet won't flush and there is human poop coming up into the shower. Cost: about 1000 bones so far.

Dad has been trying to pour 10,000 Drano bottles down the toilet and plunging like a madman and splashing it all over the bathroom. He won't call a plumber.

Mom: (standing in the doorway to the bathroom with her sweater up over her mouth and nose) "Oh my god. This is horrifying. We have to call a plumber now. Why can't we just call a plumber?"

Dad: "Sure. I'll just pay and pay and keep on paying. We can just hire more people to come up here and take care of everything. All the stocks are in the red."

Mom: "I'm not cleaning this bathroom. I'm not plunging shit."

Dad: "What are you, the Queen of England? Who are you?"

The human poop water was all over the place for days until Dad finally gave up and called a plumber. The problem is that a Bougainvillea tree I've been fertilizing has taken root around the sewer line and choked it. It's so bad and so deep under the house that it broke the plumber's machine. Two days later, Dad had to call another plumber because the toilet still wouldn't flush and the human poop water was still all over the bathroom. I guess I fertilized it pretty good. Why can't they just poop outside in the ivy like we do?

4) Dad can't find his Corvette keys . Cost: a tall pile of bones to replace ignition for a 1958 Corvette.

He's gone through the entire house, throwing stuff around in a rage, tearing everything out of every drawer trying to find a tiny pair of keys. It's kind of like when he loses his one pair of glasses, only worse. Dad's kind of spoiled though. He has one pair of glasses and three cars. He just doesn't like being stuck using mom's car .


Dad explained to me what the writer's strike is all about: It's like all the writers create some delicious dinner recipe and the producers buy it from them for 5 bones. Then they turn around and sell millions of the same delicious dinner recipe for 5 BILLION bones and they won't share ANY of it with the people who created it!

So all the writers are steaming mad because it's no fair and they've all cleaned out their desks. Dad will never clean out his desk at home, but he'll go and hang out and drink coffee with all the Hollywood writers on the picket line.

I can't wait to walk the picket line with Dad. Mom is going to put red sweaters on us (all the angry writers are wearing red). We're going to eat beets and dump red poop at Paramount.