She’s always fierce, ever so fierce - far too primal to hang anything as pedestrian as a name on. She’s simply “Kitty”, a title she pointedly ignores. I love her long black hair (I refuse to see the white hairs creeping in), the proud disdain in her eyes, and the way she seems to ignore me when she’s actually watching most closely. She bites: sharp, sharp, sharp!! She kicks: one, two, three!! All to let me know when we’re really, seriously engaged in the conversation primeval. She never backs down from a fight, unless the wind is wrong or the moon’s too high in the wild night sky. She melts into the shadows, adores the heat, and kills the little grey mouse ever so dead, dead, dead - just for me.

Or maybe not.

Regardless, you can see more pictures of Miss Kitty in her own Flickr album.

I recently treated myself to something I’d been wanting to do for nearly 2 years… I had my family’s DNA genotyped by the company 23andMe. Here are 10 things about me and my folks that we didn’t even know (and this is just scratching the surface of data about ourselves that we can explore):

10 — My Mom’s mother’s mother’s mothers sprang from the same haplogroup as THE Marie Antoinette (though that does not mean that I am necessarily a direct descendant).

9 — My Dad’s mother’s mother’s mothers came from a region stretching between Spain to North Africa, all the way around to Lebanon. No wonder I like drinking Port and eating Baba Ganouj.

8 — My DNA says that I have a 24% lifetime incidence of experiencing Prostate Cancer, as compared to other people in my same genotype. This is fairly ironic, as I am currently Continue Reading

Do you know what hyperbole is?
Do you know who Kirk Montgomery is?
Do you know what you get when you mix the two?

I just heard an advertisement for the new Star Trek movie in which Mr. Montgomery is quoted as saying that the new Star Trek is “this generation’s Star Wars”. ORLY? I thought it was supposed to be this generation’s STAR TREK!!!!

Cretin.

::sigh::

Following this new variation on logic I can only surmise that:

• “House” must be this generation’s “Gone With The Wind”.
• The new Will Ferrell remake of “Land of the Lost” must be this generation’s “French Connection”.
• “Transformers 2″ must certainly be this generation’s “Citizen Kane”
• and who could deny that “Operation Runway” represents this generation’s “From Here to Eternity”??

Alls I know is that THIS generation have their heads up their collective asses and that Mr. Montgomery is leading the charge. Just like Humphrey Bogart in “Ironman 2″.

Now THERE was a classic.

I have a little present for you… keep reading!

Anyone who’s been within a mile of a geek is aware that the Star Wars franchise continues to exert its influence on popular culture. Yet, in the 30+ years since its initial release, I think that we’ve forgotten the ferocity with which that space opera seized our collective imagination… it was a massively incredible time to be a kid… a time when words like “wookie” and “darth” and “R2-D2” were alien and exotic and felt wrong and strange and Continue Reading

Madame Duffey was a fascinating woman. She had coiffed red hair, a southern accent and that certain wackiness that all high school language teachers must possess in order to get the job.  I suspect that Madame Duffey aced her qualification exams because of the fantastically strong field of wackiness she emitted. Completely off the charts.

In Madame Duffey’s class the very first thing you learned was how to Continue Reading

>> Click Here to Listen to the Bea Arthur Song Now <<

With her passing at age 86, Bea Arthur, star of “Maude” and “The Golden Girls” is once again in the news. As a child I always found Bea Arthur rather frightening and didn’t appreciate her comedic gifts until many years later when Golden Girls re-invigorated her career. Looking back to those early years I now realize that it wasn’t her smart, assertive personality that bothered me so much as it was her androgyny… my brain just couldn’t accept a woman who had a gravelly voice, wore polyester pants suits, or those long vest thingys that start with the letter “k” (which partially explains my distaste for Hillary Clinton). But not everyone was put off by Bea Arthur. In fact, our friend Geoffrey Brown had quite a hit on his hands on the coffee shop circuit a few years ago with his tribute song to Bea Arthur entitled “Bea Arthur” (aka, “I Want to Be Bea Arthur”). Won’t you have a listen? Check out Geoffrey’s website GeoffreyBrown.net and find out more about his latest venture, the Dancing Monkey Cabaret!

On Monday night I attended the premiere of the documentary “Living is Winning” at the 2009 Atlanta Film Festival, where a packed house followed the story of professional IronMan competitor Drew Johnston, an athlete who refused to allow Leukemia to stop his desire to win the grueling IronMan World Continue Reading

I’m a huge Tongo Hiti nerd and can’t wait to stop typing this entry and drive down to the Atlanta Trader Vic’s to see them perform live and in person…. the video posted here is from last Thursday night and it’s *amazing*….. I’ve personally watched this thing 40 times and I’m sure I’ll watch it 40 more…. totally mesmerizing…. your journey begins with the powerful beauty of Celine Dion and ends in dark majesty. Sit back and enjoy Tongo Hiti at the Atlanta Trader Vic’s as they weave the most magical performance ever seen on YouTube at this particular time of the day (or night)….

Today I got an message from a friend over on Facebook saying that they couldn’t figure out how to create a photo album. From the description they left me I realized that they were confused by Facebook’s confusing interface so I decided to post an illustrated lesson here on my site. It’s really not as hard as you think!

First, look in the lower left corner of your browser’s window. See the icons down there? Those are shortcuts to some of the applications available to you on Facebook. Callout #1 is pointing to an orange icon with a person’s silhouette in it. This represents the Photos application (and will in fact alert you to that fact if you hover your mouse over it). Go ahead and click that icon…. Continue Reading

Last Thursday I met up with some people at Trader Vic’s for Mai Tai Thursday and a dosh of the ultra-hawaiian courtesy of Tongo Hiti. This time around I shot a bunch of great videos, including this mellow island version of Joe Jackson’s hit “Steppin’ Out”. Enjoy!

With the 2009 baseball season officially underway those lazy days of spring training are already fading into fuzzy memories, so let’s take a moment to look back at a great trip down to see the Braves play the Phillies at Disney’s Wonderful World of Sports.

On the weekend of March 7th I traveled down to Orlando, Florida, to see the Atlanta Braves play the Philadelphia Phillies during Spring Training. My travel package included housing in the iconic New Urbanist community of Celebration, which was developed by The Walt Disney Company in the early 1990s. While the video documentary featured here is a good primer for anyone considering taking up Continue Reading

Has anyone else noticed how big ‘Meet the Press’ host David Gregory has become lately? I’m not talking about “fat”, I’m talking about TALL. The man is enormous!! A 2003-2006 report from the Center for Disease Control reported [warning:PDF] that the average height of American citizens is five feet, four point three inches (5′-4.3″). Using a screen grab of this morning’s program (shown above) it’s obvious that Gregory towers over his co-hosts. If we assume that Al Roker and Meredith Vieira are average height (and not in fact taller, which is entirely possible) it’s short work with a slide rule to see that the man’s true height is pushing Continue Reading

This article will show you how to access a Totally Cool and Utterly Secret control panel for controlling how you see your Facebook Friend’s feeds, but first you must suffer an article that seemed ever-so-clever when I first wrote it…… (sorry)…….

Are you tired of seeing how all your “friends” are goofing off on Facebook? Do you really care if Sam Fiddlefark just took the “Which Piece of Cheese Do I Smell Like” quiz? Did you actually want to know that Finellopi Twankshaft just bought 137 people a Sexy Cocktail From Her Bellybutton or that Lorna McDufflebagg just scored 835 points playing KittenSmash?

Thought not.

I suppose then that you aren’t especially all that interested in attending the “Drive Your Pet To The Mall Day” except, perhaps, as a masked assassin atop a nearby bell tower with a high powered assault rifle and a 5-gallon bucket of armor-piercing bullets.

Thought not.

Don’t you love it when I post 20 minute long videos of myself listening to iTunes at work?

Thought not. (though I must say it hurts to actually hear you admit that you don’t enjoy them)

The good news is that Continue Reading

The older we get, the more resistant to change we become, however the recent (March 2009) interface update to Facebook rattled a lot of my friends, old and young alike. Some love it, some hate it, all will have to get used to it until it changes again. So until the next change arrives, I’m posting some tips to help you guys understand how to better manage your Facebook experience. Let’s start by looking at Continue Reading