Confession: It Was I Who Dealt It On The Bus In 1978

I went to this day camp in the summer of 1978. I wasn't a very popular kid and kept to myself, but I wasn't unpopular enough to be picked on, just ignored. The camp scapegoat was this kid named Russell, who was short and pudgy with eternally crooked glasses, kind of like Piggy from Lord of the Flies. Anyway, I don't know if it was the tater tots or the franks and beans or the egg salad sandwiches, but the camp lunches committed unspeakable atrocities upon my digestive tract on a daily basis. Heading home one day, avidly reading a Betty & Veronica Double Digest, I squeezed out an airborne toxic event of unprecedented potency. If you were to feed a dog a bucket of Brussels sprouts and rancid lard and lock him in a closet for a couple of days, the smell that hit you when you opened that closet door would be about one tenth as powerful as this. It took about five seconds for the miasma to spread throughout the big yellow bus, then the girls started shrieking and holding their noses and the guys pulled their shirts up to their foreheads. Counselors with rapidly tearing up eyes leaped from their seats to open all windows, and for a minute it seemed like the bus driver was going to pull over so we could evacuate. Some girl stopped choking long enough to cry out that Russell cut the cheese, and everyone started yelling at him. Russell started bawling and insisted that he didn't do it. He gnashed his teeth and didth rent his garments asunder. Meanwhile, I buried my head deeper in my comic and prayed that I hadn't in fact crapped my pants, so stubbornly did the overwhelming stench linger in the stifling summer heat. As the offensive vapors lodged in the noses of the entire bus, a one-sided melee ensued and Russell disappeared beneath a flurry of noogies, deadlegs, purple nurples, shark bites and wet willies. I even reached over the seat and gave him a red neck with a resounding slap before retreating back into my literary pursuits. Finally the counselors broke up the beating and exhaust fumes from the highway dissipated the horrific odor. Russell sobbed the whole way home, and the guilt started building within me. It's taken nearly 30 years, but I'm finally ready to confess that it was me and wherever you are, Russell, whether this incident turned you into a serial killer or dotcom billionaire, I'm terribly sorry for what I put you through, and I'll never do it again.

Confession: The WGA Strike Is Probably All My Fault

Contrary to popular opinion, I'm pretty sure the WGA strike doesn't have anything to do with residuals. See, about two years ago I went to this little, tiny car wash that's part of a gas station in Culver City. Due to the placement of the car wash, if more than two cars are in line to get into the car wash the line usually extends into one of the gas pump areas. If people are actually pumping gas in this area, thereby blocking the space where the car wash line would logically go, people tend to line up on the side, so the line would be kind of L-shaped, or a backwards L, or an upside-down T if people are on both sides. The point is, one day there were three cars in line and lots of people pumping gas, so I ended up pulling my car up to the left of the line, making me fourth in line. Since I had a coupon for a regular car wash I didn't need to get out of my car and go into the mini-mart to pay. If you don't have the coupon you have to go inside and pay and they give you this sign to put on top of your car that says "WASH" to show the attendant that you paid. Seconds after I pulled up, a fancy import pulled up on the right side on the line. This guy who looked just like Peter Chernin,the head of Fox (!), got out of the car and went inside and came back with a "WASH" sign. I don't know what he was doing at this modest car wash on a Saturday afternoon, I figured he'd normally have his car detailed on the lot by his fourth assistant. Maybe there was an incident with a flock of crows or something while he was shopping at Target. Anyway, by the time he returned the other cars in line were getting ready to pull up and he and I both started to pull up behind them, from opposite directions. I was slightly ahead of him and he became red faced and honked at me. I stood my automotive ground and he got out of his car and started yelling at me that I was cutting. I got out and politely told him there was no need to yell because I was in fact in line before him. He said I didn't even have a sign. I told him why I didn't have a sign, because I didn't need a sign. He seemed deeply embarrassed, then noticed I was wearing a 3rd Rock from the Sun baseball cap. It was a crew gift from when I worked on the show that I've worn like twice in my entire life, and this had to be one of those times. He asked in a menacing tone what I did in the business and I panicked, not wanting to tell him I was in TV production on a CBS show at the time, because if he really was Peter Chernin, and he looked totally like Peter Chernin, I was afraid he'd track me down and get Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS (!), to fire me. So I blurted out that I was a writer so he'd go on a wild goose chase. I didn't even say what kind of writer and he responded, "God damn you fucking writers!" Then he marched back to his car, took off the "WASH" sign, threw it at me (it grazed my right thigh) and drove off in a rage, nearly running over a kid on a skateboard. I really think it might have been Peter Chernin (who else could it have been?) and that two years later he is still so mad at me that he goaded the other studio heads into making a really bad offer just for spite, which the WGA took as an insult and things just snowballed into a strike. And it's all my fault and I'm very, very, very sorry. In retrospect I should've just let him go ahead of me. It's not like spending an extra three minutes in my car listening to A Prairie Home Companion would've killed me. So now you all know and we can let the healing begin. I feel a little better already, just getting this off my chest.