Neil Patrick Harris is busy

It's impossible to get tired of him," said Jon Hurwitz, a creator of the "Harold & Kumar" franchise, in which Harris will reprise his outrageously debauched character in "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas" this holiday.

In just the last few months, Harris charmed critics and drew big ratings for his second singing-and-dancing go-around as emcee of the Tony Awards, hosted a fundraising gala for President Obama and championed same-sex marriage legislation in New York via his Twitter feed.

That's after wrapping the sixth season of the sleeper hit "How I Met Your Mother," directing a sitcom pilot under consideration at CBS, stumping for his two current independent films and prepping "The Expert at the Card Table," a play he's directing that launches this weekend at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.

All that and also Harris is a honcho at the L.A. landmark, the Magic Castle, a producer of the immersive theatrical game, "Accomplice: Hollywood," and an affable presence on shows as varied as "Sesame Street," "Live With Regis and Kelly," "The Howard Stern Show" and "American Idol."

His voice doesn't even get a rest, popping up as the narrator on kids' audio books and in TV series like "Robot Chicken" and "The Penguins of Madagascar." And he and longtime companion David Burtka welcomed fraternal twins by a surrogate last fall; Gideon and Harper are 9 months old now.

Another "Dr. Horrible," which is in the works, "would take precedence," Harris said, though he'd have to fit it into what he calls "the Tetris game that is my professional life."

Whedon, who directed Harris in his Emmy-winning guest turn on "Glee," said it's no wonder he's in demand. He has "a Sinatra quality" that makes his shifts between genres and platforms look effortless.

"Through the force of his own personality and wit, he's become something bigger than the roles he plays," Whedon said. "People look at him and don't see any one of those parts — they see that guy they love."

For a 'big deal' Boehner ends his bid

WASHINGTON - House Speaker John A. Boehner abandoned efforts Saturday night to reach a comprehensive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a midsize package was the only politically possible scope to avoid a first-ever default on the nation's mounting national debt.

Boehner (R., Ohio) told Obama - who is hosting a key meeting Sunday evening on the debt issue - that their efforts to "go big," as the speaker says, were stymied by the toughest issues: taxes and entitlements.
"Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt-reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase," Boehner said in a statement less than 24 hours before the Obama meeting was to take place.

Boehner told Obama that, their efforts to "go big," as the speaker says, were stymied by the toughest issues: taxes and entitlements. Democrats continued to insist on tax revisions that would not pass muster in the conservative-dominated House of Representatives, and Republicans wanted cuts to programs such as Medicare and Social Security that Obama and Senate Democrats would oppose.

"Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt-reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase," Boehner said in a statement less than 24 hours before the Obama meeting was to took place.
In a statement Saturday night, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said: "The president believes that solving our fiscal problems is an economic imperative. But in order to do that, we cannot ask the middle class and seniors to bear all the burden of higher costs and budget cuts. We need a balanced approach that asks the very wealthiest and special interests to verify their fair share as well, and we believe the American people agree."

The emerging deal collapsed of its own ideological weight. Liberals were outraged at the proposals for entitlements, particularly a reduction in the annual increase of Social Security benefits, and conservatives were opposed to the idea of raising federal revenue through the tax proposal, which they would have labeled one of the largest tax hikes in history.