I have been the king of multi-tasking of late but it has just been getting too much. Last week I found myself running from the Lincoln Center Institute, where we were in rehearsals of a play that I wrote, then back up to Columbia to teach, to read scripts for a screenplay competition, and then down to meet with my agent about my book. I'd then race to pick the kids up from school at 5:30 and the minute after they went to bed at 8 I ran back to my computer to write till eleven or so.

When Leigh, my editor at Rodale told my agent and I that she wanted to wait until the fall to put out Father of the Year I sighed. I have put so much into this book and the last thing I wanted was it rushed to press. A book is like a little bird and you can't push it out of the nest until you're sure it can fly.

The pushback also gives me some breathing room to finish school work and the play and the John Legend project and a feature re-write I'm up for before concentrating on writing articles in support of the book. As it is every day I have 80 unanswered emails and pils of bills upaid on my desk. I would love an assistant but the assistant would have to be another me, the clone of me that enjoyed doing all the boring crap so I'd be free to have more fun. I've gotta work on that.

Posted by Trey Ellis at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I feel like I'm back in college where everyone I know is swamped with work and already behind. That is certainly the case with me. This week I had Spring Break at Columbia but I've never been busier. I interviewed applicants for next year from 1-5. It's now midnight and I just finished my treatment for this John Legend film that I'm working on. Monday rehearsals start for a play that I wrote on the Tuskegee Airmen at the Lincoln Center Institute and I still haven't fiished the re-writes for that. I'm supposed to come up with some sort of poetry for it. Wish me luck.

What I had planned to be working on right now, exclusively, are articles about my kids and I. Father of the Year hits stores May 1st and I've worked too hard on it, poured too much of my soul into it to not let the world know what I'm up to.

Tomorrow I'll be less cranky. A freak snowstorm is coming but still I've picked that day to go to Ikea in Jersey. I guess I must crave chaos.

Posted by Trey Ellis at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I returned to the transplant doctors and what I suspected by how I've been feeling was true, my kidney function has gotten a bit better. In fact, it's so much better now that I can't be listed for a transplant. The baseline kidney function is 19% or less to get on the list and I'm at 23% now. If I'm careful I could squeeze another five years out of my beans.

The new nephrologist did tell me, however, that your IQ goes up 5% or so with improved kidney function. Maybe less, but anyhow, it goes up. I'm wondering if all the problems I've been through in the last eight years since I was diagnosed are due to the fact that I've turned stupid?

Posted by Trey Ellis at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I meet with my brilliant editor tomorrow and see the new cover of the book, I hope. It's getting so exciting. A new book coming out is as close as a guy can get to how it must feel to give birth. I've written an article for Match.com about dating and being single that will give you some idea of what the book is about. Here is the link. The book, however, is a lot more literary and whole lot more dirty.

And here is the link to the Amazon page. I love that the page is already up but the book won't be out until May 1st. It's starting to feel very real. Let me know what you think of the cover.

Posted by Trey Ellis at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I received a package the other day, a thin one, and I opened it to find a poster of Lindsey Lohan. I assumed that it was for my eight-year-old daughter and Lohan fanatic and was about to give it to her when I noticed two big letters on the upper right hand corner: a G and Q. I just subscribed to GQ and this is the gift I recieve? Ms. Lohan is fully clothed, her shorts a little short perhaps but not nearly as sexy as she was in Vanity Fair (which wastes no opportunity to show every single 17-19-year-old starlet in a bikini or less).

It's hard being a dad who loves looking at sexy women. When Elisha Cuthbert began on 24, I said, "Hmmm. In a few years..." Then I was watching Discovery Kids with my own and there she was, on a Canadian show taped maybe five-years-earlier. Whatever fantasy about her that I was beginning to nurse instantly vanished.

Today we are surrounded by porno and I don't think that that is necessarily a bad thing. Instead of sublimated our feverish desires until they explode in violent and harmful ways, everybody has an easy outlet.

But the kid thing is creepy and dangerous and needs to be squashed now. If a model is under-aged don't show her in a sexy bikini on the runway or in Vanity Fair. It's a slippery slope, as in all judgement calls, but our new and historically unprecedented access to sexy images necessitates us protecting our kids.

Posted by Trey Ellis at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)