I'm going to dispute the claim that St. Elsewhere, as excellent as it was, was the first of the high-quality medical drama series on TV. To me, that honor goes to 1969's "The Bold Ones: The New Doctors": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063874/

It ran for only a short time, and sporadically, in parallel with other Bold Ones series about politicians, lawyers, and police, all of which were every bit as good. I was 20 when it aired, and I still remember being shocked that TV could be so superb.

Dan Henderson

Sunnyvale, CA

Interesting that this post should arrive just 24 hours after someone pointed me to an absolutely hilarious Mrs. Hughes. Check her out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWrj9TaA0Mc

Just to be clear, I have no connection with her whatever other than as a new fan.

Garrison,

I'd like to apologize on behalf of a friend of a friend, who apparently pestered you for an autograph in the San Francisco library enough that you finally just packed up and left to get away from her. We should be much more considerate than that.

Thanks for all the wonderful work you have done over all these years, and shared with us. My favorites are the joke shows on PHC, and The Midlife Crisis of Dionysus.

Warm regards,

Dan

The comedian Gallagher said he planned to publish an edition of Playboy for married guys: Every month, same girl.

We can preach all we like about the control our cognitive sophistication gives us (or should give us) over primal urges, but biology remains destiny. NPR's This American Life had a fascinating show recently on testosterone. One of the essays told the story of a man whose testosterone dropped to zero. He lost the desire for *everything*: food, social contact, entertainment. Absolutely nothing seemed to matter very much. A female-to-male transsexual spoke about the effect testosterone injections had on her. She was incapable of preventing herself from checking out the bodies of hot women she passed on the street, and she did this even having *been* a woman and *knowing* the social implications of that behavior.

We've also been throwing around words like "cheating" without defining them. To some people, any lustful thought about a person other than the spouse is cheating. To others, any masturbation, regardless of what goes on in your head, is cheating. If you're in a committed relationship, you'd better understand explicitly what behavior is out of bounds to your partner. You might be surprised what you signed up for when you took your vows.

There seem to be some common misperceptions about polyamory in a few of the comments so far. Couples who want to expand their sexual circle either have affairs or become swingers. Polyamory is about loving more than one person at a time, openly and honestly. There are some excellent resources at polyamory.org for anyone who is curious about it. It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that as a species we are not naturally monogamous, the strict definition of which is to bond with precisely one other person for life. Even the most virtuous among us are usually serial monogamists at best. If we were truly monogamous, it wouldn't occur to us to have words in our language that express such concepts as "divorce," "affair," "cheat," "slut," and "stud." Too many of us struggle with the cultural condemnation reserved for people who dare to acknowledge our capacity to love more than one other person at a time, so we settle for restrictions on our emotional lives that do not serve our hearts. At what cost?

I have this fantasy every time I read yet another example of "men's sexuality = bad; women's sexuality = good" of being able to wave a magic wand and completely eliminate in every male all the desire to look at any woman's body. Then I'd sit back and see what kinds of articles would be written commenting on the change. Whaddaya think? What percentage would express unalloyed relief and celebration?

This column brought up several random memories:

When the 737 was first introduced, it was referred to by pilots as the FLUF (Fat Little Ugly F*cker). The 747 was Fat Albert, or, when decked out in solid orange by Braniff, The Great Pumpkin.

I remembered a story from Flight International back when the Concorde debuted. One little old lady boarding for her first flight in it, and expecting a futuristic marvel, was greeted by the captain at the door, peered around inside, and said, "It looks just like a regular airplane." The captain swelled up a bit and replied, "That, madam, was the difficult bit."

As for the spaciousness of the A380, I expect that to last no more than two fiscal quarters. At that point they will decide, as did all the airlines who bought the 747, to hell with the interior lounges and bars, we're going to cram all the seats in it we possibly can. I'd bet money on it.

Dan

Son of an American Airlines captain of DC-6's through DC-10's

You never told us what you thought of the movie.

What you did say was, in part, "This would not be happening in New York," I would say. "If this were New York, every home in the Ninth Ward would have fucking TiVo by now."

Really? What about Ground Zero? It's been *seven* years since that happened.