John Ritter RIP

I put the prat in pratfall. Yesterday, while talking to someone in the office, I managed to step backwards into an empty box and to trip backwards into the doorway of my office. The fall was quite spectacular, although this time no holes were created in the drywall (and they still can't prove that I was responsible for that one so the less said the better). Actually, when I was a kid, I remember always being impressed by John Ritter's pratfalls on Three's Company, and on my U-12 youth soccer team, the coach called me "Chevy Chase" because I ended up on the ground so often. Of course, the fact that the field we played on was full of crawfish holes and other divots probably played a role in that. I also turned it to an advantage: as sweeper, I got quite good at going to the ground for tackles and clears.

Now I just use a pratfall to help disguise/accentuate my natural clumsiness. For example, a few years ago we were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I was dashing across the street. Somehow I tripped on a loose cobblestone, something in the street, my feet — I have no idea what I tripped over — I went down well, but quasi-somersaulted back to my feet, knocking my head on the curb in the process and almost smashing into some people at a bus stop. I have no idea where this story is going, but it still makes me laugh ... unlike the time in Amsterdam when I darted across a street to get to an ATM (we were taking some advertisers to dinner and my European editor and I both realized we were short of cash). I made it across the eastbound bike lane, tram tracks and car lane and I was past the westbound car lane when my foot hit the westbound tram tracks wrong and I stumbled right in front of a bike. The ankle was twisted badly that time, but I managed to hop back across the street and to enjoy dinner. Hurm, reading back over this, maybe there's a lesson to be learned about jaywalking.

Last night Evelin found a cucumber hidden in the garden. It hadn't grown into a monster yet, but it was close. We chopped it up, added some diced onion and chopped tomatoes (from the farmers' market, ours are still a few weeks away from being harvested), and then drizzled it all with olive oil, merlot vinegar, and some salt. The peel was a bit tough, but the flavor was quite good.