McSweeneys didn't want what Tara and I wrote, but y'all do, right?

Excerpts from security briefings written from Golan Cipel to Jim McGreevey, discovered after the former was fired from his position as New Jersey Director of Homeland Security when an investigation into his qualifications revealed his resume listed him as an "Israeli poet."

It's a report that's so dire that of hope you might starve
But New Jersey's security, it just isn't parve
(In fact, it's a shanda. But I'll fix it. So nu?)
--From the introduction to Plots That'll Make You Plotz, February, 2002

From the south's Atlantic City to the north's Hackensack
The evilest doers are still planning attacks
From most public square to the most private bowers
From the unguarded coastline to our sort-of-tall towers
From your small private business or those large ports commercial
To that glitzy Bar Mitzvah of my brat nephew Herschel
If we can't prevent it, they will just run amuck
And then who here will feel like the world's biggest schmuck?
--From Let's Be Honest: New Jersey Is, Like, America's Thirty-Second Most Likely Terrorist Target, March, 2002

They seek to disrupt lives and to progress forestall
Like a drive to the shul or a trip to the mall
'Til we can't even relax in our home's own recliner
Or at the early-bird special at the Wall Township Diner
--From A Latke Good That'll Do You, April, 2002

Wall Township Diner. Try the whitefish salad. It's geshmak. Seriously.
--From Addendum to A Latke Good That'll Do You, April, 2002

They are jealous, you see, of the freedoms we prize today
Of the Six Flags worth of adventure down at exit 7A
It's too bad that Al Qaeda must surely abhor
Seven Starbucks in six miles along that stretch of Route 4
What a shame it would be to see Jersey fercockt
With our Mall at Short Hills full of bargains so stocked
We can't let them lay waste to our miles of bright shmattas
And our record stores carrying Perlman sonatas
For them to come here is a pretty big shlep,
But they need to destroy us to keep up their rep
--From View From My Boss's Limo On Our Way To The Shore On Memorial Day Weekend (dictated, not read), May, 2002

I don't mind confessing, this job is the pits;
I try not to worry, but I still have to shvitz
It's a worry I think all New Jerseyites feel...
So I'll drop it here now, and just wrap up my spiel
Just go on, live your lives, let your summer begin
If give up our freedom the terrorists win
Our liberty's trampled as if by bulls at Pamplona
When we're armed soccers moms in our Kia Sedonas
--From Death Drives a Minivan, June, 2002

We're none of us safe, whether straight or you're queer
Whether John Q. Public or Golda Meir
To finance this fight, all must tighten their belts
Fighting terror's not cheap; it'll take lots of gelt
If only I knew I could derail Al Qaeda
By cashing in savings bonds sent from my Zeyde
--From Y'all Should've Known From This Moment That Something In My Résumé Was Horribly Awry, July, 2002

We'll be vigilant until we've extinguished terror's last spark
And so what if the power goes farkuckt, I'll just sit here in the dark
--From Solutions To Common Terrorism Threats, As Proposed By My Mother, Ina Cipel, During A Trip To Pathmark To Buy Numerous Brown Foods In Preparation Of The Family Dinner For The High Holy Days, August 2002

From that terrible day when panic first swirled
When chai plus one terrorists changed our view of the world
For cowards and weaklings, the bastards mistook us
And then, 'fore we knew it, they'd kicked in our tuchis
--From Go Fuck Yourself, Mohammed Atta (unfinished), September, 2002

If we can send a thousand books to California's libraries, be the initial spark of several relationships that have turned into marriages, and reunite me with a childhood friend, for Pete's sake we should at least be able to help Sars find Don. Somebody, please!

Working on this television show is teaching me how to add more specifics to my writing. When I write here, or a recap, or even a script Liz and I will eventually perform, there's a tendency to write in shorthand, to deliver enough information that someone "gets it," and then move on. Here I'm learning what happens if you leave things up to interpretation, the confusion that can happen when a script goes through ten different hands before it's heard out loud again. There's no room for imagination. Everything will actually exist and there are a thousand decisions to make. If the writer doesn't specify, there will be notes, questions, and the possiblity of something getting cut because it'll take too long to interpret.

Liz is in the kitchen. She stands by a table, eating food.

LIZ
Chinese food is so messy.

Is the kitchen in a house, apartment or office? What kind of table? Can it be a counter? Is the food in a bowl, on a plate, in a container? Is she eating Chinese food, or just talking about it because she can't eat it because it's too messy?

Liz is in her kitchen, wearing a hot, black dress. She is balancing over her kitchen table, trying to eat Chinese food without spilling any on her clothes. She drops a noodle on her chest.

LIZ
Dammit.

That's the kind of stuff I'm learning -- how to write for performance, keeping it specific and concise so the joke is clearly there. In the second example the costume person knows what to look for, props can get a container of Chinese food (or at least chopsticks and noodles), the set designer knows what's going on, and the actor has a sense of mood. Kind of. This would probably need another revision. Or three.

We've started shooting, which is just amazing and awesome and crazy, really. An idea turned into pages, and now there are all these people standing around to bring the idea to life. There's makeup and costumes and HOL-lee-wood! Duh-duh-da-da-dah-HOL-lee-wood!

I also had to sign a confidentiality agreement, so I probably can disclose a little less than I was. But I got to sit in a director's chair, behind a monitor, lean over to the producer and go, "That's a great take."

Come on. That's what it's all about.

The doctors are hard at work to determine what's wrong with me. They've decided I need three months of daily antibiotics. Yeah!

When this first started happening I was truly bummed out because it reminded me of Dad. He used to get these kinds of sores, complications from his diabetes, and it brought back all these terrible feelings. Diabetes runs in my family, from my Dad's side. He had it, his sister had it, and his mother had it. In talking to Mom about this, she suddenly remembered that my father's mom used to get these kinds of sores, too, in the same places. She made a phone call to another relative and determined that my dad's sister also used to get these sores. If you're paying attention that means my dad, his sister, and their mother all used to get what I'm currently going through. It all started for them when they got in their thirties. They all were diagnosed with diabetes around that time. They are all now dead.

Yeah, this is when the Internet is not your friend, and every page brings up something more terrifying, and there are forums full of stories of people who died from what you're going through. Both the surgeon and the infectious diseases doctor say they don't think it's Hidradenitis Suppurativa (in case you didn't click the scary link), but they do think it's possible my grandmother had it, from the descriptions of the terrible things she went through. Apparently my family members went to many doctors, suffering through all kinds of treatments, but nothing helped. There's not one sexy word in all of this, by the way. Dude. Someone needs to get on that. Boils. Staph. Carbuncles. I mean, one thing that doesn't sound like I'm made of ooze. Please.

I don't have any of the other symptoms of diabetes, but it's still enough to get me worried. I went for blood tests this morning at the crack of dawn, and then drove straight to my first shoot. The highs and lows. That's what this year has been about: incredibly wonderful, amazing news tempered with health issues, stress and huge what-if's.