The building where our offices are located is basically a ghost town on the weekends, and in order to save money and energy, the folks here have elected to keep the air conditioning off.

This building was built in either the late 50′s or early 60′s, so the idea that each suite can control its own air conditioning is laughable. Everything has to go through Engineering, and they have very limited to nonexistent hours on the weekend.

Now we’ve tried to explain to them “No, there really will be people working, so please turn the A/C on” for the last several weekends, to very limited avail.

We’re only planning on being here for a few hours today, but it’s 9:30 in the morning and it’s already quite hot in here. This will be a real fun and drowsiness-inducing few hours.

The thing that really kills me about them killing the A/C is that none of the offices, at least in our suite, have light switches. So the big, annoying, fluorescent lights that just suck down energy are on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether anyone’s here or not.

Way to be energy-efficient, guys.

I realized that I haven’t said anything here about the death of a man I consider one of my comedic heroes, George Carlin.

Partly, I think it’s because I don’t want to acknowledge that he won’t be around to call everyone on their bullshit, as I hoped he’d be for the next few years.

I don’t know that going through a list of my favorite routines of his would do much good, particularly with YouTube links to most of them already having floated around for the last week.

He had an incredibly intelligent take on almost everything, so I was stunned to learn while reading the voluminous obituaries that his formal education ended at the ninth grade.

He was incredibly gifted at finding the tiny absurdities in life, and dissecting them into ten minute monologues that had you falling off your couch because you were laughing so hard.

He often stayed away from political humor because of how dated it becomes, but when he did choose to address politics, it would stay relevant for years after (check out the beginning of Carlin’s Jammin’ In New York to see a relatively rare example).

But Carlin always had a unique take on everything, and as modern life gets more complicated and sillier, I’ll miss his fantastic ability to dissect the madness.

Carlin was less than a year younger than my father, and their paths briefly crossed when the senior partner in dad’s firm argued the FCC v. Pacifica Foundation case before the Supreme Court (and sadly, lost).

I think that’s another reason it’s hard for me to picture Carlin gone: Although Carlin fought health-destroying addictions for years and had three heart attacks, I never saw him as an old man because hell, he was younger than my dad.

He was also still constantly performing. I got my last email from Ticketmaster advertising his latest show only a couple months ago, and he had plans to tour this fall. He can’t be gone, he’s got gigs, and he lived to perform.

It’s a damn shame his heart gave out on him well before he or we were ready for it to, but the fact that hundreds of hours of video of his comedy exist brings some solace to those of us who will miss him and his perspective terribly.

So I’ll leave you with his own thoughts on death: The usual slaughtering of sacred cows, the notations of the way we address the things we fear, and the weird things we say to try to comfort other people when bad shit happens.

A few bits of errata, Laz style:

– Because we were on a Wednesday-Sunday shooting schedule, I had taken to calling each day “Fake ____”. Like Wednesday was Fake Monday, Thursday was Fake Tuesday, Friday was Fake Wednesday.

Today, the last day I have to deal with this shift, I found a flaw in my cunning plan: I forgot that it was Fake Wednesday, not real Wednesday, and that therefore the aqua aerobics class would be taking over the pool at 9 instead of 9:30, and got kicked out of the pool halfway through my laps.

– Are you really really bored? Try to identify the candy bar simply by looking at a cross-section. I went 14 for 20.

– I am extremely excited to see Wall-E tomorrow. Almost as excited as I am to actually have a Saturday off.

–Our entertainment this evening was chasing the mouse that lives in the kitchen all over the office. My PA was taking videos of this with his cellphone, one of which has me saying in the background, “Well, the mystery guy who lost his clothes finally called back.”

No, I will not be posting these videos.

–We finally finished shooting!

This has been a fun show, and a very good learning experience. The shifted week thing has been an absolute bear, but at least it was only for three weeks. I pulled a couple sixth-day paychecks, which is helpful in the realm of “Mama needs a new pair of everything.”

I’m back to a normal schedule for the next couple weeks (well, I’ll be in for a couple hours Sunday, but nothing like my schedule previous sundays of 5pm-5am), and then I’m scrambling for a new job. Gotta love the freelance world!

Most of the fleas I’ve been battling, however, are. Huzzah! I hit a bunch of the rest with a big-ass can of Raid this evening, and they do not seem to have recovered…yet.

Unfortunately, because of my high sensitivity to the bites, I’m still absolutely covered in them. Even the smallest ones take well over a week to go away, and the bigger ones will probably last much longer.

The intense itching is driving me completely insane (even taking a crapload of antihistamines), and I’ve been downgraded to Flamingo from Gay Leopard – It’s not just pink spots anymore, I’m totally covered in calamine lotion.

Anyway, hopefully this will prove itself resolved in the next week or so, and y’all will never have to hear about this nastiness again.

It’s been hellaciously hot in L.A. this week, so the fleas that I thought I’d gotten rid of are back with a MASSIVE vengeance. The only real solution is to flea-bomb the house to kill ‘em all.

The problem is, flea-bombing is a stupidly elaborate and time-consuming process, since it has a tendency to cover everything in a sticky, disgusting, chemical-filled film. You therefore have to cover some stuff up in advance, and wash a lot more stuff off afterwards.

I’m also working ridiculously late (or early, depending on your perspective). Our crew call was really late, and my call was 5:30 PM. That means they expect to be shooting until at least 5:30 AM. You know it’s going to be a long night when the thing that will cause filming to stop is the sunrise.

All that in mind, here is my rough schedule for the next 36 hours:

Now-6AM: Work in my office where they’ve turned off the air conditioning. Possibly longer.

6-7AM: Drive back to Santa Monica, try to obtain a flea fogger at Ralph’s (the grocery store).

7-8AM: Prepare apartment for fogging by putting all open food and dishes in either the fridge or the dishwasher and sealing.

8AM-9AM: Drop Chaplin off for flea dip, go to pet store and get flea fogger if Ralph’s didn’t have one.

9:30 AM – Set off flea fogger. Flee to Nate’s house and take a nap for 2-3 hours while flea fogger does its bit.

12 Noon-1PM – Go home, open windows and let apartment air out.

1PM-2PM – Return to Nate’s and napping, let apartment finish airing out.

2PM-3PM – Retrieve cat from groomers, take him home. Start to clean up.

3PM-9PM – Continue cleaning and laundering. Probably pass out from exhaustion. Hopefully will not die from whatever toxic fumes remain in my apartment.

9PM-11PM – Wake up, realize I never made it to the gym and that now I have to go in the morning. Finish cleaning.

11PM-6AM – Sleep.

6AM-9AM – Get up, go to the gym, go to work.

If I don’t post for several days, send help.

It’s always fun to read a story in Variety and, before reaching the end of it, start mentally calculating how much plasma and/or heroin I’ll need to sell to make rent.

I bought my first $50 tank of gas tonight. $50.45 for 10.970 gallons. For those lazy at math, that’s $4.59 a gallon.

I fear later this summer as gas continues to spiral up, my credit card is just going to melt one day.

Courtesy of the Tenant Services folks in the building where our Production Office is located:

Good Idea: Throwing a picnic for the tenants to kick off the summer and show your appreciation of their business.

Bad Idea: Serving Chili at the picnic, to a building full of people whose office windows do not open.

I’m going to go find myself a big box of matches…

Being friends with mostly theater geeks in High School, I rather enjoyed this (particularly the last line about the location of the Technical awards):

High School Tony Awards Honor Nation’s Biggest Drama Club Nerds

Please enjoy these photos of my father and stepmother’s tour of the “Five ‘Stans”: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

Dad’s still figuring out how Flickr works, so his captions (which contain a fair bit of historical context for what you’re looking at) are actually posted as comments. Although some of the comments, like this one, are courtesy of Ray Ann.