Or accounting? Whoever delivers the paychecks. Episode 13 of Steve Gadlin’s Star Makers has been released and that marks the end of our first season. We’ll be back soon with more talent.

I’m so lucky to have friends like Troy who know exactly what I look like when I play with a giant ball of twine.

My friends Lillie Frances and Sayjal Joshi are making a sitcom called “Funny.” They’ve already written and shot three episodes (and, modest cough, I’ve edited them all) and are doing a Kickstarter to finish out a UK-length-six show season. I’m a little biased, because part of the point of the Kickstarter is so that they can pay crew and staff like me, but I think the first three turned out pretty good and I’m interested in seeing where they go from here. The $20 level gets you access to the first three episodes, so you can tell me how great a job I did editing. Hint, hint.

Our upstairs neighbors are looking for 2-month subletters or someone who wants a 14-month lease. We like our apartment building and our neighborhood, so we can enthusiastically endorse this notion, if you’re looking for a place. You can contact me if you have questions about the building, or just to get Jess’ contact info. This apartment is directly above ours, so people who only wear padded slippers preferred.

Sometimes an idea is just so simple that it’s perfect. Like Greg Inda’s Bad Make Up Project. People wearing makeup that they have (over)applied themselves, in the fashion of a child getting into an adult’s makeup. Or, in my case, ala an insane lumberjack, I suppose. Many more photos of us over at the Project page—we’re near the bottom. (And Greg can take great pictures of people in good make up as well, if you need headshots or such.)

It’s always a delight to collaborate with Justin Kaufmann.

The rest of Episode 12 of Steve Gadlin’s Star Makers is every bit as delightful. Every. Bit.

I mistakenly called it a falcon in my humorous tweet this afternoon:

Just saw a falcon snatch a pigeon out of the air and then land and leave it on someone's porch. Amazon's newest delivery experiment?

— Fuzzy Gerdes (@fuzzy) February 13, 2014

But a zoomed in look at one of the photos I snapped with my phone shows the what look to me like the tail bands of a Cooper’s hawk:

And I didn’t actually see the mid-air snatch (it’s sometimes hard to have journalistic accuracy in a tweet), but the hawk flew over my head in a big flutter, carrying something, and then landed on a neighbor’s porch, paused a moment, and then flew up into a tree, leaving behind what I was then able to see was a pigeon.

I hope it wasn’t me being interested in what was going on that scared it away. I snapped a couple shots of the hawk in the tree and then went about my errands. On my way home, the pigeon was gone—hopefully into the hawk’s belly and not discovered by a surprised homeowner.

We’re down in Vicksburg, MS for Tricia’s 60th birthday (happy birthday, Tricia!) and with exciting bonus Chris and Katie. Yesterday we went down to the Outlet Mall and saw some Clydesdales. I’m still not sure what they were there for, but there was a carriage ride around the parking lot that we passed up, because of the cold, and a photo with a Clydesdale that we did not. The horse was so big, and soft, and warm. And his feet were huge!

I had really an amazing day yesterday, y’all. I mean, we all have 12-hour, 3-phase birthday parties, but this year I had a really good one. Phase I was… Oh wait, stuff actually started on Thursday.

Phase 0: My brother came into town. Disco’s been working downstate and coming up to Chicago on weekends sometimes, which is awesome, and I like hanging out with my brother. We get along so well it’s almost like we’re family. We spent a good chunk of the day on Friday going grocery shopping for all the different pieces and parts of the feast I had planned for Sunday. Brothers love shopping.

Phase 00: Saturday, I had tickets for me and some friends to be most of the 12-person audience of Trapped in a Room with a Zombie. It’s a frantic and exciting puzzle experience where you are, as the title suggests, trapped in a room with a zombie. If you don’t solve all the puzzles in 60 minutes, the zombie eats you all and you lose. Our group made it out in 55 minutes and we didn’t lose anyone to the zombie along the way. So, yes, we’re awesome. My one quibble with the show, and which, to be entirely fair, is just an expectation of mine based on other experiential shows I’ve experienced, is that there was no narrative to the show beyond a brief framing speech at the beginning. But then again, we were so frenetic trying to solve the abstract puzzles, I’m not sure we could have absorbed a plot along the way.

Phase I: Sunday morning, I had invited a whole slew of my friends to come and run the Chi-town Big Game 10K with me. I mean, with zero pressure—it’s a ridiculous thing to do, especially in this sort of weather. Eight of my friends accepted the challenge, which is about six more than I was hoping for. And with the pre- and post-race being inside the United Club at Soldier Field, I was actually able to relax and talk to them a bit, instead of shivering for my life. Shaun is in full-on Iron Man training mode again and so ran an extra six miles right before the race, to get in his miles for the day. And Disco is just hardqore, so he did the same thing. It was really hard to be sensible, but I decided not to join them for that, and it ended up being a great decision—I was well-rested enough and our friend Jin set a brisk enough pace that I was able to set a PR, beating my last record in the 10K by about 4 minutes. That was a real nice present for a man on the cusp of a mid-forties birthday.

Phases II and III: I had laid out the day as a brunch right after the run that would roll into the afternoon and then a Super Bowl-ish party. The party rolled along so well all day that someone came into the dining room at some point and announced “the game started 20 minutes ago if anyone cares”. People came and people went all day, and my thanks to everyone who came over.

Phase IV: My buddy Dave Stinton knew that I’d been thinking about doing some stand-up again and invited me out to a couple of open mics tonight. One of them got canceled, but I did four minutes of new material at Smush tonight. So that’s another nice present for a forty-four year old man—the laughter of six other comedians.

Race Official results: Time: 54:57
Pace: 8:51
Overall place: 85 / 243
Place in Sex: 53 / 103
Place in Age Group (M40-44): 15 / 22

The truth is out there, people.

A little peek behind the curtain: we had a freak mishap with the tape deck the first time this scene was filmed that we didn’t discover until I got to the editing stage, so this is actually the second time that Erica had to wear that suit and the second time the band played the song. (But the first time Laurie was singing the song—the first vocalist was sadly unavailable for this taping.) So… that’s why Erica’s dancing is so good.