We diddled with LOGO in sixth grade but I cut my teeth on BASIC on my little Commodore. My senior year of high school (1990-91) I took a yearlong BASIC course as an elective and we all had to write a big program as a final project. I wrote this huge trivia game about the United States Navy, spent hours mapping out and…

Ten-year-old me lusted after a TI99/4A and would be drawn to it whenever we were in the electronics department of any store. Among other reasons, I thought it was the slickest-looking machine out there. I still have a 1983 Sears catalog where I'd priced out what my ideal system would have cost, with all the extras…

She scams

Seconded. I will not travel without my Bose QC15s. Good not only for travel, but I was using them last night while transcribing some interviews that had kind of ratty audio. What was hard to understand through speakers became a lot easier to decode, not just because of the sound going directly into my ears, but the…

That I would welcome. Right now getting out the vacuum is the surest way to make sure I don't see the cats for at least an hour.

[files lawsuit against Ray Parker Jr. for old times' sake]

And that's the news. Now, here's a song by Urethra Franklin!

They can drop by and razz Frank Tavares, who's still reading those underwriting announcements well into his retirement.

Hey! As the former treasurer of my high school's Latin club, I…I…ah, shit. I really can't argue with that.

I've spent several days watching clips of Letterman's NBC show on YouTube. That mocking, ironic sense is so pervasive in our culture now that I have to keep reminding myself what it was like when the world tended to play things straight, and the wiseass persona of a David Letterman was the bracing exception instead of…

I used to turn "The Longest Time" into a doo-wop version of "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?"

Yep. I'm a huge Warren Zevon fan and if I never hear "Werewolves of London" ever again, that'll be A-OK.

Those Recaro seats ain't gonna pay for themselves.

(Chicken Man explodes)

"Wow! Who's that, Mr. Wizard?"
"Oh, that's my friend Dr. Luis Alvarez! He's got a honeydew melon wrapped in fiberglass tape. Now, Timmy, watch what happens when he shoots it with this rifle…."

Dallas newspaper reporter Hugh Aynesworth wrote an excellent book a few years back titled JFK: Breaking the News. He covered the story literally from the moment it happened (he was there, watching the motorcade) on through the trials and investigations and all else. I'd never really taken Garrison that seriously, but…

The thing about A View to a Kill that always gets me is how much Christopher Walken's character resembles when Warren Zevon would do his concerts in a suit and tie.

(puts makeup on, fixes hair all pretty)

Amen.

I used to like being kind of a grump, but the schtick does wear on you something awful. I dropped the schtick, and now it's more like straight-out lack of patience for artifice, pretense, or inability to get to the point.