For some reason, I decided to quit working at Disneyland. I don’t exactly know why. I think there was a girl involved. Wait, actually, yes, I know there was a girl involved. But then after a few months waiting tables in Newport Beach, I wanted to come back. I missed the mouse. So, I trekked [...]
I’ve been holding off on writing this one because it’s the very best of them all. It has everything: Death by curiosity Death by suffocation Death by drowning Death by chemical burn Death by generalized 70s malaise Death by miscommunication Actual death (not mine) It even has an actual birth (also not mine) mixed in [...]
The 5-year-old wanted to know something. “Mama, how many times have you crashed a car?” he asked. “None,” she said. “Daddy, how many times have you crashed your car?” “Are we going to count both me hitting things and things hitting me?” I said. “Yes.” “Are we only counting when I was driving? Or are [...]
The first time I visited New York City as an adult was March 1999. I had been to the city several times before as a kid, visiting They Who Must Not Be Named, aka the Rogan side of the family, so I had seen all the touristy sights. But this was the first time where [...]
Stick around for the comedy, but if you want to skip right to today’s lesson, it’s this: “Don’t get caught in the open during a hailstorm that has gone past ‘golf ball’ and has edged up to ‘kiwifruit.’” So, let’s get acquainted with pain: F = ma There it is. Pain. Just look at it. [...]
I was nearly crushed when I fell between two moored boats in a harbor. When I hit the water, I screamed like a little girl, clawed at my rescuers like a drowning chimpanzee and thoroughly embarrassed my preteen self. And I reacted this way not because of the danger of being, you know, crushed. You [...]
Everyone needs a friend like Eric Beaumont. Funny, creative, warm, welcoming. But most of all, generous. Generous with his time, his friendship, and certainly generous with all the quarters he spotted me for videogames. He and I both went into the videogames industry, on different paths, but my path was paved by the stream of [...]
When my mother heard I had embarked on a project to recount all the ways I’ve nearly met my maker (or at least the Angel Second Class in Charge of the Severely Maimed), she gleefully jumped in with additional suggestions. You know. Things that nearly killed me. That I was either too young or too scarred [...]
My favorite joke about The Wizard of Oz goes like this: At the end of the movie, the Wicked Witch of the West — how does she die? She melts when Dorothy hits her with a bucket of water. Where does Dorothy find the bucket of water? It’s sitting in the corner of a room [...]
Ever heard the urban legend about the girl that was killed at Disneyland, crushed between two moving walls on the America Sings attraction? Sadly, it’s not a legend. It really happened. There have been several folks that have died at Disneyland, and I almost joined them in ignominy. My story of near-legend status involves an aptly named [...]