When I attended the “Breaking Into the Box” workshop at the WGA a couple of weekends ago, I was surprised to hear Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield) recalling his distress when he suddenly got his show on the air. In TV, the writer has creative control comparable to the way a director calls the shots in feature film. When The Shield was picked up by FX, Shawn Ryan found himself suddenly responsible for hiring a crew, casting actors, making the final call about editing, etc. He was a writer. Why, he wondered, should he suddenly know about casting and editing and such? Listening to him say these things, I felt a strange calm. After all, I *DO* know about hiring people, and about casting and editing and such. I could totally run a show. Of course, I’m no expert, and Shawn Ryan could likely kick my butt at just about anything. Still, I felt a weird reassurance that I am following the right path. Earlier this week, I was meeting candidates for my online sketch comedy group effort. I’m excited, because so far I have found a small handful of really fantastic people. Obviously, I expected it to be easier to rally a troupe in L.A. than it was in Seattle. But the cherry on top is how, with some sifting and searching, I can much more easily find folks who want to participate as a life passion into which they pour their spare hours. Which is what I want

Examining my romantic history, I notice that many of my relationships have begun at times when I’ve been in a leadership position of some kind. Maybe it’s because I feel most natural and confident when I’m organizing people. As an ultimately wise source told Stan in the South Park movie, “chicks love confidence.” Maybe it’s a zen thing, where the very fact that I’m concentrating on the people-organizing means I’m NOT paying attention to women, which is exactly when women get interested. Maybe it’s some old-fashioned alpha male thing. I don’t know. I just know that I can sometimes go a WHILE without clicking with anyone, but once I’m in charge, suddenly there they are.

So here I was meeting with sketch comedy candidates at a coffee shop. After my second, hour-long pitch/interview with a writer/actor, an Attractive Blonde approached me to ask what I was working on. I’m normally a redhead or a brunette guy, but I had noticed her when she came in, because she had that cool whitish-blonde, tall Norse goddess thing going on, complete with a European-style, white wool sweater. She had worked on her laptop for about an hour, then disappeared. I assumed she left. Suddenly though, there she was, asking me what I was up to. It was probably out of intellectual interest, but that doesn’t change the fact that

The ending here is pretty anti-climactic. Candidate #3 came in to meet with me, and Attractive Blonde quickly dismissed herself. (Candidate #3 apologized moments later; he had thought maybe she was Candidate #2.) But it was a good reminder: the hours spent administrating a project are perhaps not as thankless as one sometimes thinks. There might be benefits.

Being in charge also seems to work for Shawn Ryan (who, in this picture, looks a fair amount like me.)

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