Vijal Patel

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with two degrees - one in engineering, the other in business - Vijal asked himself a vexing question. "How can I most effectively disregard the past five years of my life?" At first, his inner voice urged him to move to California and join a radical left-wing avocado commune with a proclivity for sedition. That voice was quickly silenced in the middle of the night under mysterious circumstances and replaced by a more reasonable voice urging him to "join the spirits in the far desert weaving together laughter and tears from simple words." What the hell does that mean? Was this a sign from God or a glue-induced flashback? It wasn't until his twelfth hour into an A-Team marathon that Vijal realized what the voice was trying to say. "Become a screenwriter." So you see, the answer to his vexing question came as easily as turning on the TV. Only this time, he turned to TV. Before long, Vijal moved to Los Angeles as the first voice urged him to do and entered the entertainment profession as the second voice urged him to do. But it wasn't all chips and dip for this brash young upstart. Nothing was handed to him except for some fake phone numbers from uninterested women and a couple speeding tickets from un-amused cops. Other than that, Vijal had to earn his keep. Over the next two years, he worked his way up from production assistant to writer's assistant and before you knew it, he was offered a bona fide staff writing position because a faithful producer saw talent in the boy. In the subsequent years, that boy became a man writing for such networks as ABC, NBC and is currently writing for 'Til Death starring Brad Garret which will be airing in Fall 2006 on FOX.