Cave Show Debuts Tonight

I learned something important on Sunday. If you put Greek oregano in spaghetti sauce, you have to throw the sauce out.

I bought oregano to top one of my upside-down tomato plants, and it's growing well. I have so much basil now, the branches are breaking from their own weight. I made sauce for pasta, and since I had fresh herbs on hand, I decided to use them.

The basil was fine. The oregano...it's difficult to describe how bad it was. A few tiny leaves destroyed the sauce. Parsley is disgusting in tomato sauce, and the flavor is similar to what I experienced tonight, but one leaf of my oregano is like a huge handful of parsley.

The oregano is pretty, though. I guess I won't kill it.

In other news, I'm reading reviews of the ABC series Cavemen. The series my publisher was hoping to feed on by publishing my caveman book. It's amazing that there are so many reviews. BECAUSE NO CRITIC HAS SEEN THE SHOW.

They say it sucks. They say it's racist. They say it's witless. But none of them have seen it. All they've seen is an earlier version that was junked in July.

ABC hasn't released advance DVDs to critics. They claim they're still polishing them. I think that's a huge lie, by the way.

From the clips I've seen on Youtube, and from the GEICO commercials, my guess is that the show will be pretty good while the material holds out. But critics are posturing, unoriginal, far-left freaks, and they decided the original pilot was racist because the caveman characters faced prejudices too similar to the prejudices black people face. Not sure why creating a supportive allegory for real-life victims of racism is racist, but then far-left freaks have never been long on brain power, and TV critics are usually borderline stupid. So I think the show's creators realize they're dealing with idiots--mindless, lockstepping, lemming idiots at that--and they know they can't get a fair shake. So they want the public to get the first crack at the show. Not the elitist nutbags they know will pan it.

Good idea, I guess. It beats inviting scathing reviews from Stalinists and Naderites.

The commercials were brilliant, and people loved them, so my best guess is that this will be a great show for at least one season. I'll be very impressed if they can sustain the idea longer than that. But one season should be doable.

I haven't seen any ads for the show, because I barely watch TV. If the commercials are bad, I take back what I said about the show probably being good. It's easier to make a good commercial than a good show, so if the commercials stink, look out.

I'm not worried about it. The cookbook is a big deal to me, but from the word "go," I've considered the caveman book to be the publisher's idea and the publisher's problem. If it does well, hooray for all concerned. If not, I enjoyed writing it, and there is a lot of material in it to be very proud of. I'll always have problems with low-IQ critics misunderstanding what I write and assuming it's simpler than it is because they're too stupid to perceive the subtleties, but I know what's good about the book.

I'm nearly sure now that there will be no interviews. From my own experience, I know that the publisher's PR people can pick up the phone and get me interviews. I can do that myself. I've done it. It's easy. And a month or two ago, they seemed very serious about promoting the book, but the release date is today, the book is already in stores, and the PR lady the publisher assigned to the book no longer communicates with me unless I ask what's going on. So for whatever reason, they've apparently decided not to have a PR campaign. I'm not sure if this means they've had a meeting and decided my book is not worth promoting--maybe they have some hot new title out, and they want to focus on it--or whether this is SOP. Maybe they don't promote any of their books.

I never know what's going on up there. A publisher is like a Coke machine. You can't see what's going on inside. You hear rumbles and gurgles, but in the end, either the Coke comes out or it doesn't, and you can't do anything about it.

I feel odd, taking their money for writing a book they won't promote. But I guess they don't mind. Whatever the situation is, I'm grateful they asked me to write the book, and I really enjoy working with my editor. I would love to help them push the book. I'd get up in the morning and do radio shows. I'd be glad to drive to TV studios or talk to critics and interviewers. Who knows? Maybe they'll start setting stuff up.

The cookbook is done. I have to send it in. I have to get started on a new project. I would love to do some magazine work, although it's extremely difficult to break in, especially if you're not a gay greenie Buddhist who eats tofu and craps "Selected not Elected" buttons. Sooner or later I'll get decent promotion for something I write, but to get to that point, I'll have to keep putting content out there. Which is okay, because the whole reason I do this is that I love to write. I don't sit around sweating about whether I can write another book. Of course I can write another book. The hard part is deciding what that book will be, out of all the ideas I have.

I'll be watching that show. I'm really curious to find out whether it will succeed. If it does, it's good news for me. I'll get free PR. I may become known as the asshole who ripped off GEICO, but at least I'll be known as something.