THIS IS THE WAY I ROLL(S ROYCE)

Here's my 1.7 ¥ on the Emmys (taken on their face and not for the many deserving more people who were not nominated in their respective categories and also disregarding the fact that the people who vote on the Emmys don't watch enough television to vote on the Emmys because as (NAME DROP ALERT) Joss Whedon once said to me, you can either watch TV or make TV).

• Bryan Cranston continues to righteously rock, but at this rate, Hugh Laurie is gonna pull a Martin Sheen and that's a travesty.
• Disappointed by the lack of Friday Night Lights win, but even then I thought Margulies was gonna take Best Actress. Which would not be a bad thing.
• Very pleased by Archie Punjabi's win. She had one of the best new characters on TV last season (If not THE best) and was fully deserving, though it was unexpected.
• Was kinda rooting for Michael Emerson for creating a completely different version of Ben Linus this year, but I really can't complain about Aaron Paul at all.
• As for the Mad Men wins...well as a whole I thought most of the other series in Best Drama had better years that Mad Men. I would have gone for Breaking Bad or Lost. And in terms of writing, it wasn't even the better of the two Mad Men scripts that were up. I'll leave it at that.

FOR MY FRIENDS IN MARYLAND...

So let me get this straight. If you layoff teachers, children will read things of their own volition?
Well, there it is. Vote accordingly.

BATMAN LOVES ME

How do I know? He cared enough to solve my murder. What's he done for you lately?

THE LEVERAGE JOB

I would give someone else's left arm to write on Leverage. Or even just to pitch a couple of ideas. Rogers?

I elected to write a Leverage script. Whether or not it would be read was simply not a concern for me, and I had a good idea and I wanted to execute it. Somewhere, I would find an exec that loves Leverage and she would read it. Then, I went to the Leverage panel at Comic-Con and in one portion of a sentence Chris Downey sent a jolt of "Fuck! No!" down my spine.

They were talking about how they make Portland stand in for a variety of locales (much the same way the Lost crew turned Honolulu into essentially every major city on Earth at least once in the course of six years. This locale, however, usually means a certain kind of story. But maybe not this time, stick a pin in it and wait.

Then I met someone last week who works in conjunction with Leverage. I knew they wouldn't be able to tell me much - confidentiality agreements, professionalism, little subcutaneous bombs in their necks - but I got *** to answer a simple question. "Do the words 'steal a *******' appear anywhere in the script?"*

They do. I thank this person for saving me from about forty-five more pages of work. Perhaps the research can be used in something else. Too bad, I had an awesome title that fits the whole "The _______ Job" system.

It happens to spec writers all the time. It hasn't happened to me in a good long while. Shortly thereafter someone said to me "At least it means your on the right track."

Yeah, but it means I'm riding on the caboose and I want to be driving the bloody engine."

Also, I'm looking for fellow writers who would be interested in playing in a casual, irregularly meeting run of the Leverage Role Playing Game...once it comes out in the fall. Why writers? Because shouldn't they kick a particularly high level of ass in role-playing games? If this sounds like you, leave a comment or email me.

*Those Leverage guys are real and somehow they mind-hacked me and stole my idea before I even wrote it or told anyone about it!