Some random thoughts for the weekend...

A belated happy birthday to Natalie Wood, who would have been 75 yesterday if Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken weren't doing... God knows what. 

It didn’t take Dodger phenom Yasiel Puig long to go Hollywood. Up with the team for a month, he was spotted during the All-Star break at the Playboy Mansion hanging with Chris Brown. I guess the two were comparing hitting styles.

No, I’m not attending  Comic-Con nor do I plan to review the craziness. It’s just too easy.

Registration for this year’s SITCOM ROOM weekend seminar will open before the end of this month. But if you get on the alert list. I will let you know 24 hours before I announce it publicly. As before, only twenty slots are available and I only conduct this seminar once a year. Here’s where you go for info and to sign up for the alert list.

Piper Perabo, who stars in COVERT AFFAIRS was robbed of an Emmy nomination. I’d like to see Maggie Smith run in heels.

More people watched the home run derby the day before the All-Star game than any actual game of the NBA Finals. Chicks still dig the long ball.

The hardest job in America must be the person having to write the Closed-Captions for THE NEWSROOM.  But despite its flaws, I'm still on board.

Sorry to hear of the passing of longtime White House correspondent, Helen Thomas.  She helped arrange press credentials for my partner and I to join the corps in 1980 when we were doing an ABC pilot about the White House Press Corps.   She was lovely and classy and what a trailblazer for women. 

When series get nominated for Best Show but not Best Writing there’s a good chance they’ll lose.

The problem with reading an ebook is when you want to go back and look up something from several chapters ago. I can’t imagine reading a Russian novel on my Kindle. Every nine pages I’d be saying, “Who is Slovorkivavinovich again?”

How come the guest stars in MAD MEN get nominations but not the more deserving regular cast members?

I'm off the RAY DONOVAN train.  How about getting a Fixer to fix this show?   Someone who knows how to tell a story? 

BACKDOOR TEEN MOM, Farrah Abraham, on the "Matty P's Radio Happy Hour" show, was asked her thoughts on Trayvon Martin. This is actually what this moron answered: "I feel like I've met her or something. It sounds so familiar ... I don't know what she is so I can't picture the person with the name right now."   Helen Thomas is gone but this person is still with us.

Watch for a great new sitcom debuting in the Fall on Nick at Nite called INSTANT MOM. Just added to the writing staff are two very talented young scribes named Annie Levine & Jonathan Emerson. I couldn't be more proud. And thanks to our son Matt for surprising his sister and flying down for the taping of their second produced script last Thursday. 

Talk about the torch being passed, that episode that Annie co-wrote was filmed on Stage 20 at Paramount and I've directed episodes on that same stage. 

There will be a crossover episode next year of THE SIMPSONS and FAMILY GUY. Please let THE SIMPSONS writers write it.

Some readers have commented lately about PBS pledge breaks – why are they so long and how come they show the same damn doowop and British rock star reunions over and over? I agree the breaks are waaaay too long. We get it. But that’s not as horrifying as seeing these old chart toppers now. Gaaa! These former fresh-face kids now all look like Peter O’Toole. Gerry and the Pacemakers are wearing pacemakers.

But the shows PBS air are the ones their research says brings in the most viewers and contributions. Hey, I watch the black-and-white Roy Orbison every year. The key is to Tivo it.

I’ll be teaching a course at USC this fall on “the Foundations of Comedy.” Screening a lot of old movies and TV shows. Buster Keaton was a genius. If you don’t know who he is go to YouTube or ace your SAT’s, enroll in USC and take my course.