Michael and Michael Have Issues

Many of you may be asking yourselves, your local city councilmen, and me via Twitter the following:"What IS Michael and Michael Have Issues"?

Michael and Michael Have Issues is one part sketch comedy, two parts show-within-a-show narrative, a behind the scenes look at the making of a fictional sketch comedy show aptly titled Michael and Michael Have Issues. Black and Sho essentially play exaggerated versions of themselves, and each episode taps into that "issues" theme, whether that be Michael and Michael's jealousies of each other, their combined forces against a common foe, or their collaborated attempts to do good.

For a prime example of such issues in play, see here:

(DISCLAIMER: This is real.)

To which I say:

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Less than two weeks to go until our mighty new show premieres. I feel like my wife did when we were expecting our first child: nauseous and craving mashed potatoes. After a year of working on this show, it's exciting to see the whole thing finally coming together.

In the next couple weeks, Sho and I will be doing as much press as we can to promote the show. He's going to be on Letterman, I'm going on Ferguson, we're both going on Fallon, and lots of other print and radio stuff. Doing press is sort of fun and sort of a chore. The tough part is answering the same questions over and over again. Already, there are certain questions I've grown sick of:

1. So what are your "issues?"
2. Where's David Wain?
3. Which Michael gets top billing?
4. Why is Showalter such a dick?

The thing I am most looking forward to about finishing is getting to be with my family again, who I feel like I have not seen in two months. I guess the reason I feel that way is that I pretty much haven't seen them in two months. Once we started shooting, the hours were so long that I could only get home on the weekends, which made for a fairly monastic existence.
As populous as it is, New York can also be a lonely town, particularly if you make no effort to see anybody or do anything – which is what I did. That's because work is so energy-intensive that I just didn't want to hang out when I was done for the day. Consequently, my only friends during those long days were my internet connection and Ambien.

Once the press is done, I'm going to take off the rest of the summer and just be with the woman I love. And also my wife.

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Home for the weekend. Normally that's a good thing except my family is away until after the Fourth of July, which means I'm alone. Again, that's normally a good thing except that I've been alone a lot in New York working on the show, and so it would be nice to have human contact with people over whom I have dominion (my kids) and one over whom I claim dominion (my wife). Even the dog is at the kennel, so I am totally by myself. Tonight though I'm going to a birthday party for a friend who is turning forty. I remember when my mom turned forty somebody got her a penis cake. I was twelve at the time and very embarrassed, although not so embarrassed that I did not eat a slice. That single slice of cake is probably most responsible for why I turned out the way I did.

So we continue to edit our new TV show. All in all, I would say that it's going well. Comedy Central seems pleased with everything, except for one sketch that we have a big disagreement about. For a show like ours it's pretty good to only have one big disagreement. The way we've decided to resolve it is pistols at dawn, which seems a bit extreme to me but Showalter is very committed to the idea and I want to present a united front to the network.

So yeah, it's a slow weekend here at my Connecticut mansion. I gave the entire staff the weekend off, which was very generous of me especially considering the fact that I don't have a staff. But if I did, I totally would have given them the weekend off because that's the kind of rich guy I would be if I were rich.

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I'm currently writing this from the "Michael and Michael Have Issues" offices, where I have been all weekend long writing and rewriting. Frankly, I'm exhausted. Michael Showalter left the office at 2:00 pm on Friday afternoon for his weekly squash game with his old friends from the community college he attended. So I was left to shoulder much of the work.

Rather than go home Friday night, I decided to sleep in the office Friday night so that I could a jump on the weekend's work. I started at Saturday morning at 6:00 am and haven't stopped since. Am I exhausted? Sure. But, to me, the long hours are worth it because I'm doing what I love. Yes my family misses me, but they understand that great art means great sacrifice. And that goes for them as well as for me. It's probably hard for my kids to grow up without seeing their father for weeks at a time, but I hope they will understand when they are older and I am long dead.

Yes, I probably could have made it home for a little while if my partner Michael Showalter had shared the work with me this weekend, but he's got several cats to look after and I think he had Yankees tickets, so I definitely do not begrudge his absence. In fact, I hope one of us has a great weekend.

Of course, there will probably be some of you who think I am writing this post from the comfort of my kitchen in Connecticut, having just eaten some quesadillas and homemade guacamole, but that would be plain wrong. No, I am in my tiny office grinding out sketches for our new show, and not about to go out with my family for a spring drive.

I could obviously offer photographic proof of my location, but what would that say about the trust we all have for each other? Not very much. No, I think you just should take me at my word that I am hard at work on a Sunday in my terrible office and not full from delicious quesadillas, and enjoying the terrific weather my family.

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