On a recent trip to New York, the following thing happened; I am using my Macbook Pro and suddenly Finder and Safari both lock up, showing me the rolling beach ball of eternity and refusing to do much else. Consequently,…

He was standing at the head of the line, holding up the head of the line, at Subway while we all waited for him while we all waited for the train South (the South train) to allow us to board….

I get a cleaning from my dentist — or, more accurately, my dentist’s dental assistant — twice a year. Prior to about 10 years ago, I hadn’t visited a dentist for most of my adult life unless I absolutely had…

This is, in fact, the very last Life Serial. Feel free to steal the title, I’ll think up another one. Writing about oneself obsessively (as if there is any other kind) becomes boring and trivial after a while. You begin…

The following essay was read verbatim at Fray Café in Austin, Texas on Sunday, March 11. 2001. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. Mine is not one of them. I was raised by my mom to be…

I left Los Angeles weather behind in San Francisco and was greeted with San Francisco weather in Los Angeles when the glassdog jet touched down at LAX. Typical. It was like me, being me, to bring the poor weather with…

Anyway… Anonymity is a wonderful thing. Public Anonymity is an even more wonderful thing. Personally Identified Public Anonymity is the best thing of all. Anonymity means no one knows who you are, so you can get away with everything with…

Anyway… The fallout from my last admittedly knee-jerk Serial made me sit up and look around a little closer, mostly because what I kept reading in some responses to my own decision not to use Napster is that Napster and…

Anyway… Wouldn’t it be nice if everything were free? Wouldn’t it be great if we could walk onto a car lot, pick a car, get in it and drive it away? Wouldn’t it be fabulous to be driving that new…

Anyway… I hear that a lot of people are insane. I mentioned to my very good friend Ben Brown the other day that I enjoyed the writing of a particular person with whom he was acquainted, and he said that…

Anyway… After the Cool Site of the Year awards in 1997 (being the 1996 awards) I sat with Derek Powazek and Andy Gems at a table at a Mexican restaurant in The Mission and agreed—over a pitcher of Margaritas—that the…

Anyway… Sometimes I surprise myself with my own stupidity. And after the number of years (decades) that I’ve been dealing with it, one might think that by now I’d have learned to take a step back and pause before I…

Anyway… There is something hazy and indistinct about San Francisco, made all the more so after another bout of projectile vomiting behind the drag karaoke bar down from the Safeway on Market. What was I thinking, anyway, downing that bucket…

Anyway… I have a headache right now. I should just go to bed and wait out the rest of this day lying under the covers ignoring reality, drifting in the soft, warm comfort of dreams and silence. But what I’m…

Anyway… I know what I said. I said I’d have a lot of time on my hands while things were “coming together.” I said that I’d probably be posting a lot more because I’d have nothing better to do, and…

Anyway… As detailed some weeks ago—and, yes, I’m aware that it has been weeks since my last entry here (and I’m a little disappointed that no one bugs me about that anymore like they used to, which either means you…

Anyway… Three things that have changed since I’ve become unemployed (in the traditional sense): My alarm clock no longer goes off. I no longer dread Mondays. I cut off all my hair. I have a really round head. Like a…

Anyway… I quit my job today. I’ve never been fired from a job, unless you count my first job but then I wanted to get fired because I hated it and I couldn’t tell my mother I quit that job…

Anyway… By popular demand, more missing scenes from “Star Wars—Episode I—The Phantom Menace”. By the way, did you know that “Star Wars—Episode IV—A New Hope—The Special Edition” was the first film ever with three hyphens and four titles? It’s a…

Anyway… I believe it was John The Baptist who said, “Holy shit! Do you know who that is?” Celebrities come from California. They’re born and raised there before being set loose on an unsuspecting public who thought they wanted John…

Anyway… Being sick when it’s hot outside is… sick. I mean, it makes you feel more sick than you are, because you feel like you have a fever even if you don’t have a fever. And you sleep all sweaty…

Anyway… I’m sitting at home eating my late lunch on Sunday because I slept in as usual because I was up late the night before as usual not doing anything too exciting except maybe talking on the phone or looking…

Anyway… I saw “The Phantom Menace” about a week after it came out at a 9:00 show on a Thursday. The audience was about, oh, two-thirds full which was less than I expected and hinted that word of mouth on…

Anyway… I started working out at a gym, recently. I hate it lots and lots. I figured I had to do something because my waist size has recently passed the big four-oh, and that to me is what can honestly…

Anyway… My father was dead before I started Kindergarten. I can remember my mother telling me, on the morning she was dressing me for my first day at school, that it was a shame that he had not lived long…

Anyway… I forgot my mother’s birthday. Again. I seem to manage this every year and one would think I’d have carved the date into my flesh somewhere so I’d stop forgetting to remember, but every year I forget and every…

Anyway… Short impression, goes like this; “This is CNN. Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica.” And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you get on your dress from the Gap, which…

Anyway… I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. Well, I watched Cher sing the National Anthem because, c’mon, Cher? Singing the National Anthem? At the Super Bowl? On Fox? Could there be a more complete pop culture experience than that? And…

Anyway… I forgot I wrote this. See what happens when you get home late from a delayed flight, drunk on wine and full of fish? And, yes, I know I haven’t updated in like six weeks. Yes, I know that…

Anyway… Where is the Web headed? What is the Web good for? Here we are several years into the painful, messy birth of this place and there is still no clear answer to either of those questions. Or there are…

Anyway… I have no idea what I’m going to write about, so this is an experiment of sorts. I suppose I could start by relating my not-fun weekend, which was all Microsoft’s fault. (At the end of this tale, some…

Anyway… The panel on Personal Storytelling went on for two hours. I arrived with my satchel of laptop and no expectations, knowing only that I would need to introduce myself for 10 minutes and wondering why the hell I was…

But enough about Monica… There’s this guy. When I come to work each morning, I see this guy sitting in a little tiny roller skate car, like a Ford Aspire or something, really tiny car, and he sits there in…

Anyway… Now that it’s all out in the open — or should I say, hanging over the bathroom sink — what We The People, have from Mr. Starr’s endless “Whitewater Investigation” is a sad, lurid, impersonal and rather badly written…

Dear Santa, How’s tricks? I know you weren’t expecting to hear from me — or anyone, probably — so soon but I have a feeling that some of the stuff I want won’t be around later so I thought I’d…

Anyway… I was gonna write about that Web Standards thing here, but, eh, I’m tired of it, frankly. I mean, the bottom line is that most people don’t really care about it and those that do all seem to be…

Anyway… A recent Red Herring article pointed me to a new search service on the Web called NewHoo. Rather than dwell on the fact that the service has abducted Yahoo!’s classic interface right down to how the categories are displayed…

Hello and welcome to the finals in the World Championship of Web Journal Writing here on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. I’m Al Michaels and with me here in the booth is my longtime colorman and sweatshop foreman, Frank Gifford….

“Sanity” was playing at a theatre in a Mall near the college. I think. Hell, at this point it’s amazing I can remember what I did on any given night. It was a midnight show, tempting me to stock up…

The party wasn’t happening. Yet. We were abnormally and embarrassingly early so that the idea of “blending into the crowd” was completely out of the question since “the crowd” was two women sitting on a couch. We wandered into the…

I dislike flying. I’ve said that before, haven’t I? But it’s one of those things one cannot overemphasize. I was filled with anticipation about this trip in particular since I’d never been to Austin but I once lived with someone—Debra,…

Heard about the Technorealists? People I know are already sick to death of the term and the very idea of this new word and the dozen people from either coast who knocked their heads together and came up with it….

The Oscars get presented Monday night. Does anyone still care? Titanic tied a record for the number of nominations for a single picture with 14. Pretty amazing! That breaks down to, what, a little over US$14million per nomination. And the…

Time once again to step back and look at the big picture of what’s happening on the Web landscape. We’re well into 1998 and there’s plenty of crap raining down on us, as usual, that we’ll have to sort out…

So, the company that owns The Psychic Friends Network has declared bankruptcy. What, didn’t they see this coming? I don’t believe in psychics. Usually when they’re displaying their incredible gifts on TV—all them ladies sitting on this long couch while…

Good golly I’m bored by all this endless debate about Clinton’s sexual proclivities. Last Sunday night, “60 Minutes” dragged out some out-takes from an interview they did in 1992 with the Clintons where they weren’t allowed to answer any questions….

Ah, a fresh start. The bad part about this going in that I did not have to think about before (and which lack I shall attempt to recapture) is “audience awareness.” I am now THX rather than CB radio. I…