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.

This video is of an appearance by my old KLSX afternoon hosts Larry Wachs and Eric Von Haessler, the Regular Guys, after they got fired in 1997 (after I was already out the door myself). They went on the KTLA Morning News, where they pretty much took over the show for a segment, running circles around Sam Rubin, sparring with an off-camera Mark Kriski, and, apparently, boring Carlos Amezcua. Eric had 90s hair, his son was still little, and Larry was still working on getting the knack of shaving his head without stubble.

I found this while looking at old VHS tapes without labels to see what was on them; I had forgotten I had this one. It's a fun artifact of something that has some peripheral connection to my own career. And the guys are alive and well and on Rock 100.5 in Atlanta.

First, I like how Televisa's soccer coverage includes the dancing skeleton for Dia de los Muertos. If only Fox's football robot was a skeleton instead:

And this sign was taped to a traffic sign on my running route:

Whatever happened, this is kind of a sweet thing. I wonder if Theresa saw it.

It hasn't let up. I spent time at the opening convention cocktail party, but otherwise I've been trying to get work done. Nerdist has a new design, and it took time to figure out the new system and what we need to do to make posts look right; the column, which was due this evening, is much like performing root canal on myself. So that'll have to wait.

The convention? More talk radio. But you could have guessed that. While you ponder what a convention on the heels of more mass firings in the business must be like, I'm going to go watch the end of the World Series game and hope that the headache subsides enough to let me sleep.

Here, this is great:

Okay, it made ME laugh.

He's trying to tell us something.

Same dog on rival WTVJ:

Also on WTVJ, here's an unusual way to change the channel on your TV, a channel-changing poodle:

Awesome.