Top Ten Ways to Put Off Blogging

So come to find out, we have already come up with several ways to put off posting on the blog. Which is of course already a way to put off writing. It's not easy, but here's how we do it.


10. Discuss how much we love/hate Katharine McPhee.

9. Blame each other for stinking up the office by not removing Baja Fresh salsa.

8. Halo 2. (see March 31st post)

7. Watch the classic grape-stomper video over and over again. Yeowwch!

6. Steamy, soothing bubble baths. (Cinco only)

5. 4 8 15 16 23 42

4. Trash talk about previous day's Halo 2 game.

3. Mumblety Peg

2 Search eBay for a life-size remote control R2-D2. (Ken only)

1. Long walks on the beach.

Cinco's Secret

Okay, in an earlier post, Cinco let out my big secret. I like action figures. Yes, I am a geek. As a kid I used to go to fantastic worlds where I was the hero and saved the universe and I guess I still like to go there. Now, it's time to expose Cinco. He loves frogs. Yes, you read it right. He loves frogs. Not only does he love frogs, but I am fairly certain that deep down, he wishes he could be Kermit. How do I know this? Well, let's take a look at some of the items Cinco has on display in the office.


This is just a small sample of what can only be described as a shrine to all things frog.






The most disturbing item is an actual dead frog holding a guitar.
All of this along with the several frog themed T-shirts he wears regularly make it perfectly clear that the world Cinco escapes to is infinitely different from mine. Let's take a look...





Cinco at home




Cinco at work










Cinco in love.







Cinco's first born.








Yes, this is Cinco's world. I don't understand it. I don't pretend to. Sometimes I wonder how we can even work together. I guess that's the great thing about our partnership. Even though we are so different in so many ways, we seem to be able to make it work.

Which Celebrity Said It?

One of these celebrities we've hung out with said to Cinco's wife Amy:

"Take care of the man."

Who was it?

UPDATE: and the answer is...FABIO! Congratulations to the lucky winners!

Shelly's Brother

To many people Cinco is known as Shelly's brother.

Click Here to Find out Why

Celebrities we've hung out with: Jack Black

Cinco here. Jack Black was Disney's first choice for the lead in BUBBLE BOY. He had just finished a scene-stealing role in HIGH FIDELITY, and they were very high on him. At one point we were told to make Jimmy the Bubble Boy play guitar because Jack Black was also a guitarist. Ken and I didn't know Black's work very well, but they showed us some Tenacious D stuff which was very funny. We were in (although frankly it didn't really matter to the studio what we thought--we were the writers!). Now the goal was to get Jack signed on. A dinner meeting was set up: Jack, Ken, myself and Disney co-presidents of production Nina Jacobson and Todd Garner.

We met Jack at a sushi restaurant in Century City--he was there waiting when Ken and I arrived. We smiled. Punctuality is very important to us. Then Nina and Todd showed up and the fun began. Black said he thought the script was cool. But he wasn't sure he could play the part. All of us assured him he could. This is the part he was born to play! No one else could ever do this part! I wish I had crazy anecdotes to share, but Black was pretty serious. He seemed a little uncomfortable, not sure what was expected of him. And completely uninterested in success or stardom. My most vivid memories are of Todd sharing a story about strippers in Vegas and Nina getting very excited--"Strippers? What about strippers?"--and of a later incident between Ken and Jack Black in the restroom. I am a gentleman, so I will leave Ken to elaborate on what happened there.

The dinner seemed to go well, but eventually we realized we had failed. Jack Black didn't end up doing BUBBLE BOY. He chose to do another movie called SHALLOW HAL instead (SHALLOW HAL box office: $70M; BUBBLE BOY's: $5M--we'll let you decide whether or not he made the right choice).

He's now a huge star. But Jake is also a huge star. Since then we have had dinner with one other star. He didn't sign on to our movie either. Hollywood, take note: don't let Cinco and Ken have dinner with actors you want to star in their scripts. They are poison.

What's the connection?

What is the connection between these two pictures? Please post your response.


UPDATE: all of the answers were excellent...but the one I was looking for was--

"I am I said/To no one there/
And no one heard at all/Not even the chair." Neil Diamond

Thanks for playing!

Celebrities we've hung out with: Jake Gyllenhaal

Cinco here with the first entry of a new weekly series in which Ken and I share stories about the celebrities with which we've rubbed elbows during our adventures in Hollywood. I'm going first, so I get Jake.

We first met future-cover-of-Entertainment-Weekly-gracing Jake Gyllenhaal at a table read for Bubble Boy. The reading went really well, but there was one problem: Jake read the Bubble Boy's lines as if he were mentally retarded. We all tried to disabuse him of this, and for the most part it worked, but there are still vestiges of it in his performance. A performance, which, by the way, made the movie.

We were on the set every day during the shoot, and got to know Jake well. It was easy--he wasn't a star yet! Nobody even knew who he was! We'd tell people the star of our movie was Jake Gyllenhaal and get blank stares. He was "that kid from October Sky."

Anyway, here are my impressions of Jake. He is a very serious, sensitive young man. Just look at that picture. He took the role seriously, he took life seriously. He was college-age and thought deep thoughts. This is not to say he had no sense of humor. He did. But there was a thoughtful quiet to him. Again I refer you to the picture.

And he didn't like dialogue. Maybe it was just our dialogue, but he really didn't want to say many of the lines. Felt he could say what he needed to with his eyes. And let's face it--those puppy dog eyes of his speak volumes. So the Bubble Boy became a boy of few words. The pivotal line of the movie--"I'd rather spend one minute holding you than a lifetime knowing I never could"? He hated it. That's why when he says it in the movie it comes out like one word.

By the way, in articles about Jake now there is no mention of Bubble Boy. It may be a condition set by his publicist.

Anyway, I saw Jake recently at a screening. He was the biggest star there. He smiled and asked what Ken and I were up to, was as sweet as always. He was a couple of weeks away from being nominated for an Oscar for that cowboy movie. You know the one where he says that line, "I wish I knew how to quit you"? Clearly and distinctly? Carefully enunciating each word?

It's no "I'd rather spend one minute holding you than a lifetime knowing I never could." But it seems to have caught on somehow.