Pilot

Once upon a time, I was a person of dreams. A creative person. A hob-nobbing person. I was living in Los Angeles -- all over L.A. -- as a struggling would-be sitcom writer. Struggling is a relative term, really. In addition to taking meetings to try to get before this show runner or that, or this better agent or that, I also had a pretty nice job for Warner Bros. with a nice office on the studio lot.

I was hanging out with my writing peers. I was hanging out in comedy clubs catching sets that my friends were doing and feeding off the energy of fellow comedians. I was dating girls significantly younger than myself.

I had it good. I hadn't quite broken through as a writer, but that was just a matter of time. And, then...

I met my wife. Fell in love at first sight. Next thing you know, there's an engagement, wedding planning, a wedding...and before we were even married six months a pregnancy.

Suddenly, I was a dad. My hipness quotient disappeared overnight.

Then my wife's parents got sick. Very sick. My wife's mother had an early onset of Alzheimer's and was quickly losing touch with her memory. My wife said that she wanted to go home and be close by so that she could spend some time with her mother before she couldn't remember her any more.

How do you say no to that?

Next thing you know, I'm leaving my job at Warner Bros. and leaving the LA writing scene, just as I was getting some renewed interest from a play I had written and directed.

Without being fully prepared, I was living in Southwestern Michigan, dealing with "lake effect snow" and median temperatures that are at best half of what I had been used to in my cozy Burbank digs.

I walked into a depressed economy, and instead of writing comedy, I was writing freelance articles for publications like "Fit Pregnancy" or any website that needed content and covering high school sports for a newspaper. And, soon, instead of working on a studio lot full of name brand talent, I was working for a staffing company, managing people that took the job because it was the only real option and dealing with minimum wage factory labor.

Then, the final straw...another pregnancy. I wanted to name the kid after what my reaction to the news had been, but my wife felt that "You've Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me" was too long of a name and not easy to shorten. I suggested that we could just go with "Fuck," since that was the essence of the sentiment, but I was again overruled.

Now, five years later, I've got an older son that's been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that means. I have been told, however, that the condition is not named after famous deli man, Maury Asperger, and has nothing to do with ingesting too much pastrami on rye...which makes sense because my son hates pastrami. In fact, he's a grainetarian. Doesn't eat meat, doesn't eat vegatables...only eats foods from the "cereal and grain" portion the food pyramid.

I've got a younger son that points out repeatedly that I'm bald, old and may have put on a few pounds. I have the same success rate in getting him to listen to me as Wily E. Coyote has in catching the Road Runner.

My wife pays even less attention to what I say, because she says that I've given up the right to have her listen to me because of my continuous whining about being cold and insisting on not changing my "home" on AOL away from Los Angeles.

And, I've got a job where I'm technically one of the bosses, but no one particularly cares to listen to what I've got to say and my closest peer in management has even more problems than me.

Basically, what it comes down to is that my life has turned into a sitcom, with me cast in the role of befuddled, ineffectual dad who can come up with a good line while the world spins around him. And, unlike other points in my life where this would have been beneficial -- where my real world experiences might have helped me get a staff gig on "My Wife and Kids" or "According to Jim," which I would've since parlayed into a spot writing on "Modern Family," or at least, "The Middle" or "Parks and Recreation" -- now I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, and the whole thing does me absolutely no good.

Sure, sure...blah, blah, blah...love of my family, enjoying in the richness of watching my children grow, etc., etc. I get it...I'm sorry that I used to picture myself as being more Rob Petrie working for "The Alan Brady Show" in New York City and less Steven Keaton working for a small PBS station upstate.

Yet, that's what my life has become...only substitute small newspaper for PBS station (they both carry about the same level of relevance to be honest). A sitcom that no one watches and no one even has the common decency to cancel. If I'm going to live it, then I'm going to write about it...and what better way to do that than to put it out into the bloated blogosphere.

That's the thought anyway.