I've been friends with Lawrence O'Donnell Jr, for over 10 years now. We met doing a political/comedy panel show that was a forerunner of Politically Incorrect. Now after LOD doing a lot of McLaughlin, writing "West Wing" and creating "Mister Sterling," he has a show on MSNBC called "Saturday Final with Lawrence O'Donnell." I've done a lot a Politically Incorrect and LOD and I talk a lot, so he asked me to do the show.

I finally got good at PI, I was comfortable and I did a pretty good job. There were a couple where I tanked and a few where I worked harder than I should have, but I got okay at it. LOD asked me to do the second show of SFWLOD, and, of course, I said yes. It's a really hard show. There's LOD and four guests and no one is in the same room. We're in little electronic Hollywood Square type boxes and we're doing the show with ear pieces. I was in a little studio in Vegas with a TV picture of the strip behind me. It's a good time of day. It's 7pm in the east, so that makes it 4pm on Saturday here in Vegas and that doesn't get in the way of anything. It's a little room, and I had the ear piece, which is always hard for me. The camera man had a TV with live program that I could kind of see, but there's a delay, so I could only glance, or I'd get confused. It's doing a radio show with bad sound and trying to know that you're on camera all the time. It's hard work and it's a full hour.

LOD and I talked a lot on the phone and in Email. It's odd to know the host of a show like this as well as I know LOD. It's puts another layer on it, because I have to deal with his "character" on camera while also knowing what he's really thinking. It's a little nuts. I was on with Miss America, some Republican guy and some Democratic chick. That was the four of us. LOD introduced me as a CATO Fellow and stuff like that. For a political show, we were doing pretty broad jokes. It was much broader than I would have thought.

I hit all the beats we had planned and LOD was happy with me and he said the producers were very happy. I think I did a fine job on the "Hunting for Bambi" hunk. I just said it was fake. They had done the interviews in the same studio and the camera man gave me some inside stuff that gave me confidence in that position. Miss America said it was demeaning to women, and I pointed out that some said that about swimsuit competitions. It seemed to play well. I laid back for the first part of the show, and just hit a few jokes, so I could take off towards the end without dominating the whole show. LOD is pretty brutal on keeping the show moving, so you can't really build anything. I actually had less time than I got on PI to style a joke. LOD wants a real "get in get out" rhythm and I was adjusting to that. It's not my usual TV style. It's a very lonely, lost, experience with just that little ear piece, but, with luck, I'll get better.

I plugged "The-bright.net" a lot and there was a really nice package with that. I guess that was about it. I think I came off okay. The people that matter said that I looked good, so that made me happy. We did a little magic trick and it seemed to fool people (not my Sister for a second, but what do you expect?). So, that's it. I guess I did well. It's hard work. LOD seems to want me back a lot and his producers seem to agree, so I guess I'll be doing it fairly often. It means I have to go back to reading more of the papers and paying a little bit more attention to what's going on.

I'm not going to get to "pundit" but I did okay as a nut on a pundit show.

Penn

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