I have my father to thank for a love of horror movies. We were the first house in the neighborhood to have a vcr (Betamax or otherwise) and I was fortunate to have parents who not only brought home all the great movies we remember so well... the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, HALLOWEEN, Larry Cohen's movies, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE!, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, PHANTASM and on and on and on... but who also watched these films, loved them, and seemed to have no real concern over letting my siblings and I watch them over and over and over again.

In honor of Father's Day, my assembled family just watched the opening chapter of Stephen King and George Romero's CREEPSHOW together.

God, I loved this stuff when I was a kid. Over and over, I wore that VHS tape down...

They say these sort of deaths come in threes. Who is next? Will it be you? Will it be me?

Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died aged 90 in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, it was confirmed tonight.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

The visionary author of over 100 books, who predicted the existence of satellites, was most famous for his short story "The Sentinel," on which filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" was based.

He was also credited with inventing the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality.

Clarke was the last surviving member of what was sometimes known as the "Big Three" of science fiction alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.

So nice to upgrade to Mac Office 2008 with a new Treo 755p (not to mention the OSX upgrade to Leopard)... only to find that Microsoft no longer includes a conduit for syncing Entourage to mobile devices.

Over the past couple of years, I've really become a Mac devotee -- everything I used to make fun of in those I'd jokingly considered cultists for whom Steve Jobs crapped only sunshine and rainbows. But this is awful, and a huge step back from the point of serious business consideration.

How can the makers of my beloved Xbox 360 drop the ball with such thunderous and dramatic consequence here?

I feel cut off... maybe it's a good thing?

Aww, they're so cute...

As Andrew Sullivan writes on his blog alongside this embedded video, "All resemblances to the Obama-Clinton fight are accidental."

Indeed.

Heading out shortly to visit the ancestral homeland of Suffolk County, Long Island... home of classic rock radio and the really funny Christmas jingles and ditties I really do miss.

God I love the Cheech & Chong. Does it get more seasonal than "Santa Claus and His Old Lady"?