fine whine

I'm torn... should I go to the Ohio State Fair today? I've heard some strange tales indeed, of fried Twinkies and dangerously unsafe rides, but neither is as tempting as they would've been in my youth. Am I getting old or just grown-up?

OK, you got me, this was a feeble excuse to put "fair and balanced" on the page, in slight defense of Al Franken, whose newest book was set to be taglined as such until the Fox News Channel brought forth legal action. While I can see the validity of their claim, I also recognize the sheer ridiculousness of going after a satirist and former SNL cast member. And all the cool people were doing it, I was told...

I figured out what I am going to collect once I have disposable income. I want to have cool watches. I've been checking out tokyoflash and a bunch of other exotic watch sites and truthfully, I want most of them. Not all, some really are ugly, but I want a bunch. So when I can afford it, well, I'll be set.

I was wandering through a large bookstore today, and found myself looking for some pretty niche titles:

• Chicken soup for the vegetarian's soul
• Mensa for Dummies
• Better time management in just 30 hours a day

Funny, I couldn't find them.

Today I was flipping through No one you know by New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan, and coincidence struck.

It hit my foot.

The book fell from my hands and the corner hit my toe. It's not a big book, but it's not small either and as it is hardcover, the edges are a bit sharp. So it stung a little. I reached down to pick it up and noticed the cartoon shown on the back, captioned "If I can hurt just one person with this book, then it will all have been worth it."

Okay, when I was a kid David Hasselhoff was the coolest guy ever, based solely on his turn as charismatic badass Michael Knight. Back then I tried to catch every episode of Knight Rider, and when I grew up I think I wanted to be Michael Knight—my days of wanting to be a paleontologist long over. Now that I'm working my way through John Sandford's Prey books, I see the character Lucas Davenport as what Knight Rider's creators were working toward: A powerful and intelligent man equally capable of sensitive loving and ruthless violence. Sandford gets it right, Hasselhoff did not, but Lucas Davenport only drives a Porsche, not K.I.T.T., the coolest car ever imagined.

Anyway, Hasselhoff is more frightening and off-putting in this video than he ever hoped to be in the show.

Just a quickie: I'm starting to really like 007:Nightfire on the PS2. It helps that I only paid five bucks for it, but even had I paid twice that I'd be enjoying it. It's very playable and the "movie" is better than a couple of the more recent 007 events I've bumped into.