This is the episode where Giovanni Reda finally gets to speak on camera, and if you'd like to see behind the scenes footage of the shooting of the season finale, go to www.theberrics.com.

Norm Macdonald was and is an amazing guy to work with and we spent quite a bit of time goofing off with him. Chris Kotch directed this episode and he's always a lot of fun to work/goof off with. All in all, I think this is a very good episode and a fun one to end the season.

See you all next year. And thanks for stopping by.

I've said to hell with it and gotten myself a Twitter account and couldn't be having more fun with it.

We're not shooting right now, Geraldo was a nice guy, Waltrip was an unbelievably nice guy and these are good episodes. What else can I tell you.

I went to the Tillamook cheese factory in Tillamook, Oregon and hung out with a humongous cow. Here's a picture.

This episode and next week's were great to shoot. They are basically filling in this year for what would've been a cop's episode.

Greg Garcia directed this and next week's episodes and as usual I think he delivered. It was a somewhat tricky shoot because Wilfred Derkis refuses to work with Mr. Garcia. But I guess that's a story for a different forum.

This was one of those episodes that it was impossible not to laugh during takes. Sometimes Faizon would be overcome with the spirit and talking in tongues and Jason and I would be rolling on the floor.

I've been listening to this band AGAINST ME! I wasn't honestly a huge fan but I hadn't heard Reinventing Axle Rose. That s*** is on repeat! The song WE LAUGH AT DANGER AND BREAK ALL THE RULES is insanely good. There is also a great video on youtube for the (equally great) song BABY I'M AN ANARCHIST...or you could just go watch that video on ethansuplee.com or if you're a right wing conservative you probably shouldn't, it glorifies people like Emma Goldman, it might throw you to the center with leftist imagery and propaganda...or it might just bum you out...

It's always a little strange when people show up to my work that are so into me that they actually think they are me... I try and play it cool but really the caption above my head should be "has someone called security?!?" Just kidding, there's actually a lot that goes into the portrayal of Randy as evidenced by this here picture. I couldn't do it all by myself!

Hygiene is a very important part of Earl being Earl.

It's not just me that gets a little assistance.

This is kind of a montage of an awful sequence wherein I get sprayed in the face...

Sprayed in the face some more.

Then it got super creepy...

I became very sad...

Then I became very angry and bitched at our wonderful and talented director Eyal Gordin...

Then I turned my anger toward its actual target and was promptly hit with a bucket of instant oatmeal... Total bumout...

Here is a very rare picture of Jason and I with Chris and Thom. I've been working with Thom for years now and he is AMAZING!!!!! Whenever I see something in a script that at first seems terrifying I am always immediately calmed knowing I have Thom in my life.

Here we are with our stunt coordinator Al Jones. He like Hooper good.

So we've had a little time off... Kinda nice.
Too much time off is NO BUENO though.
I've been listening to DEFIANCE OHIO which is an amazing folk-punk band, I can't wait for them to come through LA so I can see them live.

I guess there aren't too many episodes of Earl left in this season for me to write about so I'm gonna drop you a little secret for when this "blog's" season is over... www.ethansuplee.com, I can write f*** on there without the ***! A real class act.

Anyhow, if you're wondering what I do with my time off, here's a picture of Jason Larocca (of the punk band The Briggs), Geoff Ludke (my favorite on set props guy, sorry Mike Shank! You're a close second pal!), Me (Ethan Suplee of American History X, Blow, Cold Mountain, Remember The Titans, My Name Is Earl etc. etc. etc. I'm pretty cool...) and Steve Berra (writer/director/actor/professional skate boarder/internet mogul of theberrics.com fame) at a performance of POINT BREAK LIVE...possibly the greatest stage performance to ever have been performed live on stage. And you guessed it, it's a stage rendition of Point Break.

I don't think I need to say anything more, I mean you can only imagine how great a stage performance of Point Break would be. The icing, every night, every performance, Johnny Utah is picked from the audience!!!

Here is how we spend our time at work: I say "Hey Eddie, there's a perfectly good but unused pool table over there. Pretend like you're playing pool and I'll take a shi**y picture with my blackberry and use it on my "BLOG"... Oh, you didn't realize I was an ultra cool guy with an online personality? Well yeah, I am..."

Then moments later: "You know, that was great and all but you're wearing that big jacket and we wouldn't want the five people that read my ultra cool underground blog about punk rock and Earl to think that the producers don't pay the heating bills."
EDDIE: "It's raining outside..."
ME: "Yeah ok, well how about taking it off and showin' a little skin? You know, for the ladies..."

This would be Greg Garcia's shout out to the ladies... He's an animal!

PINKY - Awkward episode to shoot, wonderful episode to watch. Greg Garcia directed it and I think his use of space is really great and makes for a very strong episode. The paddle boat was scary, the bicycle built for two even more so; I don't think Pressley is used to someone else steering and almost toppled us a few times.

Did you know Coldstone had sugar-free ice cream?

Doc from The Love Boat was f*****g hilarious. Jason and I could hardly keep it together in our scenes with him.

The kiss was like shaking someone's hand but then afterward people on the crew started howling which made it less like just shaking someone's hand and yet still not at all like a real kiss, but my mind kept going back to the text message my wife had sent me about karma and being a good father and that made the kiss almost exactly like a handshake, so it all evened out in the end.

Also, since I've taken to plugging bands, this week I will plug Francis Clementine's all time favorite, JIMMY CLIFF. She likes the song "You Can Get It If You Really Want" the most but anything by Cliff makes her happy.

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From bigdaddywrites:
OK, here's a stupid one I thought up once...but it's fun to think about (regarding going faster than the speed of light). We build a train track around the earth (I know, there's a bunch of water and stuff, but work with me here). On that track we place a train and on TOP of that train is another track (with a train on it). Train 1 (on the bottom) hauls ass around the track. Train 2, on top of Train 1, goes as fast as it can too. Keep building upward and ride the top...how fast can we go?

To bigdaddywrites:
Ummm...I'm pretty sure we'd never be going faster than the train on the ground. But I'm no physicist. If a fly is flying through a car driving 60mph is the fly flying 60.1mph? I don't know.
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From phyllisdillonjr:
I knew you had great taste in music when I ran into you at a great show! So I took your advice on the Symarip, good choice. I hear they are coming out to LA sometime this year, we shall see. Anyways great to know there is a little rude in the biz. You should share music suggestions with all of your blogs, I have a feeling you have a knack for soundtracking. Hope to run into you again one of these days (not in a creepy way). Cheers!

To phyllisdillonjr:
What show was it?
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From Mrsshelor:
Ethan, can you do me a favor? Crazy, but....I told my husband you were answering comments on this blog and that you answered mine - so he said tell you to say hi to him! LOL His name is Nic Shelor, if you don't mind....thanks! :) We'll be watching!

To Mrsshelor/Nic:
Hi Nic.
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From Dr_Llama:
Hey, did nbc cancel my name is earl of something? I really like the show and i am a big fan. I hope it comes back soon!

To Dr_Llama:
Not that I'm aware of!
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From hendrixnow:
hey Ethan, Thx alot for the answer. i have to say i feel bad that this blog seems like it's in a dark deep corner of the nbc website but the plus side is you get only real fans in here. I'm real upset their was no episode this week its the ONLY show i watch. i love it so much i grew a mustache! btw u looked badass with one. i got many questions but 1 at a time. I hear you guys scream "Woohoo Jackie!" in a couple episodes like the mustang and stole a motorcyle ep. Wats that mean? whos jackie?

To hendrixnow:
That's a doozy...years ago, apparently, on Rosanne, she would just hire her friends to be writers on that show. There were legit writers too but she'd come in and say this is my friend Soandso and he's gonna be a writer. Eventually there were a few of these guys and not all of them were that familiar with the show. Anyway, one day they were talking about a b-storyline with the Jackie character and one of these "writers" that was a friend of Rosane's said "whojackie?" because he didn't know who that was. I don't know if that actually happened but that's the story I heard and the reason behind "whojackie."
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From pplupo:
Hi Ethan!I'm glad you read the comments because I googled some way to contact you and I have even registered as a user on NBC just to be able to post a comment. I'd like to ask you to create a Fan Page on Facebook so I can add myself as a fan. I already added me as fan of actors like Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson and I miss you on my favorite actors list. Since only official representatives can create fan pages, please, do so. Could you do that for a fellow fan?

To pplupo:
Hey man, I'm not really too good with computers and the wide world web. But thanks for saying you'd add me if I did.

This week it would be, Spiegel Im Spiegel by ARVO PART. That is what I'd like to be listening to while cruising along at one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second, approaching the speed of light but never quite making it, on my way to some fantastical place.

Space is strange and interesting. Space doesn't always act the way it is supposed to. Space is here and there where you are and millions of light years away there are other planets and solar systems and galaxies and universes that also exist in space.

Well, what is the big deal about space? What's the big deal is that when I was a kid I read this book called A WRINKLE IN TIME and ever since then I've had the feeling that real legit space travel by human beings is possible. I guess it's really not and that is the trouble. I'm not talking twenty-six thousand miles to the moon; I'm talking space travel on the order of parsecs. I mean, let's check out some other galaxies and really get out there and fill up some of this space with non chaos. Let's find some wormholes to get us there because as it is we're very quickly not getting anywhere at all. As it is now it'd be like trying to crawl from New York to China, the long way including oceans, without using your arms or legs or probably worse, most likely much worse.

There are people that truly don't believe we were ever on the moon, I'm not one of these people but I've heard this impassioned argument before and there are some good points. Like the space crafts that went to the moon apparently had less technology than a common cell phone. WOW!

I don't really think anything can travel faster than light but I hope there are ways around this problem as described in A WRINKLE IN TIME. I really do hope.

I imagine at some point in our history someone looked at some vast distance and considered it too great to ever traverse. That's how I feel about space, that's the reality of it right now. Based on the technology boom of the past hundred or so years I would assume that one day what seems so vast to me now will be a short flight away.

I suppose none of this has anything to do with Earl. Only that we had the legendary Curtis Armstrong as a guest star this week and he played an ex-astronaut. His name almost sounds like an astronaut's. He was quite nice and very dedicated to his role. Early one morning, it was very cold, he stripped down into his skivvies for our off-camera eye-line. He wasn't being filmed but wanted to give us what we were supposed to be looking at instead of wearing a jacket or robe or anything warm. I thought that was very nice but found myself wearing sun glasses and a jacket while they shot him and I was off camera. I'll have to work on that.

If you want some behind-the-scenes of this episode, go to www.theberrics.com and then go to the WEDNESDAYS WITH REDA section and go older until you see Jason or I. There are nine parts and I thought they were pretty funny.

I think NASA is doing a pretty damn good job, they're like the guys thousands of years ago that set off in small boats expecting to fall off of what they thought was a flat planet. Cheers to them for taking the first step.

The other day I was having a conversation with my younger kids about space. Francis Clementine is almost 4 and very curious about everything. I was saying to her that where we live is really a very small place in the whole scheme of things and that if we look at a starry night that some of those stars have planets just like earth and there are many more stars that we can't even see. I was telling her that I hear that the universe goes on and on forever and ever and there is no end to it. We agreed, that is pretty big, she could show you how big by just stretching out her arms...

Curtis Armstrong and I

While reading this you should be listening to "Must Catch A Train" by SYMARIP.

Wiford Derkis and TV's Tim Stack getting into some mischief

Earl and friend beautifying themselves...

Mrsshelor
Don't worry. They'll be back. or they already are?

Matat
Well that's his name so it should be capitalized...

hendrixnow
No. I can't speak for Jason but yeah, to some degree, maybe not literally, I do believe in karma.

Kranlin
THANK YOU

gardenwife
Maybe he was...

dianesparkles
Thanks!Our Thanks! Ourshows music is the best!

Adkbeau
Hello. I'd rather not get into religion. I'll just say that I believe in god and respect the rights of all to believe what they believe and don't think less of any religion no matter how different the views are to my own. I've never been to the Adirondack's but isn't lake placid plagued by a giant alligator????

goofball04
It was indeed. I think deep down Joy is a pretty good person...maybe not entirely good but not all bad.

Swangliming
I gotta say that I think that iphones are more fashionable but yeah, the blkbrry is pretty good looking I guess. I spend way too much time playing sudoku on mine. Cheers to China!

Chickenboop
Thank you.

cwinsten
I would've skipped it to work with me too! thanks!

Iblahblahforaliving
Thank you very much. I kinda hope I only have Randy's best qualities in me.

janet444
Thanks a lot. I have been enjoying Randy too. I don't think smoking pot is a good thing but I definitely fell like way too much money is wasted on the "war on drugs." I think educating people would be vastly more worthwhile then punishing them.

goofball04
Thanks, I laugh myself silly almost daily. Those women have definitely kept themselves together!

gardenwife
I know, so am I.

dianesparkles
Thanks a lot. I try and use my kids as a barometer for innocence because in all truthfulness it DOES NOT come naturally to ME. Thanks for watching.

See you all next week.

This was the episode with the super cool guest star I mentioned a few weeks back. DANNY GLOVER! Roger Murtaugh himself. There are times that you hear about a wish list type of a person, like who would be the first choice to play some part, and often that person is unavailable. Well, we got Danny Glover to play Darnell's dad and that is pretty sweet.

The first day we worked with him we shot the scene where Jason and I are chained to the fake bomb. Normally Jason and I are not necessarily on our best behavior, there is quite a bit of goofing off and laughter that takes place while we're working, I think though that we were trying extra hard that day to act like professionals in front of our guest. At some point Danny was meant to say "call me, I'm speed dial two..." and what he said during this one take was "call me on dial tone foo..." and look, it's not likely that you'll find Jason or I running through our dialogue verbatim on the first try but for some reason "dial tone foo" really hit us hard and it was all we could do to not fall down laughing. I'm sure this was compounded by our attempt at being professional; well I'm not sure what it was exactly but damn... We really did try to keep it together, which made it worse. I believe that that might have been the hardest we've ever laughed on set, while trying not to laugh of course. Danny was really awesome and it was nice to cast such a great actor in the role of Darnell's dad.

To this day if I say "dial tone foo" to Jason it will cause a near hysterical meltdown on set between us.

I had a lot of time off this week, well the week that this episode was shot. Earl has to take Mr. Turtle back to Joy and Darnell and I'm left holding down the fort. Eric Allen Kramer was awesome as a "friend of Kenny's" and that whole "b" story line was a lot of fun to shoot and very hard to get through without cracking up. It's weird to walk onto set and meet a guy for the first time and have him immediately launch into gay innuendos and convincing flirtation to which you are supposed to appear oblivious. We somehow got through it, though the scenes in bed were really tough.

There seems to be a topic I keep running into here at work and since it's been a relevant work topic it is a relevant topic for this blog. I will preface my opinion by saying that I don't do drugs or drink alcohol and haven't for quite some time. Anyway, I don't think that we should espouse drinking or drugs but I also think that we should shred the taboo of something like pot. I also think it should be decriminalized. It's never made sense to me that a person could go to jail for smoking pot or lose their job or be demonized. That's MY opinion and I'm probably in the minority since here in America the majority is said to have sway over such matters. Anyway, I don't think people should promote drug use but I feel the same about alcohol, I would put alcohol in the same category as marijuana. Furthermore I have no idea how pot could improve one's ability in sports? Do you? I'd love to hear from someone with real knowledge in the area. Steroids are a different matter entirely, steroids are plain cheating and that ain't cool.

UNITY by Operation Ivy comes to mind. Somehow those lyrics work for me right now on a multitude of levels. I'll give odds that my "legalize it" rant doesn't appear on nbc.com...