Proffered with humility from the Tampa Bay edition of Creative Loafing, an entirely unanticipated yet exceedingly welcome and flush-inducing appraisal from local magnate Mark E. Leib, all the more felicitous for being published during the week of my 41st birthday. (I don't? Well, aren't you nice. The monkey glands must be working.)

In deference to those already established at whose altars I genuflect with zeal (and you know who you are, you brilliant SOBs!), I respectfully append good friend Drew DeCaro's name to the list, congratulate all those named with whom I've had the immense good fortune to share the stage, and invite you all to my coming-out cotillion, wherein we shall thrill to the boys playing mumbletypeg and naughtily snitch old Yegor's whiskey. Tee hee hee!...

Quote of the Week (for Father's Day): "This is an important archive, and it's a lot of fun as well. It has a lot of cultural resonance, not only nostalgia, but things that carry over to the current day. My children and I might not have music or authors we both enjoy, but we always have Mario and Pac-Man in common." -- attributed to Selby Kiffer, senior vice-president and apparent tapehead in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, speaking on an upcoming auction of roughly 2,200 drawings, schematics, diagrams and other documents generated in the early 1980s by video game pioneer Atari. (source: NY Times)

Lovely. My son and I may never bond over Dostoevsky or Bach, but we'll always have Tekken 2...

Woman in Mind has opened to uniformly positive reviews, and justifiably so. (Check out these bouquets from Creative Loafing, The Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersurg Times.) Ami Sallee Corley anchors a solid cast of incredibly inventive and insanely talented actors under David Jenkins' peerless direction (Put away those hip boots! I'm being terribly sincere here.), and I couldn't be happier to be numbered among the fold. No one company with whom I've worked has ever been as welcoming or as passionate about their craft as the Jobsite Theater folk. My embarrassment of riches continues this month as I head into rehearsals for their upcoming production of Hurlyburly, and if my head does not explode from all these viscous warm fuzzies, here's hoping that I have the same news about that show sometime in August.

Peace in the interim. (And come see the show! Blockbuster has rented out their only copy of National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, and you should be on Netflix, anyway, you chucklef***!)