My friend John asked me a couple of days ago if my blog would just be about writing and personal stuff, or if I was going to talk about work, too. (For anyone who hasn't read the bio, I do scripts at Late Night with Conan O'Brien.) No, I told him, I doubt I'll write too much about work because one of the cardinal rules of remaining gainfully employed is "Don't Shit Where You Eat." This rule is especially true of working in television, since there is always great temptation to gossip about behind the scenes stuff and ample opportunity to say just the wrong thing to just the wrong person at just the wrong time. I've seen it happen, and I don't ever want to get caught up in that car wreck situation, thanks. I like my paycheck.

There is one exception I'll make and that's if there's something I think is harmless enough that on one could object to me talking about it publicly. Well, I've found something. Here's a piece of news that's harmless enough for me to blog about, and, since it was also announced weeks ago, I'm not revealing anything new. The week of April 30th through May 4th, Late Night will be doing 5 shows from the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. And, though I hate to admit it, travel shows do tend to be really good. The energy of the audience is absolutely overwhelming, the comedy is always great. And, since I'm the first to admit that I'm a big grouch about my job and travel shows in particular, if I'm telling you those shows'll be worth watching, then you should watch them.

Ok, so, why am I a big grouch? Because though viewers might love them and though they might make good TV, for me travel shows are a total nightmare. For one thing, we're in a theater, not a studio. Theaters are a lot bigger, and not really built for what we do, or at least not for what I do. I spend most of my time running--literally running--from the head writer to my computer to the prompter and back again. The day ends up being one big obstacle course. Really, they oughta make theater seat hopping an Olympic sport. I'd have a good shot at medaling.

And also end up working 12 to 13 hour days. No kidding, 12 to 13 hours. When we were in Chicago last year, I would get into the production offices at 9 am, and I wouldn't get back to my hotel room till about 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night. It was brutal. And I didn't even get to see any of Chicago, which sucks since I hadn't been there before. I'm sure things will be the same in San Francisco, which again, totally sucks since San Fran is a great city. Oh well, c'est la vie.

But okay, here's one detail about the San Francisco week that I probably shouldn't talk about, but I'll hint at anyway. They've booked a guest for the Tuesday of that week that, as an SF&F geek, totally got me excited. Now I don't get too excited about guests anymore--I'm really jaded when it comes to celebrities--but this person got me so enthused about going that I've already asked one of the segment producers if I can get an autograph, and that's something I rarely do for myself. (I think the last autograph I asked for myself personally was Scorcese about 6 or 7 years ago. He received an honorary degree and spoke at my commencement the year I graduated from NYU. I brought my commencement program for him to sign. That was a cool get.)

So anyway, watch that week of shows and find out who's turning me into a screaming autograph hound.