So, prior to being diagnosed with sarcoidosis last year, I was in the middle of a heavy-duty regimen of dental care repairing the effects of being too long without dental insurance on my gums. (Kids, don’t try this at home.)

I was just at the end when I went into the hardcore downward spiral, and missed my follow-up appointments and all the rest. (I was actually in surgery on the day I should have been getting my teeth looked at, if I remember correctly.) My illness precluded really focusing on getting back in the swing of things for several months. Today, I went back for my first cleaning since the operation. It didn’t go great — I’m feeling pretty thrashed right now after all the digging around in my mouth with The Hook of Doom and all the rest.

I did learn, from my horse-crazy hygienist, that horses can get sarcoidosis. I now have to come to terms with the realization that I will never run in the Kentucky Derby.

City Manager Podegracz: City moving forward, Special Education rate among state’s lowest and other stories.

• Yes, a story that was supposed to appear in the paper did not, although it appeared for a few hours on the Web site, due to how the workflow goes from paper to Web site. (The story was pulled for editorial reasons that I agree are sound but are probably more properly discussed on the Hesperia Star blog, if anyone cares.)

When I was born, the world was jamming to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye. Not a bad little tune and possibly an auspicious song for my later career.

What song was #1 when you were born?

It was a bug hunt.

Last week, the Daily Press formally launched its new digital version. For now, this full digital version of the paper is free, but at some point in the future, it’ll require a subscription, as I understand it.

I’m curious as to how the public responds to this. I don’t think it’s a great secret that Internet advertising isn’t turning in a great profit for anyone. As newspapers move towards a future where news-on-paper isn’t their main way of reaching readers, a more viable model than the current systems has to be found. Advertising on give-it-all-away Web sites isn’t working, and people are disinclined to register for newspaper sites (those ads pay more, since advertisers actually know who’s looking at them) and that leaves the industry to find new alternatives.

And that brings us to the Daily Press’ ePaper. If it’s successful, you can look for a Hesperia Star ePaper to follow.

I’ve been invited to take part in Read Across America Day this Wednesday, March 1. I’ll be reading … something to third graders at Topaz Elementary School here in Hesperia.

(The national day is March 2, coinciding with Dr. Seuss’ birthday. I’m not sure why Hesperia is doing it on Wednesday instead.)

Judging by the ratings, I was the only one watching the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin Torino. I guess it’s just me, but I find skiing events (which seem to make up half of the Olympics) a lot more compelling than 99 percent of the summer games.

One of my favorites is the biathlon, which grew out of real-world concerns (”Hey, Ingmar, the family’s hungry and we’re snowed in. Go shoot us some food and do it before dark!”) instead of dubious events like Aerobic Dance and 99,000 different gymnastics events. Cross-country skiing, for those who haven’t done it, only looks easy: In reality, it’s exhausting and hard. Combine that with precision shooting — five bullets, five targets, and a lap around the penalty loop for every miss — and you’ve got a race where the sub-events actually make the other one harder. Trying to shoot steady after racing through the snow for 30 minutes ain’t easy. (In comparison, the triathlon, while certainly a demanding event, is three cardiovascular events that are mostly complimentary.) Great stuff.

And while the summer games have been marred in recent years by an obsession with Americans-only in the TV coverage, in the winter games, since the Americans didn’t have a chance in many of the events, they just went with the folks who were contenders. It was great seeing Estonia win their first winter games medals ever and watching the travails of Norway and Austria, two powerhouses having rough years. (Even though I haven’t been to Austria in decades, I find myself rooting for them in the winter games.) Maybe the lack of American focus hurt the ratings — I’m sure some TV executive is saying they should have spent all their time on #14 or whatever, medals be damned — but I’d like to think there are more people like myself, Jenn and Peter who actually enjoy seeing the smaller countries (without tour buses for individual athletes) excel.

TiVo was practically a must-have for the games, with some events only running in the middle of the night, but often being nearly uncut if so.

Now I have to start counting down the days to Vancouver in 2010.

Once upon a time, Tony Scott took a script by a then-unknown auteur named Quentin Tarantino and gave us the hyperkinetic, color-drenched True Romance. While it never got the raves of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, it was, in its own way, a great film.

Fast forward more than a decade, and Scott reaches for that same bottle that once contained the lightning and tries to drink from it a second time. This time around, he has once again assembled a who’s who of actors (including Christopher Walken, who had a memorable scene in True Romance facing down some very unhappy mobsters), cranks up the color and hyper-kinetic style and … doesn’t quite end up with a great film.

Domino is a good film.

A fun film.

But not a great film.

The problem is the script. While Tarantino’s scripts appear to careen wildly back and forth, they actually have a great deal of structure and he’s a disciplined writer who knows where he’s going and only includes what’s needed to get there, even if he enjoys faking the audience out about the final destination.

Domino, instead, ultimately becomes fairly flabby and overly long and it suffers the one fatal flaw such a film should never have: There are moments where it’s simply boring.

Having said that, it’s a film worth seeing. The all-star cast (including career-redeeming turns by two former 90210 stars), the music and the cinematography almost make up for what the script lacks.

Recommended for fans of Keira Knightley, the amazing Delroy Lindo, Tony Scott or, heck, even Quentin Tarantino.

Back in December, I talked about the free-the-garden-gnomes movement. My cartooning friend Stephen (correction: my Canadian cartooning friend … much to my father’s disappointment, everyone’s doing cartoons and comics but me) has picked up the torch.

Free the gnomes!

After weeks of build-up, the supplies for the war in Silithus finally arrived from the cities of Ironforge and Orgrimmar tonight on the Silver Hand server in World of Warcraft and one of the guilds that had assembled the scepter necessary to ring the gong did so, and, at long last, the Ahn’Qiraj war began.

There were giant bugs, Egyptian god look-alikes and lots and lots of lag.

It was a pain in the butt at times, but it was cool to be a part of it, since we missed the big events like this in EverQuest, which tended to be long over before Jenn and I had even started playing the game.

And now we can look forward to killing lots and lots and lots of bugs.