When I first played "I've Been to Guerrero" for my wife, she laughed out loud. That's exactly what I hoped she'd do -- and I bet you will, too.

I wrote "Restless" in Spring of 2001 and recorded it in early November, 2002. The finished product sounds a whole lot different than I imagined it would, but I like it a lot -- and I think Dick Dale would approve of the electric guitar part I came up with for the chorus.

I recorded the traditional blues spiritual "Motherless Children" in late October, 2002. My wife, Judy, provided the background vocals. I played everything else. I'm particularly proud of the slide guitar solo.

I completed "I Am a Desperate Man" in mid-October. My friend Kurt Iversen was kind enough to lend his support on lead guitar and backup vocals. His guitar solo is hot enough to burn your speakers down.

Since shortly after I moved to Mariposa, California, I've been bragging about my version of "Streets of Laredo". In early October, I finally decided to put my media where my mouth is -- and, false modesty aside, I think I may have produced the definitive version of this American folk classic.

In August, 2002, I recorded an instrumental piece called "Along the Mighty Merced".

In March, 2002, I recorded a song about the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center called "They Fell Down". It comes from the heart and I think it's one of the best things I've ever done.

I only wish it hadn't been necessary to write it..

. . .

I was lucky enough to spend three days as a contestant on the game show Jeopardy! in March of 1992. That was the most fun I had standing up, that entire year.

If you're a fan of the game, you can test your own trivia prowess against the three Final Jeopardy! questions I faced during my appearance on the show. And, if you like to play other types of games, as I do, you might like to try my play-by-email game, CitySmith. The rules are simple, but I think you'll find that figuring out a winning strategy is pretty challenging.

. . .

I also like to read and write science fiction stories and I'm gearing up to tackle a comprehensive biography of Alexander the Great. As part of that project, I've edited the public-domain Dryden translation of Plutarch's "Life of Alexander" to incorporate chapter numbers in an effort to make it easier for casual students of the canon to look up citations of Plutarch's biography from the footnotes of other texts.

Please be aware that my html-ized version of Plutarch's biography is 276,000 bytes in size, so, if you're on a slow connection, you may have to wait as long as a couple of minutes for it to download.