From everything I've ever heard or read, Vincent Price was the sweetest man in the whole wide world. He loved his children and he loved to spread the joy of his favorite pastime, art, through charity work and museums. But man, he was a great bad guy. So you're in good company if you join the tradition of really great guys who play epic villains.

A handy diversion.

Break as many legs as you've got!

You are so going to get spammed by Epson or Weyerhaeuser some day.

Well, that's a heck of a photo. The view of Molokini always makes me feel alot of things, very strongly, all at once. And then, half a heartbeat later, it makes me *relax.* I'm glad that you and your wife got to go see that view in person.

My family enjoys Eureka, and has done so since its premier. The show's been even more enjoyable to watch since you joined it. I'm definitely sorry that Bob will have to wake up soon.

So is making your own beer a coming of age thing? My dad said he tried to make his own beer at the same age, back in the early 70s. I don't know if he had *any* instructions. He said that one day he heard these popping sounds in the garage. Went out there to find the bottles exploding. Mom alleges that he'd tried to flavor the beer with things like bits of onion, though he gives her the stink eye and denies it. The funny thing is that now he makes a pretty good homemade wine. I wish you luck in your pursuit. If you use a recipe and follow the instructions, you should do very well.

Not saying I conflate sci-fi technobabble with real science, of course, I'm just sort of relating the emotion behind scientific jargon to the emotion behind well-acted technobabble, and saying that the latter might help convey the former.

If you've ever been to a scientific conference on any subject and seen one guy stand up in the lobby and call another guy, loudly, an absolute idiot over coffee just before they both leave together in the same cab, then you understand the emotional meaning of technobabble better than many people who get glassy-eyed and say, "Can we talk about something that *matters* now?" If an actor like yourself can convey that emotion effectively then maybe, just maybe, there will be one less person in the glassy-eyed, why-does-science-matter, those-researchers-are-wealthy-welfare-mooches set. So thanks for the hard work, seriously.

The definition of parody shifts a bit, but Hustler Magazine vs. Falwell pretty much cemented the bulletproof position of porn, and Hustler obviously lifted much of its material from actual advertising copy for an alcohol company, publicity shots of Falwell, etc.

Ditto. They already want you for something, I bet.

"This sort of thing hardly ever happens (the material we typically get for television just isn't this solid), so I'm making the most of it; it's pretty fun, and tremendously satisfying." Oh lord, don't write things like that. You always get replies like, "So, did show XX really write a weak character outline??" And you have to write something evasive and polite, or something that defends the work that writers have to do under their grueling schedule, or whatever, for every show you've ever been on. I will assume that every audition for everything you starred in involved well-fleshed material from a team of crack writers and an ace director who, you hope, will hire you again. I mean, clearly they had the discernment and depth to choose you. Some of those *other* auditions featured badly drawn, undefined characters. But you won't name names. :) Break a leg.

"I realize that this doesn't sound nearly as funny now as it did to me at the time." No, that's great; I intend to say something like that to my spouse the next time he idly wonders if he should get rid of the beard. Whenever he gives into the temptation, he regrets it and goes running back into the hairy faced fold tout-de-suite.

What is it with eighties era malls and "Putting on the Ritz?" I've got a few memories of that tune in similar places.

Geek diets - the game night diet is the big one, isn't it? My husband and I host Friday game at our house, so about every other week I toss something into the crock pot. Most of the gang don't bring as much junk food when they know that real home cooking is coming. I don't spend more than two dollars on fixings to make vegetarian red beans or hummus. They're ridiculously easy to make and a good way to kiss up to the GM. I haven't found anything else quite as easy and cheap.

Yay! Eureka is family viewing around our household. And I call it the Siffy Channel.

"I'm going to do the Snoopy dance until I fall down, now." I shall accompany you with the appropriate finger snapping and head bobbing. Yay!

I think the first anime that I saw on video was The Last Unicorn, and I loved it, of course. And there was all the after school stuff on UHF. But the first time I heard the word 'Japanime' (the nomenclature wasn't set in concrete, probably because we didn't have much of an internet) was at the school sci-fi club's showing of Akira. Somebody had gotten a tape with the voice dub. I don't think it was the scratchiest tape we'd ever attempted to watch. First, my mind was blown by the cinematic quality. Then I was all, "WTH?" as the story proceeded. And I think I skipped out on most anime viewing for the next four years. I think the original story writer said to himself, "You know, 2001 is just not byzantine enough. Maybe it could use a few buckets of blood, too." Sorry. Akira is almost certainly an extreme sort of film that is either loved or reviled by the viewer. There's not really any middle ground.

I don't have that TOS chirp on my phone, but it's not because I don't like it. It's because I hang out with too many geeks. I'm often in the sort of places where more than one person will check her phone if that chirp goes off. And on game night? Fuggedaboutit.

Hmm, I notice a trend here; you seem to have most of your mishaps in the kitchen.

Technically, it should be Le Bistro Oriental. But that's kind of the point, I suspect.

Weegee reportedly had to cheat to fit such a scene into his famous news photo "The Critic." He actually had his assistant liquor up a barfly in the Bowery, bring her to the opera, and let go of her as two rich society ladies landed on the red carpet for a waiting press. The Bowery lady's reaction to the society ladies was real, but she wouldn't have gotten to air her opinion without a bottle of wine and a ride uptown. But check out more of Weegee's photography from the 1940's and '50s. It might be your cup of tea.

Oh, that last line really was Sam Spade-ish. I call Guinness "The Beer that Eats Like a Meal."

I don't know if I saw a wonderful portent of the new year this evening, or a bad one. I'm sussing it out. I was at the grocery when an entire five-shelf section of champagne came crashing down on this woman in the liquor isle. She was surrounded by yards of broken glass, but so far as anyone could tell, she'd escaped with only an enourmous run in her stockings and an amazing, earth-shattering scare. I've got some good reasons to fear the new year, and this one was really really great, like a million snapshots of your favorite vacation, the one you retell over and over again until you bore your grandchildren. Anyway, it's interesting to read your summary and see what an interesting time you had, to go through your old snapshots. But I'm sitting in the den with my family and I've got to break out the bottle of sparkling apple juice. I'll wish everyone a Happy New Year. :)

I thought Wesley pretty much fulfilled each Whovian's mashup wishes in the most graceful way possible when he left with the Traveller. Though I'm afraid that an awful lot of geeks compared him to Adric. I'm glad that Wesley didn't meet the same fate.