Some Fun II

My Calculating Life

2008-09-16T14:40:00.001-07:00

Right now, I have over 550 handheld LED calculators from the 1970s sitting in my basement. At one point, I was the third largest collector of these calculators in the country. How could this have happened to me?

Christopher Walken

2006-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

Inside the Mad, Mad Head of Christopher Walken
After this piece ran, Bob Dylan called the magazine to say that it was the best profile he'd read in the past 6 years!

Walken

Jenny McCarthy

2006-08-29T05:25:00.000-07:00

Jenny McCarthy

Long-distance Casting: It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion

2006-08-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

The Utterly Amazing World of Long-Distance Casting!
If I had this one to do over, I would leave out the business about how fat this one fellow was. I understand it caused him considerable pain, and I've felt bad about it ever since. I thought about cutting it at the time. I just didn't think about it hard enough, I guess. He didn't deserve what I did to him -- or, actually, what I allowed another fellow to do to him in a quote.

Motion

Fly Fishing with Lefty Kreh: a Bummer Tale

2006-08-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

Learning to Fly Fish with Lefty Kreh (a tale of woe...)
The magazine reported an unprecedented, record-breaking number of hate calls and letters after this one came out. It was flooded with subscription cancellations. Seems readers thought I had gored the sacred cow. Indeed, one of the magazine's largest advertisers -- Llyon's Publishers -- threatened to pull its advertising for a full year because of it. Wow!

Lefty

My Y2K Problem

2006-08-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Y2K Bug.
Living by the words in this piece cost me $250,000 at last count. It's probably a half a million at this point. Garffff!

Y2K

The Killer World of Pro Bodybuilding

2006-08-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

Size Matters: a report from the trenches of professional bodybuilding
Got many threats upon publication of this story -- threats of physical violence and lawsuit-type threats. None were carried out. Actually, everything I wrote in the piece was true, as was acknowledged by the bodybuilding buff magazines, which in print begain refering to me as a ``pencil necked geek.''

Bodybuilding

Tori Spelling

2006-08-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

This is the second story I've done about Tori Spelling. She gets a lot of heat, but I like her (though, as you'll see if you read my eBay story, I did skip out early during a lunch with her so I could go on an old-calculator hunt in L.A.'s 2nd-hand shops. Hey, you've got to have your priorities!)

Tori! Tori! Tori!

Inside the World of Professional Bass Fishing

2006-08-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

Inside the World of Professional Bass Fishing

My Short Happy Life as a Professional Gambler

2006-08-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

My Short Happy Life as a Professional Gambler

Neve Campbell Is Something Wild

2006-08-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

Neve Campbell Is Something Wild

Grady Stiles, the Lobster Boy

2006-08-27T09:53:00.001-07:00

Cruel and Unusual: Grady Stiles was born with claws for hands, flippers for feet, and a stone for a heart. This is the story of the bizarre life and gruesome death of the last of America's sideshow freaks.
This one has troubled me weekly ever since it came out. I. Can't. Shake. It. Really, I can't.

Lobster Boy

The World of Pro Bikini Contests!

2006-08-27T09:52:00.002-07:00

America's Cups: the girls of the professional bikini-contest circuit

Bikini

How I Got Unstuck

2006-08-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

My battle with my inner-investing demons
Unstuck

This Is Your Brain on eBay

2006-08-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

This Is Your Brain on eBay: a tale of addiction, loss, and little gain
During the writing of this story, I became a buyer, seller, and collector of LED pocket calculators from the 1970s. I now have 550 of them. And I no longer care about them. Can anyone say, OCD?

eBay