Good Lord, I’m losing my touch.  But that’s to be expected.

It’s been so long that I’ve written here on my “daily” clog that the fingers are sluggish; but there’s only one way around that, isn’t there?  Pour a cup of coffee, set it down on the old notebook with comedy ideas from the eighties, crack the knuckles and GO.

By the way, I haven’t actually cracked my knuckles since 4th grade, when my mom told me if I kept doing it, not only would my hands be as stiff as a statue’s, but my grandchildren wouldn’t be able to make a fist.  I’ve tried to similarly terrify one of my kids from doing it in the same way, but he’s certainly smarter than me, and can smell hyperbole a mile away.

Ah, folks.  The weeks and months have been busy, and I’ve been about as flawed and stupid as I usually am — no self-deprecation there:  We’re all flawed and stupid, and the sooner we realize that, the easier it is to smile at it and be happy.  On a related note, maybe you’ve noticed that the only really “smart” folks you ever meet are, uniformly, exceptionally unpleasant and annoying (and often dangerous) people.

And here we are, once again at the greatest time of the year:  President’s Day!  My wife and kids are already excitedly at work upstairs on our traditional Franklin Pierce cake, and we’re rehearsing our Warren Harding tableau, AND… this year I’ve promised a shiny, new Kennedy half-dollar to the first one who can figure out what-in-the-world-kind-of-middle-name “Gamaliel” is.

Enough thin sarcasm; especially inappropriate, considering that the whole point of this clog was to say thank you.  Thank you, that is… to you.

I’ve been lucky over the years of show biz.  I love acting and writing, and I work pretty steadily, and that’s pretty lucky.  And I love being a comic (maybe first and last, I don’t know), and my one-man show, “Cocktails With Larry Miller” is doing very well and growing every month.   It’s a cliche, but a true one:  Dough goes up, and dough goes down, but making a living doing what you love is quite something.

But that’s not what the thank-you is for.  It’s for something that doesn’t involve money at all (at least not yet).

My podcast, “This Week With Larry Miller,” on Adam Carolla’s Ace Broadcasting Network, is doing really well.  We went up 262% in 2011, and we’re hoping to do the same this year (hey, who knows?  Maybe 263%).  But I love it, and it’s a wonderful, new, other way of being funny and meaningful, and it means the world that it’s finding a home out there.

That home is with you.  So… thank you.  I think podcasting will find ways to make lots of dough someday, and that will be dandy, but it won’t make me any happier doing the show, since I love it now.

Colonel Jeff’s idea of “The Million Martini March” is a good and witty one:  Thank you for tuning in every week, and please tell a friend.  As you may know, our website is larrymillerpodcast.com, and getting to a million by the end of 2012 would be a very big step indeed toward — well, I don’t even know toward what.  All I know for sure is that it’s a big step, and a good one.

And I tweet daily, usually two or three a day, at larryjmiller.  I try to make them funny and reflective, and I actually think that 140 characters is more of a poetic guide than a trite limit:  I love the challenge, and try not to ever write things like, “Walking down the hallway now… tight shoes… tight hall… tight walk.”  My followers (God, that’s still a creepy word to me, “followers”.  Makes us all sound like Hitler in the twenties) have grown from 10 in November of 2010, to just over 9300-plus today, and that’s an honest, three-or-four-a-day, and that’s the way I like it.

So thank you.

This blog in general has informed “Cocktails,” which has informed “TWWLM”, which informs the Tweet — and over and around and back again.  An example of this is that the line I began here, “Remember:  If you walked out of bed today, and had a job to go to, and a home to come back to, and someone there who cares about you?  Folks, the game’s over, and you’ve won.”  That line and theme and sentiment is now the weekly sign-off on the podcast, and I’m moving it into the show.

I wrote 400 or so of these clogs, and I see that as the same creativity and story-telling of all the other forms.  Oh, sure, if I were better organized or smarter — or just slicker — I could do them all and throw in learning Danish as well, but life rolls on, as you well know, and I’m not that well organized.  In fact, I think I’ll take the kids upstairs now and we’ll see if there’s a good “war picture” on (as my daddy would say).

Besides, who needs to learn Danish anyway?  (Finnish, maybe…)

So thanks, folks.

Keep working and trudging and laughing out there, and I’ll do the same here.  And don’t forget to look up every day and say, “Thank you.”  After all, there’ll come a day when you won’t have to look up to do it.  After all…

REMEMBER:  IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY, AND YOU HADN’T DONE SOMETHING YOU LOVE IN FIVE MONTHS, AND YOU FOUND YOURSELF WITH A COUPLE OF EXTRA HOURS, SHUFFLE OVER TO THE DESK AND DO IT.  AND THEN GO WATCH A GOOD WAR PICTURE.