Dear Diary,

Hope you like your new look. You were horribly injured in a terrible accident and scientists worked around the clock to make you into a BETTER, FASTER…DIARY. You are the SIX MILLION DOLLAR DIARY! Some people will say that it was stupid of me to spend 6 million dollars on diary instead of a house, or food, or badly needed health insurance but I stand by my decision.

Holy Spicoli!!! I just looked at the date of my last journal entry! I can't believe how long it took me get back to you this time Diary. If this pattern continues I will most likely write to you again sometime around gubernatorial recall time. I swear to God Diary that this had nothing to do with my trademark "laziness that would make a throw rug seem industrious". Oh no!! This time I was ACTUALLY busy!

Well, obviously you have noticed that mikeynewman.com has a new face! Well I have my good buddies Jeff Giles and Rahul Gupta to thank for that. They have been busting their asses nonstop to get this new-fangled thing out there. If any of you like what you see, feel free to check them out at Grab Bag Design. Or, you can just click the link at the bottom of the page.

Meanwhile, I have continued to slave away in the underground clothing mines that I like to call Urban Outfitters. During that time I have quickly learned how to hate nearly the entire human population of Earth. Also, it doesn't look like I am going to be finding my future wife by helping some hot blonde try clothes on. But this month, as a special service to anyone reading you, Diary, I have included a handy dandy translation guide so that you can understand what a retail worker is really saying to you when you are in their store.

Well in the long, long, embarrassingly long amount of time since I last wrote, my sketch show, Steve's Garage, had previews, opened and COMPLETED its 10 week run. As usual our last show had to be different than all the rest. Whereas last time we all just got drunk for the last show in our run, this time we decided to have a power outage. 15 minutes before show time the power company decided that it would be a perfect time to shut down all the power for the entire block just because there was a downed power line! What a bunch of pansies. Nobody's ever been hurt by a downed power line! Wait a second. Lots of people have been hurt by downed power lines. My bad. Well our showed got delayed by an hour but we managed to keep our audience happy by performing improv on the streets AT NO ADDITIONAL COST! That's just the kind of guys we are.

Well I am sure that many of you out there have been waiting with bated breath for the completion of Casting Director Dos and Don'ts with Dave and Mikey. Well, wait no more. We had to reshoot some scenes, rerecord some sound and I had to learn Adobe After Effects to make an animation but all the hard work has finally paid off. I just took in the master copy to be duplicated today. Soon Dave and I will be sending VHS copies to nearly every casting director and theatrical agent in LA. If any of you want a copy on VHS or Special Edition DVD (I am dead serious here folks. DVD) then just email me at and I will see what I can do. We also hope to have a streaming version available for download on both our websites as soon as possible.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!! My writing partner Dave and I (Note: Writing partner relationships are not recognized by the State of California) have finished writing and shooting our second short tentatively titled A Trip to the Airport. We managed to shoot the entire thing in one CRAZY day. Not only that but Dave and I have written a script for a pilot idea for a TV show. I'll tell you more about it, Diary, as things develop. Still gotta copyright the thing before we shop it around. But stick around because there is even more shorts on the way!

I have finished the 5th Harry Potter book. It depresses me that Harry Potter is getting more ass than I am…

I have continued having a blast interning for casting directors. Lonnie Hamerman joined Paul Weber's office casting She Spies for a few months and brought me along for the ride. While there I got to meet Paul Weber and Ivy Isenberg and the four of us had a wacky fun time crank calling Steven Spielberg and making photocopies of our butts. Okay, so none of that really happened but, oh man, you can imagine what it would be like if we did, right? Right?!

Well, Diary, time to wrap this up. So let me tuck you in, and I will close with one last fun little story. About 3 months ago, my friend Amir and I were having a late, late dinner at Fred 62, the diner down the street from his house. When we walked in we noticed that there were two women with tons of headshots casting something. We made a joke in passing and then sat down at our own table. I suggested to Amir that we go back to his place and get our headshots and bring them back and give them to the 2 women. Amir expressed no desire to walk 3 blocks back to his place. (It is, after all, SIX blocks round trip) so I suggested that we DRAW our headshots and resumes on napkins and hand them to two ladies. At first Amir balked at this suggestion but with a little cajoling we were soon drawing ourselves on napkins and giving ourselves fake credits. We went over to the ladies and introduced ourselves and gave them our shots. We all had a great laugh about it and then Amir and I went back about our business of eating not even knowing the name of the people we had just accosted. Well, Amir went dropping off a few weeks ago and ran into one of the two women. Turns out it was Mandy Sherman of April Webster Casting, the office that handles Alias. Apparently Mandy held onto those napkins and showed them to the rest of the office the next day and reportedly still has them to this date. Like I always say, "It always pays to be crazy." If you want to read more about it check out Amir's perspective. Okay Diary, you're all tuckered out so it's lights out time for you now. Here is a kiss on the cheek (smack) and with that I'll say what my daddy always said when tucking ME in: "Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite." Wait a second…bed bugs?!

MN