From time to time, I glance at the statistics for this web site. The most entertaining aspect is seeing what people search for that brings them to my domain.

This week, someone googled the phrase “Christina Ricci naked super Blade Runner.”

I’m not sure precisely what that searcher was hoping to find, but I like the way he thinks.

I’m back from the Bahamas.  I gotta say, L.A. actually feels a little chilly.  Perspective is a funny thing.  Typing reminds me that one of the fingers on my right hand hurts slightly.  I bent it back catching myself on a table, when I lost my balance standing on a chair to watch a Caribbean rhythm band that surprised the wedding guests.  My falling had nothing to do with the drink in my left hand, but my attempt not to spill said drink did make the fall worse.  It was an awesome moment, my foot twisted in the seat back, behind me a ledge with an 8-foot drop.  I actually remember thinking, during those several seconds of struggling for equilibrium, that I needed to do more things like this.  They would, undoubtedly, make me a better writer.  That means the whole weekend in the Bahamas a tax write-off, doesn’t it?

In the time I was gone, a whole lot of actors and other mediamakers have responded to the craigslist postings I renewed before I left.  I need to sort through those.  Cool that so many people are interested.

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When I was in college, I trained myself to sleep on airplanes.  It’s easy, really.  You just do an all-nighter before your flight.  Now I have a Pavlovian response to flying, such that as soon as I lean back on that unyielding headrest with the circulated air pumping in my face, I’m out.  It doesn’t always last, though, so I’ll sometimes still do the all-nighter before in order to make sure I can sleep through most of a flight.

Tonight I’m taking a red-eye to the Bahamas for a friend’s wedding, so I slept only two hours.  Should be perfect.

It’s tough, though, to get yourself when you don’t have to.  My technique?  I use some important task that I MUST get done before I leave, and I procrastinate that task juuuuust enough.  After you’ve done lots of time-wasting and feel like going to sleep, you can’t, because you still have to do the important task.  For example, my to-do list last night included working on a client’s web site for a few hours, contacting the people involved in the spec commercial we’ll be shooting, and buying some pants to wear to the wedding.

Faced with that work to do, what did I do when I got home?  Watched Mythbusters, then Lost, then last night’s The Shield, then the new South Park.  Then I dove in to several episodes of season seven of The West Wing. That lasted me until about 4 a.m., at which point I felt like falling asleep.  But I couldn’t, because I still needed to work on the web page.  Brilliant.  So I built web stuff until about 8 a.m., and finally let myself sleep.  But I had to set an alarm for a couple hours later, and I couldn’t sleep through it, because I still had to send e-mail and buy clothes.)  The trick, of course, is knowing just how many West Wing episodes to watch before you start your work.  It’s a science.  Few people accuse me of making healthy choices when it comes to sleep, but at least I will arrive in the Bahamas well rested from a night of plane sleep.

More from me when I’m back next week.  I’m about to spend 3.5 days away from the internet, which I’m not sure I’ve done since there was an internet.

I’m old. Through much of my career in education, I have been able to rely on my relative youth to connect with students and seem ever-so-slightly hip in a way that other teachers don’t. But now I can see the writing on the wall, and I almost hear myself muttering “kids these days” from time to time.

But there is no denying it. I hate text messaging. I don’t find anything Dane Cook says to be funny. And am I the only person out there who seriously doesn’t understand what you’re supposed to do on MySpace?

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I don’t know about you, but most years when I fill out that entry form for the Oscar pool at this party or that, my selection for “Best Animated Short” is based on little more than which title sounds fun to me. Well, not this year! On Tuesday I caught a screening at the Academy’s theater of all of the animated and live action shorts nominated this year. (Thanks to my roommate who found out about the event, and thanks to the really nice lady who slipped me a ticket when I arrived two minutes late and discovered I couldn’t pay with plastic. Thanks, nice lady!)

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