more book pricing news and Happy Anniversary, Lenny

Did I ever tell you about my friend, Lenny? I met him while I was hanging around outside of a meeting my ex was attending and we talked. He was trying to clean up his act and two days later he "got clean"...this week he celebrates his seventh anniversary of sobriety and I am damn proud of him.

I got to speak to him today on the phone for the first time in months. He is an actor, and usually works as a background actor in TV series (he looks a lot like a softer version of Anthony Heald, who was in "Boston Public" as Gruber or played in "Silence of the Lambs" as Dr. Chilton, the "friend" that Lecter was planning to have for dinner). He worked "Boston Public", the series version of "Weird Science" and "7 Days" before they moved North to save costs, to name a few of his longer-term gigs. But, with the reality TV wave in Hollywood, jobs are harder to come by for actual actors.

I remember him telling me once that he had to make a choice a few years ago to go with one of two new shows: "Boston Public" or "CSI"...I'm betting there are times he could kick himself for going with the high school drama. Ann and I used to call our watching of this show every week our "Lenny Watch" as we would look to see him in crowd scenes, playing a parent or a teacher or a cop (I saw him clearly in a cop's uniform one time, and another as a nattily-dressed parent at a student musical).

He loved working for productions done by David E. Kelley, as Kelley always allowed for a weekly twelve step meting on the set, there were a lot of people in recovery who worked those shows. Hearing he did that made it easier for me to forgive Kelley for marrying Michelle Pfeiffer.

Congrats, Lenny...you are the man. I will send an autographed copy of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES to the next producer who picks Lenny up. Just let me know. (This is the sort of thing friends do for friends)

Now, back to the books...you might want to go stock up on copies of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES now...rumour (okay, reality) is that the MSRP on that volume is going to be $36.95 through all major retailers. That's seven dollars more than the price through cityoflegends.com or lulu.com. I promise to hold the autographed price at cityoflegends.com at the $29.95 level at least through September 10th...then, all bets are off.