Creative types have a legendary reputation for being difficult and moody. But Rob Corddry isn't your run of the mill "Grumpy till his first cup of coffee" personality. His particular brand of self-diagnosed "genius" requires significantly more managing than, for example, Dr. Henry Kissinger or Ralph Nader (both of whom also had shows on Adult Swim).

Over the many seasons of filming Childrens Hospital, we producers (or as Rob refers to us, "The Bar Mitzvah Boys") have learned to identify which of the many dark moods he's experiencing that day and how to channel it into telling jokes. To those who may find themselves working with Rob in the future, we offer them this cheat sheet of our survival tactics: Rob's mood paired with our prescription.

Mood

Remedy

Omni directional rage

Assign a new intern to him for the day and hide

Unconditional self-centeredness

Set him up with a procession of bloggers. Every hammer needs a nail, right?

Generalized terror

(with or without panic sweats)

Pretend he's invisible

Narcissism

Business as usual

Refusal to put on makeup

We solved this one in Season 3 by making his makeup heroin flavored

Faked writers block

Tell him Ken Marino is punching up his script

The giggles

n/a

Painful urination

A broad-spectrum anti-biotic

Disorientation and/or temporary amnesia

Totally fuck with him! This is one of our fun days.

Self-pity

Ice cream truck!

Obsessiveness resulting in gambling addiction

Mission Impossible style, we've built an entire fake Indian casino and racetrack outside Calabasas and staffed it with actors. It's rigged such that Rob always loses. Then he comes back to set, broke, hungry for his next paycheck.

Generalized alcohol abuse

Any day the call time is after 11am, you run the risk of Corddry showing up drunk. On those days, we schedule a phony pre-call punch-up session or tech walk-thru. So Rob has to come directly to set after dropping his daughters off at school. Otherwise, he has time to stop at a bar on his way in. Of course, if the call time is TOO early, we have the opposite problem -- he might still be drunk from the night before.

As you can see, we're like the finest sous-chefs, constantly tweaking the ingredients in our "sauce" (Corddry's psychology) to make our signature dish (episodes of Childrens Hospital). The worst, however, is when Rob comes in happy. Then there's nowhere to go but down. He could flip at the drop of the hat. It's too nerve-wracking. On those rare occasions he's in a good mood, we just set the generator truck on fire and go home.

This article was originally published October 2012