I think we can all agree that the time is ripe for a 'Mr. Personality' reunion show.

Hello, hello. Good morning to one and all.

I'd like to announce that there's a very special man out there in Diaryland. He's a man among men, a man's man, as it were, in several senses of the phrase. He goes by the name of Mangus, and though I have never met him, he has earned my undying love and devotion.

Mangus likes to draw. Recently, he took a look at this picture:

And the good man allowed it to inspire him to create this enduring artwork:

Now, I'll be among the first to admit that his drawing makes me a look a lot more crazysexycool than I actually appear in real life. But, wow: When someone immortalizes you and makes you look like an awesome new comic book, you just don't complain.

Mangus will be handling all of my press from now on.

So, the last few days have been good and eventful, and we have some catching up to do, you and I. This entry will include the story of Friday's Internet Date, in full color glory.

First, though, there's a little story thread that remains open that I think I can wrap up in this entry. At least, I hope I can, because I am deathly sick of the subject. It needs a little taste of closure, though, and that's what we're going to do right now.

Over the last few weeks or so, I've written about my friend Becky. She went through a breakup, and it was tough for her, as breakups can be. We talked alot during that time, and she wanted to do stuff like write the guy a letter, drop off his stuff at his house, etc. I convinced her to not do anything too emotional and just play it cool. She did, and they eventually had a conversation that was calm and cool and led to the best possible resolution, all things considered.

Then another girl out there in the diary world, whom I've met once, got the crappy 'no call silent treatment dumping' from a guy that she was seeing. She was upset about it, naturally, and wanted to do the letter thing too. I talked her out of it and convinced her to let it go.

So. I know that I'm giving myself a little pat on the back here, but it felt really good to be able to help them out. I wasn't 100% happy with the way I conducted myself, but guiding and managing them let me prove to myself that I do know how to handle situations like these. I got a bit emotional with my recent incident, and that's fine, but helping those two out was validating.

If I had one thing to say to the girl I was dating, it would be this: It's cool that we ended up where we have, because that's clearly where we need to be, but both of us are truly better people than the people we acted like at the end. I just wish we could have got here without all the fussin' and the feudin'.

That's the simplest, purest thought I've got on the subject, and, as such, it should be the last.

Now, if anyone else breaks up, you're on your own.

I can't play the wise gay uncle anymore.

On to the fun stuff: Friday night's date.

Man, oh man. The girl had a clever and funny profile on the personals site. A really cute picture, too.

It would have been great if the girl from the picture had showed up.

If that photograph was taken within the last year, I will eat my proverbial hat.

So, I was a few minutes late to the bar where we had agreed to meet, but I still arrived before her. I took a seat on the bench outside and waited. I saw someone coming up the street, but dismissed them as the person I was meeting that night, because it did not look like her. She approached, waved, and said "Hi!" and I can only hope that my double take was not as obvious as it felt.

It's not that I'm holding myself up as some paragon of virtuous goodlooking manhood, it's just that there was a remarkable difference between what was in the catalog and actual item.

I knew we were doomed.

We sat down and ordered some drinks. The conversation began and I wondered how long it was going to last. I like a bit of snappy give and take with any potential romantic interest, but anything that could have snapped, crackled or popped was woefully missing. At one point, the subject of parents came up, and I found myself thinking "Oh, my mom. I miss my mom. I wish I were having dinner with my mom right now."

Generally, any time you wish your mom is around, it is not the hallmark of a red hot date.

So, flash forward about two hours, and the words "I have a meeting tomorrow morning," are coming out of my mouth. It was true, though! I know it's the standard sitcom excuse to leave a romantically awkward situation, but I really did have to get up to the Improvolympic the next morning for an early meeting. She saved face by countering that she was really tired and needed to go to bed. I suspect that she wasn't having a great time either.

There was about as much chemistry between us as a mixture of sugar and salt.

Pay the bill, buy her drink. Walk to the car. Stilted hug. "See you around." Drive through In N' Out. Home and pajamas by 10:30pm. The Simpsons and a cheeseburger. More happiness than I'd felt all that night.

See? I told you it might yield an amusing story. And you were worried.

Barring an act of God, that will be the last dating story for a while. Looking at the strings of numbers that represent people, i.e. 5'6'', 115, 26, 310 has gone from amusing to vaguely uninteresting. For now, your pal Bill is off the market.

Saturday night I found myself at a housewarming party up in West Hollywood, or 'WeHo' as the truly annoying might say.

I reconnected with my old friend Brian from my 2nd City Chicago days. Since this was a housewarming party, we made a quick stop at RiteAid to procure the proper gifts for such an occasion. I decided to bring wooden spoons and corn cob holders. I pushed Brian to get the girl whose house we were warming a pizza cutter, since I've noticed that people in Southern California simply don't own them. Instead, he went with a 'chip bag clip' and a whisk, arguing that people here don't cook their own pizzas.

So armed, we headed up to what turned out to be a very Hollywood party at a very Hollywood location: A building called 'The Enclave' near Fairfax and Sunset. Our hostess was extremely drunk and very happy with our gifts.

Party mingling ensues, and since this is an apartment full of young aspiring industry hopefuls, the jargon begins to flow thick and disgusting: Treatment, option, pitch meeting, production company, screening, junior exec, residuals, contacts, specs, auditions, Academy, points, headshots, agents, ICM, CAA, NBC, Burbank, Dick Clark.

On one hand, it's all very interesting. On the other hand, you wish for a fire.

The surrealism continued as I went out to the porch for a cigarette. I was apparently the only smoker at the party, which made it all the more typical. As I stood on the porch in self-imposed socially unacceptable exile, I overheard a conversation between a guy and a girl behind me, seperated from me by the sliding glass doors.

GIRL: I just really think that I have a lot of talent, you know? Like, I wouldn't be out here if I didn't think I was really, really going to make it. You know?

GUY: Oh, yeah! I know! I can totally tell that there's something about you. You just have, like, this...energy. I can tell you're going to make it.

At this point I turned around, glancing back to confirm that this was an actual conversation taking place between two human beings.

GIRL: (Beaming) Really? You think so? That's so sweet!

By the end of the night, they were publicly, drunkenly making out on the couch.

The surreality continued when I went back inside and struck up a conversation with a girl that seemed relatively normal. She then launched into a detailed explanation of her Valium habit.

"You can only get it by prescription in the states," she said. "So I order it from a website based in South Africa."

"Do you think you're addicted to it? I don't know how the whole Valium thing works."

"Oh, no, no. I only take it at parties with a glass of wine or whenever the Lakers are losing."

She claimed to be above the whole "Hollywood scene." I don't know, though. When you're an aspiring actress living in Hollywood that's constantly popping Valium, you seem pretty into the scene to me. I kept thinking that I was talking to a character that was cut from an early draft of 'Swingers.'

We decided to leave the party when our hostess began puking.

Brian and I headed over to a late night breakfast place called Norm's over at, I believe, Melrose and La Cienega. At the end of our meal, he made an unsuccessful attempt to pick up our waitress. Brian likes to do 'exit interviews' with the girls that turn him down, and he told me the waitress assured him that she would have given him her number had she not had a boyfriend. He was satisfied.

I drove Brian home. I knew exactly how to get back to his apartment, which surprised me. Apparently, I've somehow absorbed the ability to navigate Los Angeles without realizing it.

I finally got home around 430 am.

The next day, I nursed a slight hangover while happily enjoying a Cubs game on the ol' Tivo. The game was at Wrigley Field, and I sighed inside as they pointed the camera at the corner of Clark and Waveland outside the ballpark. My old neighborhood. I checked, and was very happy to learn that there are going to be several home games during my trip home in June. Needless to say, I plan to attend a game at the friendly confines.

So, I'm up at the IO later that Sunday night. My lighting shift has been switched from Thursdays to Sundays. I'm standing outside the theater, having a smoke, when a reasonably normal looking old man happens by, looks me up and down, and stops in his tracks.

"You are one of the nicest looking guys I've ever seen," he says, literally allowing his eyes to travel up and down my whole body and back again. "You just look like a nice, solid, good guy."

"Well," I think to myself. "This guy is alright." I laughed and smiled and thanked him, wondering if this is what girls have to deal with.

Then I noticed he was foaming at the mouth.

When he started talking about how his wife threw a pizza out the window that morning and the time he stole $800 from someone named Miller Hughes, I excused myself and made my exit back into the theater.

The rest of the night was uneventful.

Last night, there was a so-so performance at the IO, counterbalanced by a lovely meal with my friend Natalie at the Airstream diner in Beverly Hills.

And that, my friends, brings us up to speed.