In celebration of Darwin in Malibu, which I'm directing at the Generic Theater in March, I am finally reading The Origin of Species and posting chapter-by-chapter summaries and commentary. Part 0 covers the history of the book, plus its title page and introduction.

Part Zero: The Origin of the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin was a naturalist. He was on track to become a doctor, but he proved a rather squeamish medical student, and left medical school for Cambridge to become instead an Anglican priest. His father, a doctor, was disappointed enough by this to say, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." While at Cambridge, he found his true calling: that of a naturalist, an all-around scientist of the natural world (and especially the creatures which inhabited it). "Naturalists" were the progenitors of modern biologists, and like so many very early men of science, the best of them  became masters of many disciplines. Naturalists combined aspects of what we know today as biology, botany, entomology, taxonomy, chemistry, geology, and more.

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A couple of years ago, I played a joke on a new friend. Instead of laughing about it, she accused me of harassment and breaking and entering. Granted, it wasn't a very funny joke, but I wasn't aware the penalty for a comedian bombing was so severe. So I'd like to post a warning for any practical jokers out there: never, never play a joke involving somebody's car, house, or computer without getting notarized forms signed in triplicate that they're planning on getting the joke.

First, a little background. This was not the first time I planted a joke grenade on someone's computer. Allow me to describe just three prior offenses.

In college, back when "sound cards" were brand new and nobody but geeks like me knew how to record or play sound on computers, I changed my friend's computer startup sound. He was ahead of the technology curve himself and had managed to hook it up to his stereo, so the next time he booted his computer, he got blasted with a deep-voiced recording of God instructing him to fill his disk drive with potato chips. (For the record, he denies following the instructions.)

A couple years later, my girlfriend was running sound for a play that was being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I'd rigged up a system for them to run the sound cues off of a laptop computer–way ahead of its time back in 1997! When she got to Scotland and booted it up, the joke grenade deployed and she got a very cute romantic animated message from me.

A few years after that, I installed a widget on my brother's computer so when he booted up, he got HAL9000's eerie red light on his desktop, reporting loudly that all systems were functioning perfectly.

If you haven't detected the pattern yet, let me describe it bluntly: these jokes are not very funny.

But they're kinda cute in their own way. They're just stupid little joke grenades. They're mildly subversive, in a spirit of fun, and you wouldn't think someone would respond to one by suggesting she might file a harassment suit. Right? Then keep reading.

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1. I was cast in Glengarry Glen Ross, which opens tonight at The Generic Theater and runs till Feb 10. You try keeping up with a blog while rehearsing a play and see how it goes. I'm playing Kevin Spacey.
2. I went to Georgia twice, Charlottesville 4 or 5 times, Baltimore once, North Carolina once, D.C. twice, and almost went to Florida.
3. I'm not allowed to write; it's a writer's strike, after all.
4. Okay, I'm allowed to write. But I tried to get permission to reprint a great article from Creative Screenwriting about the strike and why it's important, and they were all enthusiastic but never got back to me.
5. I watched a bunch of Oscar screeners with my dear friend Ginny and her son Matt and his awesome girlfriend Joan. They're voting members so they get the magic DVDs.
6. Cloverfield is going to be the most profitable movie in years. I know this has nothing to do with why I haven't been writing lately, I just wanted to point it out. Want to make massive cash? Shoot a movie for <30 mil, cast unknowns, shoot handheld camera, and only use 10 minutes of the expensive kind of CGI. NOTE: this will only work if you put talented people in charge.
7. I got two baby sugar gliders and have been raisin' 'em up. You try keeping up with a blog while being a daddy. It's impossible. What? Lots of people do it? Fuck.