I admit, my proverbial grapes are slightly acerbic...

So… there’s a new show premiering on Bravo tonight called Situation: Comedy. The premise is pretty simple… get a bunch of schlubs to send in a script for what they think is sure to be the next great sitcom. Then, pick a few of the “best” ones, and let those writers complain, bicker, whine, and pout, all while trying to produce a pilot to pitch to NBC. Finally, let the audience vote on which one should be in the fall lineup, and watch as NBC surreptitiously finds some way to nudge it off the schedule so they can instead expose an unwilling public to the new “bound to succeed” offering from the producing team that brought you “who wants to marry my dad?”.

Anyway, more than 10,000 of these aforementioned schlubs submitted their dubious attempts at prime time bliss… and I was one of them.

I was NOT however one of the 9 finalists…

Nor was I one of the 50 semifinalists that were asked to submit a video outlining our pitch.

No… instead, my hopes and dreams languished in the abyss with 9,950 other would be writers whose end product apparently seems to be better purposed for birdcage liner than network stardom. That being said, I’d still estimate that at least 3,478 of those birdcage liners would be funnier than “Family Matters” on it’s best day… and that show lasted for years!

And that’s okay… I honestly didn’t expect to launch a new career out of this contest… I simply wanted some forced motivation to make me try something new. And I did it. I actually completed a script, which (in my estimation) wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t better than everything already on the air, but I’d wholeheartedly assert that if a somewhat large cross-section of America can sit through 30 minutes of “according to jim” (minus the commercials of course), then enduring the debacle that would have been my sitcom would probably have been preferable to at least 7 of them.

I wasn't really looking for fame and fortune, so I wasn't all THAT upset... but ya know what would have been nice? a frickin’ response… any kind of frickin’ response… but instead, I got bupkis. I mailed out my package (with a friendly word of encouragement in broken-english from the nice Japanese man at the post office no less), and was left to wonder if it had even been received…

A poorly worded rejection letter written in crayon would have been a welcome respite from the silence that greeted my submission. A piece of Hello Kitty stationary with a frowing face. A post it with “YOU SUCK” scrawled in sharpie black. A carefully wrapped piece of poo. All of these would be preferable alternatives to not knowing if my work was even read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… the work is its own reward, I know… but I also know this…

As I sit and watch the premiere tonight, and I start to see and hear about some of the ideas that came out ahead of mine, I’m going to begin to wonder what in the world these people were thinking… I’m going to wonder what made them pick those schlubs' scripts over mine… I may even start to question the integrity of the US postal service…

In short, I’m going to complain, bicker, whine, and pout… and it’ll almost be like I’m actually on the show.