Last week our friend Bob announced that he was going to sell a few old Star Wars toys he had laying around his house. This of course piqued my interest, as I’m one of those millions of children who were imprinted with the plans for the Death Star back in the summer of 1977. Like many of those kids, my formative years were spent poring over pre-production illustrations by Ralph McQuarrie and building my own models of the ships out of balsa wood and styrene. Looking back, I thought that I had a pretty great collection of lovingly-used Continue Reading

I made the accompanying USA Today style illustration to show the location of my scars without grossing anyone out, and to tell the story of how I decided to let a surgeon and his robot use tiny little surgical tools inside of my body.

In the fall of 2008 I went to my new primary care doctor for a physical. My PSA levels were high so we ran a round of antibiotics to see if it was an infection of some sort. After two weeks we re-tested and the levels were just as high so I went to see a urologist, who suggested that everything pointed toward the need for a biopsy. I opted to wait until after the holidays.

On January 27th of 2009 I went into the hospital for a surgical biopsy. Three days later the doctor was on the phone telling me that I had prostate cancer. Somehow I knew that I was going to get that call, but it still shocked me to my core. On the way home that night I called an old friend to tell him the news, still trying to make sense of it myself. Later, I wrote a letter to a friend living out of state as I didn’t want to Continue Reading

One night earlier this week I woke up embracing one of my big J.C. Penny brand pillows, with my hand slid up inside the pillowcase… I’m not especially proud of this, but I’m pretty sure that I got to second base. The problem is, I didn’t know “her” name. So I’ve asked my friends to help me name this new pillow girlfriend and am posting a poll with all of their suggestions in the hopes that Continue Reading

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. Continue Reading

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