"WHY PAMPER LIFE'S COMPLEXITY?"

Well, it's been a busy day thus far, here at the halfway point at 3pm. Zchooommmm!

Let's see, what gems do I have for you today. Well, last night, a student from Western Michigan University contacted me, looking for Mario Van Peebles. Sure, I interviewed him in 2005, and we sat together in a diner booth and laughed and talked and had a merry old time and I wrote all about it, but I don't, you know, call him up on the weekends and say hello. Anyway, a very polite young lady asked me for him number. Sorry. See, she's doing a project about August Wilson and wants to talk to African-American playwrights about him and his work. So, Im thinking, wait--- does she mean Melvin Van Peebles, Mario's father? He has some playwright cred on top of his directorial cred. Maybe? Anyway, I explained that I'd be happy to help in any way I could with her project, but she's have to go through his publicist like I did.

I can't say I saw that coming. Sure, if you Google our names together, the first five hits point you to the interview. But, you have to Google our names together. And why on earth would anyone do that? Anyway. Nice girl. Her project sounds cool.

Let's see, what else is the haps today? Well, I'm scurrying around reminding folks slated to come to Pilcrow to email me their "Five With..." interview answers, speaking of interviews. I only have a couple more in the cue, then I'm going to start making up answers for people, and nobody wants that, I can assure you. The five questions are the same for everyone, so yank them off the Pilcrow blog and go nuts. What's that? You're an author and want to come to Pilcrow and sit on a panel but haven't set such matters up yet? Well, you just drop me an email and I'll bet we can figure something out.

Also, speaking of Pilcrow, we've set up a ChipIn page for donations. Office supplies, odds and ends, refreshments and the like, well, all of that adds up, so people started asking to donate to the cause, and now we point them right to our ChipIn page. Easy.

I also just saw the headline "Artificial Muscle Heals Itself, Charges iPod" and, well, that was curious, too.

I could go for a patio, chips, super hot salsa, and a nice not-too-sweet margarita. That sounds pretty great.