True story. A friend of mine was the lead designer on on a Star Trek video game. Late one night, he gets a phone call. “Hello?” “Hi, I’m Dave and I’d like to speak to Scott.” “This is Scott.” “Is this the Scott that’s the lead designer on the Star Trek game?” “It is.” “I […]
As some of you may have heard me rant about in the past, I used to be a sportswriter. And before I earned a spot covering all the major pro leagues and colleges in Southern California, I did my time covering high school sports. Everyone does it. A rite of passage, if you will. So, […]
My wife and her girlfriends (all 40ish mothers) are all about the YA novels. They trade them with each other. Whatever. I watch football and play video games. Everyone has their quirk. But when the Breaking Dawn movie came out, they had to make a special trip. A special trip to see the movie, for […]
I don’t deal well with personal challenges. Ninety percent of the time, I’m like, meh, it’s not worth it. I got bigger fish to fry, bigger beers to drink. But 10 percent of the time, I’m like, challenge accepted, and then I start sharpening various medieval weapons, because I’m going to hunt this challenge down, […]
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 […]