lots of e-mails flying around these days with layout and design issues. i've seen mock ups for about a dozen pages, and it's looking pretty slick! wish i could publish them here, but i'd get my hand slapped, surely.

the big issue right now: the look and shape of a certain animal we plan to include on some of the pages. an illustration, if you will.

will you?

have been busy going through the copy edited manuscript of behind everyman. amazing how thorough copyeditors are. the attention to detail is eyeopening. i thought this stage would be all about punctuation. (your/you're stuff) but it turns out it's about more. yes, lots of commas where i should have M-dashes, but also things like this:

"you say he's having a super bowl party, but it's may. how can that be? maybe change to stanely cup party?" or "you say he's at work, but it's exactly a week after his birthday, and his birthday was on a sunday...so is he working on a sunday? and if so...why are all his cohorts, as well? what kind of world does this dude live in?"

and the facts checking is great too. i thought the eagle on the muppets was named fred. well, it's sam folks. that's right, sam.

i thought centrum's tagline was "one a day plus iron." well it turns out, that's a whole other multivitamin.

nifty...me thinks.

still busy with deadlines, deals, book hubbub...good things are happening though. more as i know.

in the meantime, i've been getting nice shoutouts from long lost friends around the world. most recently from berlin and san francisco. so if nothing else, this site serves that purpose. and thanks to "bill the balletomane" for his annonymous submission. he found something on me in an old atlantic monthly.

also: steve martin's site has gone through an extensive rebuild. check it out here. my favorite part is steve's bloggy message board...very entertaining.