(View entire post here)

It's always a roll of the dice at events you haven't done before; you never know if anybody's going to show up. Judy and I were whistling down the I-5 in the San Joaquin Valley, and the temperature was burnishing the golden hills at a hundred and thirteen degrees.

I was fortunate to be selected by the Autry National Center to kick off their book club at the Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles-it was to be the swan song of The Dark Horse tour. "It's the debut of the program, so there might not be very many people..."

I glanced at her. "Yep, I know."

If you haven't ever been, the Autry is my favorite museum in the world, and one of the few where you can ride your horse on the equine trails of Griffith Park, tie off to the hitching rails at the museum, and go in. Try that at the Guggenheim.  

When Gene Autry started the museum, he was adamant that it not be about the glorification of himself but more of a celebration of the entire West. Back in the late eighties, Judy and I were in LA when I started exhibiting symptoms familiar to every wife-I stood by the doors of stores and jingled the truck keys in my pocket and stood on sidewalks (not my natural element) and looked into the distance with my eyes set in a hard squint.

"Why don't you go to the Gene Autry Museum?"

I'd been to the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, California (now having moved to Branson), and though I loved Roy, hadn't enjoyed the experience. "I don't think I can stand to see Champion stuffed."

"It's not like that."

(View entire post here)

It was a mistake to have accepted Amy's invitation. We had been broken up for two years and the last thing I wanted was to rekindle any part of our relationship. But I feared that declining could somehow be misconstrued as me still being fearfully, immaturely, trapped in the past, unable to move forward and "just be friends," proof no doubt that I harbored feelings for her and lamented my decision to end the relationship.

So I said, "Yes, Amy, that sounds great. I'd love to see the performance with you."

The performance was by Zingaro, a French dance company who famously incorporated live horses into their act, and it was staged, for lack of an adequate venue, under a giant big top tent in Battery Park. It was all the rage in New York City. And it was also very expensive. So my motives in accepting were duplicitous.

(View entire post here)

In the winter of 2008, Perigee published a quirky paperback original called The No S Diet, by Reinhard Engels and Ben Kallen. More manifesto than prescriptive guide, the book presents a strikingly simple way to lose weight -- one that's easy to remember and (just as important) easy to stick to: no snacks, sweets, no seconds -- except on days that start with S (Saturdays, Sundays and special days).

The book grew out of software engineer Reinhard Engels's popular blog, and is the result of his own long quest to simplify the complicated, often overly complex weight-loss methods dieters adopt and then typically drop shortly before or after seeing results. It's one of a series of quirky programs Engels has dubbed Everyday Systems -- simple, commonsense solutions to everyday problems. (Some of the other problems his systems tackle are litigiousness, problem drinking, and idleness.)

Each of his solutions hinges on one simple premise: find an irresistibly simple way to eliminate excess.