Well, that was fast. Regular readers might remember El Pantera, the Mexican action series I worked on, running the writers’ room and overseeing story development for the second season for a while.

Univision is already starting to run those episodes, starting tonight at 9 pm Eastern, 8 pm Central. Check it out!

While I knew the second season had begun airing in Mexico (to very nice ratings, I’m told), I didn’t think it would be here for a few more months. But I just caught a promo while flipping through channels. It looks great. I haven’t seen the actual episodes yet myself. But now I totally can’t wait.

If you don’t habla the español, you may not even need to. This is a profoundly Mexican show, but the episodes should be visual enough and actiony enough that you’d probably follow the rough outline of the story even with the volume down.

Just from seeing the promo, I’m already happy for and proud of the folks I worked with for turning our string of ideas on an office whiteboard into what look to be very cool episodes. It looks like they did a terrific job.

¡Felicidades otra vez a todos de los gentes creativos y talentos de El Pantera!

Well, that was fast. Regular readers might remember El Pantera, the Mexican action series I worked on, running the writers’ room and overseeing story development for the second season for a while.

Univision is already starting to run those episodes, starting tonight at 9 pm Eastern, 8 pm Central. Check it out!

While I knew the second season had begun airing in Mexico (to very nice ratings, I’m told), I didn’t think it would be here for a few more months. But I just caught a promo while flipping through channels. It looks great. I haven’t seen the actual episodes yet myself. But now I totally can’t wait.

If you don’t habla the español, you may not even need to. This is a profoundly Mexican show, but the episodes should be visual enough and actiony enough that you’d probably follow the rough outline of the story even with the volume down.

Just from seeing the promo, I’m already happy for and proud of the folks I worked with for turning our string of ideas on an office whiteboard into what look to be very cool episodes. It looks like they did a terrific job.

¡Felicidades otra vez a todos de los gentes creativos y talentos de El Pantera!

The latest from one of our main favorite geniuses on the planet. (Acts I and II are up; Act III will go online shortly.)

Humankind should be thankful that Joss has decided to entertain it, and not destroy it with his mighty mind.

If you do not enjoy watching this, there is nothing inside you worth saving.

I suppose you could say I’m a fan.

Tides, a nonprofit organization that promotes social justice and a saner world, is about to start a big shindig called Momentum up in San Francisco.  Buncha people sharing ideas on how to do good.

The guest list includes former VP candidate John Edwards; Alex Gibney, the documentary filmmaker behind Taxi to the Dark Side and No End in Sight; Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: the Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation; Premal Shah, president of cool microlender Kiva, a group I’ve been meaning to pimp here for some time; and tons of other people who do neat stuff.

It’s described in the literature as “where some of the most creative minds in the progressive movement come together to challenge, inspire, and rejuvenate each other.”

I’m not one of those creative minds, and my sciatica defies rejuvenating, but I’ll be attending as media.  Any really nifty challenging, inspiring and rejuvenating going on, I’ll mention it here.

Particularly hoping to snag a chat with the Kiva dude.  (Seriously, check out Kiva.  You lend a teeny amount of money — not donate; lend, like $25 or something, and with a repayment delinquency rate near zero, so you get it back — and people in the developing world get lives that suck less.  Possibly a lot less.  The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went to one of the idea’s pioneers.  It works.  So Kiva up if you’re in the mood.)

More good ideas to come shortly, I hope.

Last Saturday night, I was walking home from late drinks with friends when I heard a loud metallic BANG about thirty or forty feet to my left.

I looked up, and two cars had collided, apparently at fairly high speed. And the vector product of their interaction sent them in a new direction: directly at me.

Yipe.

You don’t see cars coming right at you in the middle of the sidewalk very often. This was like one of those movie moments when a character looks up and sees a large, moving, out-of-place object — a falling building, a crashing plane, a strangely airborne car, etc. — that is about to suddenly kill him.

Two tons of metal were hurtling directly at my thighs. I’d have maybe half a second to do something about it.

Mostly, I said the word “shit” over and over. Also, I ran like hell. All I could come up with.

Fortunately, since the cars were also still braking and rotating, the one barreling most perilously at me slowed rapidly as its tires became perpendicular to the direction of travel, and I probably could have just stood there like an idiot (instead of running like one) and escaped. False alarm. No actual danger. (For me, anyway. One of the drivers seemed pretty hurt, although he refused medical assistance. The other driver is probably in pretty big trouble; she fled the scene, but a passing paparazzi — the same guy who got beat up on a Malibu beach recently, in fact — happened to see the accident and scribble down the license number.)

Still, for all of one second, I had pretty good reason to wonder if my number was up.

In the movies, that’s the sort of thing that gets people to reevaluate their lives, maybe improve their relationships or pursue their life’s dream or stop drinking or, hell, I dunno, join a gym or get that nifty sex change or at least form a freakin’ 4-H club or something. So for the last two days, I’ve been kind of waiting for my big insight or important life-changing decision.

Come on, insight! Here I am! Ready and waiting!

But so far… nothing. Nada.

It appears, shockingly, that running away from a large noise may have granted me no special knowledge.

What a ripoff. Makes it seem hardly worth almost getting killed in the first place.

I wonder if this is because (a) deep down, I truly believe my life choices are all very good, (b) I don’t, but I have no real interest in happiness whatsoever, or (c) something important is still brewing that I haven’t yet noticed.

All of these seem unlikely.

So, great: I don’t even have any insight about my own lack of insight. Well, crap.

Of course, if this sort of thing ever worked, Evel Knievel would have been the wisest man alive.

Man, Evel Knievel would have been like an oracle. With, like, robes, and a big throne, and people would have come to him with their problems, and Evel would have been all Obi-Wan, stroking his chin and gesturing somberly with his scepter, and then doling out advice in little aphorisms whose meanings would slowly unfold as the listener would contemplate and grow.

And then he’d, like, go jump over some sharks in a minibus. And then he’d come back and be even wiser.

But he didn’t. That is also disappointing.

Bottom line: if I’ve gained any larger awareness of the world to share from the experience, it is only this: all of us, brothers and sisters, everywhere on this green earth, should try, every day and in every way, not to get mashed by a Lexus.

This is my advice to you.