When in Rome...

On the 4th of July, while by tradition I should have been grilling a gamey roster of exotic meats, I was instead airborne, flying from Philadelphia to Rome. I'm here for business, which is a pleasure, but I'm also prepared, between duties, for a week of all-out celebration...

I had to take it with me to pull it off, but I've finally sent back to New York the finished, no-fooling, completely edited and updated and revised Smothers Brothers manuscript. About a ream of pages, marked with my notations and deletions and additions on top of my copy editor's, which are in addition to the revisions by my editor. Included were Post-It flags marking places where I'd added a sentence or paragraph long enough to require them being typed out rather than handwritten -- 30 flags for 29 chapters.

So now it's out of my hands, literally. If UPS doesn't mess up this international shipment, my editor will have the manuscript tomorrow, and her understandably impatient and hamstrung colleagues will be able to lurch into a higher gear. Meanwhile, all the rest of the book material, including the dedication and acknowledgments, was sent this morning via email. So I'm DONE, DONE, DONE. No more revisions. No more fact-checking interviews.

Finishing all this up meant I missed a day's sessions, and at least two terrific opportunities for meals and a private tour. But already, I've enjoyed one such meal, at a remote hilltop location so gorgeous, with food so delicious, it as sinful. We even drove over part of the original Appian Way (see picture) to get there, winding our Way, Appian or otherwise, through hidden streets I could never hope to find unaided, and undriven.

But from now on, it's all work and all play. I'm here as a member of the International Advisory Board of RomaFictionFest 2009, a gathering of international TV writers, producers, executives and other interested types specializing in the creation of scripted dramas, comedies and documentaries. In other words, this is a convention of people determined to rage against reality TV.

For the next few days, I'll be seeing some of the best TV in the world, and hearing about what's coming next. Eating and drinking some of the best food and wine in the world is a bonus -- but after shipping off Dangerously Funny, I'm determined to be Dangerously Indulgent.