On Saturday, we walked once again in the Revlon Run/Walk for Women 2012, and it raised money for cancer research; We walk to honor Fran's survival, and our friends and family who have fought the disease, but also to honor Phyllis Simon, who we've missed for 17 Mother's Days now. This 10 seconds of drumming is from the band that greets walkers and runners at the end of the walk every year:

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

It's "Homer," I believe, the mascot the Braves put in because anything connected to the name "Braves" would be, you know, a little racist. Not that it stops them from chopping. But that baseball-head HAS to be the stuff of nightmares for little kids all across the South. Geez, he's disturbing.

That's how WINS in New York addressed ad agency questions about its about-to-debut all-News format. It's not like WINS was the first all-News station; Gordon MacLendon had gotten there first, at XETRA in Tijuana and at WNUS in Chicago -- but it was the first in New York and far more ambitious than MacLendon could afford. People really had nothing to go on, no idea what it would sound like, or whether, as the last question asks, they'd run out of news. 47 years later, they haven't run out.

He always loved Sinatra, so, Dad, here's one I know was a favorite. Happy birthday:

2. Lose weight or you'll look fat.

3. Invest in a comb, why don't you.

4. Maybe you should wear your glasses on camera, because the squinting makes you look like a fish.

5. Nice voice, Kermit.

"Zou Bisou Bisou," by the way, not "Zooby Zooby Zoo." Very French-like.

It's been an interesting few months.

I've been a little -- no, a LOT busy with my day jobs. Both All Access and Nerdist are going extremely well, but my responsibilities for both have left practically no time to do anything here. Hence, the silence. And then, unbeknownst to me because I never got a notice and I don't remember everything, this domain briefly expired. But when I discovered that, I took care of it. And now, we're back.

So, let's throw up a little thing I found in the interim, circa 1966, ad artwork from the legendary Jack Davis with the lineup of proto-talk station WNBC New York, featuring Brad Crandall, Big Wilson, Bill Mazer, Edith Walton, and Mimi Benzell. That was a different kind of talk radio, to be sure. I remember listening to Crandall, Wilson, and Mazer; only Mazer's still with us, at 92 years old, having been on radio and TV in New York forever and giving us "Sports Extra," which for sports fans in the New York area in the 1970s was must-watch TV every Sunday night in the pre-ESPN era.

Okay, see? Back. I won't be posting every day like the old days, but I WILL be posting. An eight-year habit's hard to break. In the meantime, there's also Twitter, All Access, and Nerdist, too.

I had no idea fishing poles grew like that, complete with lure. You learn something new every day.

I'm not big on carolers in general, and carolers in costume less so. It's just a little twee for my taste. The crowd was polite, but most folks just kept eating and chatting. It's hard to get a place where it's 68 degrees and sunny in December to feel like Christmas, and harder still when it's in a La Salsa.

But I'm not complaining. In fact, this is a great time. Work is- dare I say it- fun. I get to write about interesting things for supportive people. I'm very lucky. And grateful.

But it hasn't left a lot of time for pmsimon.com. I remain, however, hopeful that I can get back to it more often soon. After all, here I am, typing with one hand and maneuvering a Cherry Coke with the other. It CAN be done

I'll bet he or she is indeed special.

What happened was this: Yesterday, the car suddenly lost power, then regained it, while I was driving. I made it home, checked the battery, and saw that it was close to totally discharged. I charged it up with my handy heavy-duty charger, but while the voltage showed it was charged up, the meter also showed that the engine was not charging the battery anymore. Ah, well, alternator replacement time. With the number of miles I have on the car, it was bound to happen. So I made an appointment for today.

And then I realized, you know, I'm about 20,000 miles past the replacement time for the timing belt. I can't be taking that chance, not with CES and a drive across the desert on tap soon. That costs a lot. But so does replacing your entire engine.

So I was looking at a lot of money for repairs, but it had to be done. And early this morning, battery charged, I hit the road for the long drive to the mechanic.

Of COURSE I didn't make it. What do you expect?

I ALMOST made it. It was only as I approached the crest of Western Avenue near PV Drive North that I noticed the voltage meter in the cigarette lighter was dropping rapidly. I swung up PV Drive as it turned into Vermont, and I got all the way to Vermont at PCH, in front of Kaiser Permanente Hospital, when the meter fell to the point where I knew I wasn't going to make it. I was stuck at a long red light in heavy traffic and the idiot lights all began to flicker. I imagine that pilots get a sinking feeling when they realize that their attempts to keep their planes aloft aren't working; this wasn't quite that serious, but my stomach sank nonetheless. The light turned green, and I shouted a blue streak telling people to get out of the way so I could get across PCH and pull into a driveway or something. I floored it, but the car only made a buzzing sound. Yet, it moved enough to coast one last time across the six lanes, then came to rest on the shoulder in front of a school and just went blank. The hazard lights wouldn't even work. Nothing. Dead.

But I was lucky. I got out of traffic. I was in an easily identifiable place. And the Auto Club sent someone out within a half hour, and the tow took all of five minutes, because the shop was that close. Now, the car's fixed and running. All's well that ends well.

Except I'm still out a lot of money. But it beats what it would cost to buy a new one.

How does a show with Jennifer Aniston, Wayne Knight, Tom Kenny, and others, created by David Mirkin of The Simpsons and Get a Life infamy and with interstitial cartoons by Bill Plympton and Charlie Kaufman -- THE Charlie Kaufman, of Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich fame, fail? Maybe because it wasn't that funny. But it was on Fox, and it lasted 18 episodes. I saw it a couple of times. It wasn't memorable.

It's bad enough that they actually felt the need to explain who Tom and Jerry are and include the general plot of the cartoons, but they couldn't even properly spell "too." You have to figure that someone at the firm that provides the listings has one job, to get this stuff right, and can't even do that.

Not that we need listings to know what "Tom and Jerry" is. But, still.

That's not to say that I'm not going to continue to do this thing. It is to say that I'm not going to worry about missing a day here and there anymore. When I started this thing over 8 years ago, the intention was to write something every day, just to prove to myself that I could. I've more or less done that, but the introduction of Nerdist on top of All Access means that I'm writing about pop culture, the general topic of this blog, all day. and once I'm finished with what sometimes is an 18 hour work day, the last thing I want to do is to write more.

I will write more, of course. I can't stop cold turkey. But, for now, if there are days when everything stands still around here, you'll know why.