How to Recover from a Bad shave

When I worked at Walt Disney World, the last thing I’d do every day before getting out of my car to walk in to work would be to remove the makeshift Elizabethan neck ruff of blood-soaked paper towels I had sticking out of my collar. One costume I had was maroon, and hid blood stains pretty well, but all of the others I wore were white, pastel blue, or mint green: colors that not only show, but often clash with blood stains.

For the record, these days I use a Panasonic electric razor on both my face and head, and am very happy with it.

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How to Reminisce

It is true that one Christmas my older brother asked for, and got, a sort of more complicated alternative to the Big Wheel called the Green Machine.  

It is also true that the same Christmas I got what we ended up calling the Batman Machine, which was mechanically identical to the Green Machine, but Batman themed. It was, objectively, better in every way, but Mark specifically asked for a Green Machine, so that’s what he got, while I accidentally got to be Batman.

Our younger brother got no Machine, because he was a toddler. Though, in a sense, he ended up getting both of them, because we’d both outgrown ours by time he was old enough to use them. That argument didn’t seem to make him feel better at the time. That’s the problem with toddlers. They lack foresight.

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How to Sway Someone to Your Political Opinion

The idea of murderers organizing into a political movement and holding rallies seemed more far-fetched at the time.

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How to Act When You Meet a Celebrity

When I worked at Walt Disney World, I encountered a few celebrities. The only time I made a legit fool of myself was at one of the hotels. I was working the front desk early on a Sunday morning. I had ducked down to organize some of my forms or something, and I became aware that someone was standing in front of the desk. I stood up, started to say good morning, and froze up when I saw that I was face to face with a very famous woman whose work I happen to admire a great deal. My mind ground to a halt, and I stammered at her for what felt like a half hour.

The hope is that someday she’ll want to make a TV show out of one of my books, and we can share a laugh about it. That’s highly unlikely though, and if I did end up in a meeting with her I’d probably just start stammering again.

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How to Face Your Ancestor's Misdeeds

There is no reason to believe that the famous chemist who developed “The Meyer Method” was in any way related to me. In fact, there’s ample reason to believe that he isn’t, simply because he was famous, and a chemist.

There are many spelling variants of what is, phonetically, the same last name: Meyer. There’s an old legend that all Meyers used to be part of the same family, but the many Meyer brothers got into a terrible fight and all changed the spellings of their names as a way to disown each other.

It’s just an old legend, and probably isn’t true. But, having seen the way my father and my uncles deal with their differences, I can believe it.

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How to Avoid a False Bargain

Yet another comic based on a real conversation with a coworker. He bought his girlfriend a bottle of perfume he selected because it was the largest bottle for the lowest price.

This was in Orlando. There are a lot of strip mall perfume stores in Orlando, most of them called “PERFUME.” They’re usually next to stores called “LUGGAGE,” “ELECTRONICS-SONY,” and “T-SHIRTS.” For some reason, tourist destinations seem to draw certain kinds of stores, even if they don’t fit the area’s primary draw. If you’re on a romantic trip to the Bahamas, perfume makes sense. Same goes for Hawaii or Cabo San Lucas, I guess. But if you’re going whale watching in Juneau, or spending a July day at Universal Studios Orlando, the last thing you want is something that will make you smell more.

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How to Capitalize on Current Trends

This strip was written about the show Castle. The basic premise, a crime fighting novice with a seemingly unrelated skill set teaches an irritated cop how to do his-or-her (usually, on these shows, her) job, is so widespread now that I’ve heard it referred to as “The Castle Formula.”

They’ve announced a new Star Trek series following the life of a now much older Captain Picard. As I said on Facebook shortly after the announcement, I sincerely hope it follows the Castle formula. I’d call the show Murder It So.

If I were writing it, there’d be a retired Borg who lives nearby, and Picard would always try to pin the murder on him at first.

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How to Assert Your Intellectual Superiority

I did, in fact, go to radio broadcasting school. Very early in my time there, our chief instructor called us all together and made us watch a documentary about how the radio industry was dying, and then told us that he strongly suggested that we do something—ANYTHING—else with our futures than go into radio.

Later on, during a job interview at a radio station, a program director told me straight up that most program directors avoid hiring anyone who went to broadcasting school.

We all have moments in our lives when we wish we had listened better to one of our teachers. That job interview was one such moment for me.

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How to Handle Shocking News of a Highly Personal Nature

I picture a commercial that’s just closeups of bloodshot eyes while a Sarah McLachlan song plays. (Not the song you’re thinking of. It’s been done to death. I’d use something inappropriate, like Your Love is Better than Ice Cream.) Then a voice-over would say that your donation will make it possible to give these poor afflicted souls a squirt gun full of VISINE.

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How to Find Your Roots

One of my uncles’ favorite stories is about the time they got the pigs drunk on ’shine. It’s a proud heritage.

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