Operation: Zacksplanation is go for launch.

Updated 8/29: You can now read my script...right here!

"The Man in the Restaurant"

And Wendy's equally intriguing (and completely different!) script is here: "The Man on the Roof"

Coming soon: Another version of the script - with commentary! Featuring my very own chicken scratch and Red Pen treatment!

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The day has come. Or at least it will in about 18 minutes, probably by the time I finish typing.

My link is not quite ready, but soon Wendy Young from Obsessed With Bones and I will be unleashing our fan scripts dealing with the "Zack Situation" on "Bones."

I'm not going to tell you too much, because I want you to read it first. But I can tell you that this was written as an "episode," meaning it could logically follow the season finale's events by a few months. (Of course, Season 4 has already started filming and has followed its own plot, but anyway...) I can also tell you that it deals with several aspects of Zack's story that were never explored, never mentioned, and probably never even considered. But aside from this being a completely unofficial, fan-written story, there is nothing fantastical going on here. In "The Man in the Restaurant," you will not find Booth in a delirious state, you will not see Patrick Duffy exiting the decontamination shower, and Zack will not be waking up next to Suzanne Pleshette.

Until I can update tomorrow night, please visit www.ObsessedWithBones.com to download my script in pdf format. I will post a more comprehensive summary tomorrow, including a list of the very important people who helped me write this.

In the meantime, I thank Eric Millegan (who celebrated his birthday this Monday!) for creating such a great character that his undoing also undid my writer's block. I wish I hadn't had to write this at all, but if a good story can come out of it (and if it means that Eric is free to do more storytelling himself), maybe this hostage situation of a script was worth it after all.

I also thank Wendy, a fantastic writer who was crazy enough to go along with this cockamamie idea. This was a fun ride, and it's been such a pleasure writing with you!

Also: Stay tuned for a HuffPo on fan-fiction later this week, including another version of my script with "commentary." How self-indulgent, I know. Equal parts sharing the storytelling process and defending my sanity.

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I am going to have to be a basketball fan now.

At no time in my entire life have I ever been good at sports. Only this year did I finally grasp and become excited about football. (Don't even start me on the Giants winning the Super Bowl...I almost tattooed XLII on my person in celebration.) But even for years, I will almost always sit down and watch a basketball game. The stats make me a little dizzy and I'm in it mostly for the lean arms, but after watching Kobe Bryant and Team USA beat down everyone in its path at the Olympics, I may seriously have to pick a team and follow them.

Like football, watching basketball is as entertaining as watching an amazing ensemble of actors play off each other to tell a story. Something I'm picking up in acting class is "playing a scene to win." Currently, I'm in a scene in which I think I win, but I ultimately am quite a huge loser. But when my scene partner and I are up there watching, listening and waiting for the other, it feels exhilarating and crazy. I have to think that players on basketball and football teams have to do the same exact thing - watch, listen and wait. Then react. There's an awareness of the outside without connecting to things external to you and your team. While my scene partner and I are both playing to win and one of us loses, we are both competing for the same goal - telling the damn story the way it bloody well should be. The same way a sports team is competing to top their opponent. It's awesome. I don't get it from baseball as much, but I do get it from hockey. I definitely don't get it from golf. I really can't take golf.

Sounds like I just discovered the freaking thing, doesn't it? Welcome to Earth, Jamie. By the way - it's a sphere.

But it's official: I love basketball. I may never, ever, ever be able to play it and I may never learn the stats, but in the meantime, I'm going to sit back and watch some amazing teamwork. And sets of arms. (I'm talking to you, Dwight Howard.)

He's 23. It's wrong...

Also, I have the same birthday as this awesome fellow, Dwyane Wade:



Go USA!

But I really hope this means I don't have to be a Knicks fan. I'm a New Yorker all the way, everyday, but the Knicks just suck. Maybe I'll just be a Knicks fan because Madison Square Garden is so convenient, and after all these years as a non-jock nerd/dumpee, maybe I should just be used to rejection and defeat. What do you think? Help! I can't make a decision!

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"I love it when you two impersonate earthlings."

Doing absolutely nothing for my case of convincing my loved ones that my sanity is in tact after a "Bones"-centric spring and summer, I started rewatching Season 1. Holy crap, this is such a great show. It's almost frustrating, even aside from how Season 3 ended. Because "Bones" makes everything else on TV look like crap in comparison.

The script I've written for Operation: Zackplanation has been registered with the WGA and will be unleashed on the Interwebs August 27th, one week from Wednesday. In between will be an announcement on Searching Bones and a podcast soon after the release. Wendy and I will be letting you in on some information beforehand, but since we really want them read, we're not letting on too much. I've gotten excellent feedback from my friends on mine, and I've also read Wendy's - and they are insanely different! I really think fans of the show will be psyched for this.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I've been defending my mental state all summer. Yeah, I got so affected by a whackadoo storyline on a TV show that I spent my summer outlining, writing, rewriting, researching and - literally - going back to school to write this script. But I'm not gonna front - it's been fun.

And I'm so glad it's over.

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"The Man in the Restaurant" - Bones "Episode" 4.53ish. (Not really.)

My draft is ready! I have a final draft of my "Bones" script, "The Man in the Restaurant" written, rewritten, fed-back, and edited to within an inch of its life. Wendy and I are set to unleash these things in about two weeks pending possible additional feedback from a VIP, whose identity I will reveal only if said VIP is able to give us said feedback. Otherwise, you'll have to live in suspense.

More info to come, but I've also read Wendy's script, and I can assure all of you "Bones" fans that you will be loving our two takes on the Zacksplanation!

Stay tuned!

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A puffer? For me?

So, all the feeling like crap last weekend was manageable until about Thursday, when I officially developed a barking cough. I skipped my class in favor of sleeping, thinking I would go to the doctor in the morning and go to work.

Yeah, didn't happen. Friday morning I woke up and could barely breathe. And the barking cough remained. So, that would be bronchitis, which I don't think I've had since I was a kid. But my throat from Thursday into Friday actually felt like someone was wringing my neck. I was issued a real live inhaler, antibiotics and cough medicine to go with the decongestants and Tylenol I was already downing. Now, none of these things alone will put your head in a fog, but all put together? And sick already? I basically slept all day Friday and Saturday. (And never used the inhaler. But Friday morning I totally would have.)

But today I was feeling good enough to shoot a movie for my buddy James, which is a really good thing because it had already been delayed for two months. So I got to have scary zombie makeup and corn syrup splattered all over me and then pretty much just walk across James' lawn and try to make him cry. Awesome.

And I'm putting finishing touches on my "Bones" script, on which I've gotten no feedback on the thing as a whole, but will be getting some tonight from my friend Jake and hopefully some more from others by tomorrow.

And by "getting some" I meant feedback.

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Draft 1 Finished! Also, I'm seriously a mess.

Can I tell you about my weekend for a second?

Friday night, I attended a screening for the Ghouligans, a comedy venture created by my good friend Mike. I usually don't go out on Friday nights because I'm most likely dead tired. I did this time, and I probably should have stayed home, except we had a great time and I would have regretted missing it a lot.

Saturday morning, I was awakened by the worst charley horse EVER. I honestly wanted to gnaw my own leg off with my teeth and be done with it, and it even made me sob and verbalize. It ended up leaving behind an entire yanked calf that had me limping like House. Meanwhile, I was morning-phlegmmier than usual and had a wicked headache.

So, I was off to a great start.

Then, I went to pick up the wig I was going to wear to play Lilly in my friend's new show "PB&J." I was told immediately that I was the perfect candidate for extensions, that my hair was doing nothing for me, that my hair was basically crap and going gray...

We were also holding a Slacker TV BBQ at a beach park that day. It was thundering when I got home, then it started pouring rain. The outdoor BBQ in the tree/lightening rod-filled picnic area was ON! I went. I felt like crap, but I went. The rain stopped as soon as we finished building a rain shelter, and by then I had progressed to feeling like shit. But I got to murder a crippled CD player:

Jamie Smashes CD Player (Slacker TV BBQ '08)


Then I went home and fell asleep with my Zacksplanation script open, unfinished and taunting. I finally finished that sucker after dinner - 62 pages. Just slightly overlong, but officially the first full-length script I had completed in ten years. I'll be editing that tonight and Wendy and I will soon unleash these things on the "Bones" fan community.

Not over yet!

Sunday I woke up with a full-blown cold - sore throat, clogged nose, weird, awful buzzy headache. But we had a shoot in Brooklyn for "PB&J"! No way was I missing my first day as Lilly, plus we were going to Coney Island, the day was gorgeous, and I had no lines, so there was no reason to slack off this time. The day was awesome. I came home and fell asleep at 11:00 and slept clean through my alarm the next morning. I had also stubbed my toe so bad during the shoot that it looked like someone tried to torture it, but you can't even tell on camera. But then my co-star Jaime and I went on an amazing journey throughout the Prospect Park area of Brooklyn looking for an open pharmacy - on a Sunday. Oops.

That was my weekend. It rocked. I was pumped the whole time for other reasons, but it was really a great, awesome time.

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