Incredibly annoying LA idiot on cellphone at poolside restaurant: “Guillermo del Toro dropped out? Fine, we’ll just fix the script tomorrow.”

What? That was me? Oh, right. Sorry.

Yes, I was that guy, the annoying idiot on his cellphone. Best part: Kathy Griffin, who has built her career mocking idiots like me, was sitting about three feet away at the next table. In my defense, it was all true, and had to be dealt with right then. And I’m an annoying idiot.

I should explain.

Just spent the better part of the week out in LA to help produce the Geek Awards, hosted by the incredibly great Ken Jeong. It was a fantastic show, done up all LA-style — red carpet, award ceremony, music performance by Mayor Hawthorne. The very funny show script was written by old Daily Show colleague Jason Reich.

I stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. Because you model your life on mine, you’re probably wondering whether you should stay at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. First, ask yourself this: do you watch the show Jersey Shore and think, “huh. These seem like wonderful people. I would like to spend more time with them. In fact, I’d like to stay at a hotel infested with people like this — except somewhat more crass and ill-behaved.”

Judging from what I observed, the Roosevelt is irresistible to folks like that. The first day there I had what turned out to be the amusingly ill-conceived notion that I could go sit by the pool and write, being unaware of the elegant pool parties the Roosevelt hosts on the weekend. Think of something penned by Dante, but with more back tattoos, bedazzled jeans, and fake boobs. I think the best way to sum it up would be to describe the dulled, defeated expressions on the faces of the housekeeping staff — the sort of expressions that suggest they spend far too much of their time cleaning bodily fluids off of inappropriate surfaces.

On the whole, though, great trip: successful event, good food, and a great new back tattoo.

Gorillaz came by the studio with Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash and rocked the joint.

So why not link to it. Ryan Britt, who wrote the review, also hosted the reading last night at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn — an absolutely awesome space. Great turnout for the reading, and great help from the very funny Will Hines of Upright Citizens Brigade, who conducted a Q&A with me after the reading.

If you visit Amazon.com, you’ll see a lovely review of The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Seth Grahame-Smith, the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If you don’t visit Amazon.com but visit my site and read this blog posting, you’ll see the same review, cut and pasted:

Seth Grahame-Smith is the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into sixteen languages. Seth is also a film and television writer/producer, semi-frequent political blogger, and the co-Creator/Executive Producer of the new MTV comedy series, Hard Times. He lives in Los Angeles. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Sheriff of Yrnameer:

I like to imagine the night, sometime in the late 1960s (England, a castle–it was raining), when Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams (brought together for, let’s say, a writers’ conference) met for the first time in front of a roaring fire (okay, it was snowing, not raining) and fell madly, deeply in love. I like to imagine that they laughed in the face of social convention (and God) and produced an illicit love child, who they named Michael Rubens for no reason in particular, and who inherited the most favorable genetic characteristics of each of his dads. Lucky, lucky, lucky bastard.

The universe of The Sheriff of Yrnameer is our own, albeit somewhere down the line, after Earth has been reduced to a pile of irradiated rubble (”At least we got the terrorists” reads the commemorative plaque). Capitalism has run amok, and corporations are king. The Yrnameer of the title (a contraction of “Your Name Here”), is the last unsponsored planet in the galaxy–an agrarian utopia where artistic expression and humanism are cherished ad nauseum. Into this idealistic paradise is thrust our hero, Cole–a hilariously ineffectual space rogue on the run from a nasty creditor (is there any other kind?) named Kenneth. Having dealt with a few major fiascos (a cargo hold full of freeze-dried orphans; a corporate training satellite filled with bloodthirsty zombies), Cole eventually winds up on Yrnameer, only to find that a bandit has threatened the inhabitants with death if they fail to hand over this year’s harvest. Through a Blazing Saddles-worthy confluence of events, Cole is appointed sheriff: an accidental snake wrangler in the Garden of Eden.

There is a great big bucket somewhere (probably in Houston) from which all great sci-fi/comedy novelists drink. And though Sheriff will no doubt be compared (favorably) with both Hitchhiker’s and Discworld, Rubens really has his own thing going here. There’s the standard stuff, the stuff you’d expect in a top-tier genre novel–the richly textured universe; the hapless, oft-misbehaving protagonists; the perpetually amusing adversaries–but Rubens’s sense of humor (which tends toward the absurd) seems more biting and incisive than that of others currently milling about near the bucket. In fact, as you flip the final page you might find you’ve learned more about our own world than Yrnameer. Plus, there are zombies in it–so it’s automatically awesome.–Seth Grahame-Smith

…and in celebration of that fact, I’m going to shamelessly repost some really nice reviews I previously received, in the hopes that they will then show up on searches, and more people will buy the book, and so on and so forth.

A really nice review from Topless Robot.

Yes, we’re truly freaks, as detailed in a recent blog post by scientist Natalie Wolchover (h/t Andrew Sullivan’s blog). Come visit my brain sometime — it’s like something painted by Hieronymous Bosch on a bad day.

I’ll be reading on August 11 at Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO (that’s Brooklyn, for all y’all not from around these here parts). I’ll be appearing with, and trying to keep up with, the fantastically funny Will Hines from Upright Citizens Brigade.

Just got the first paperback copies of Yrnameer from the publisher. New color, similar design. For some reason they put my terrible author picture on the back cover, apparently to frighten off any prospective buyers.

No, seriously. Had lunch today with Daniel Nayeri of Clarion Books, who just acquired my novel Six One Three. In addition to being an author, an experienced editor and an all-around nice guy, Daniel was also a stuntman for a while (apparently lots of dude-riding-bike-who-gets-nailed-by-car type appearances).

“The High Road” by Broken Bells, from the great pop-up show we produced in an Austin parking garage at South by Southwest. And by “we,” I mean the fantastic producer / director Michelle Stahl: