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Pictured: Cheryl Lead took this shot of the coverguy admiring his cover! FIVE YEARS after the first edition of my book, Then Handsomest Man in Cuba , people are still somehow finding well-thumbed copies in doctor's waiting rooms (even a hostel bookshelf in Nepal!). It's gratifying to receive the occasional email from a reader who liked it - even a few who didn't . It's just been released in Germany as of 2009, thanks to my agent Peter McGuigan of Foundry Media - and I'm glad my German is rusty - I can't imagine how some of my Aussieisms like "threw a pickle in the cheesecake" came out of the Google Translator. Please ask for copies at your local bookstore - it really helps keep an author stay in the $1 bins inside the store rather than outside - soggy books are indeed sad. Dear Lynette, I just finished "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" and loved it, loved it, loved it!I THANK YOU for sharing such a wonderful adventure. I just wanted you to know

Getting the full knee-down from bike fit guru  Andy Pruitt , knee guy to the cycling stars (including the US Cycling Federation).  A-fitting we will go...  Watch  VIDEOS See  PHOTO GALLERY TODAY I received some good news - and in this recession, any news is good news. My knees, which were starting to sound like I was hiking through granola when descending a stairs, are not falling apart after all. I merely have a relatively benign form of crepitus . Wiki it and you'll see it's a term for anything that leads to innoisy knees. In my case, no bones or diminished cartilege seems to be involved - just fluid. The ass-ometer measures, well... I consulted RoadBikeRider.com's Ed Pavelka on this last year, who wrote: Lynette -- you need to see a cycling medical specialist. The best in the business is Andy Pruitt at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine . If you can't go to Colorado maybe he can recommend someone in your area. Generally, pain beh

This morning I switched on my Blackberry Pearl and clicked on a link a customer Leon in South Africa sent me. His email simply said: When we tend to complain how bad things are sometimes we do not know how fortunate we are. This is an article out of today's Sunday Times . The first thing displayed in my little handheld window onto the world was the above picture with this caption: No grocery deliveries: Food is much scarcer in Zimbabwe’s rural areas than in the cities. Kudakwashe Chiveura prepares to catch a cricket he has dug up to eat in Mutoko, northeast of Harare. Picture: AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi When I switch on to a news site from the west, like NYT or CNN, the first thing that's windowed is "Democrats set to offer loans to Carmakers". Even on a salary of $1 a year, think of how infinitely better off an auto exec is compared to the above gentleman about to breakfast on a cricket. How ever hard it may seem, we must try to be thankful. Thank you Leon for you

Strewth, you learn something new and wierd every day ... I just posted this video of myself getting a haircut (for NY) in Chinatown for my upcoming Cheap'n'Choosy blog post and noticed almost 900 hits on it within a day of posting. How odd ... I used YouTube's handy Insight tool and found that a large chunk of views came from the clip being linked at The Shampoo Forum . Reading through some of the posts there reveals a foamy fetish - people who love getting their hair shampooed, brushed, combed ... Now we all love that feeling, just like a dog loves a good scratch, and especially when comes with a free scalp massage - but I never thought of it as being discussion topic. The internet never ceases to amaze, eh. On this forum, "blow job" takes on a whole old meaning! Well, at least unlike porn, it's all good, clean fun, and the participants have little chance of getting pregnant or catching any communicable diseases. I wonder when the Proctor and Gamble's w

Dumbo Feather is very nice to touch-and-sniff coffee table mag featuring interviews with people who've spent a bit of time physically and/or mentally outside their own postcode (or zipcode as they say upover). If your internet connection doesn't complain about downloading the very stylishly art directed PDF, do avaread . You can find this link to it buried in my bio . They've made some of my snapshots look very arty indeed, including a classy cropping of the above shot, which is simply a close up of a topo map of the Nanawale Estates subdivision where I have my sliver of foliated lava on the Big Island of Hawaii . I was contacted by Kiwi editor/owner Kate Bezar while downunder 2008 , and she came over to my apartment and let me ramble into her little dictaphone. Since it came out I've received emails from some wonderful people from my past: Sue Carey and Gigi, from my days at Saatchi. And some coincidences: I was wandering down 19th street in Chelsea, Manhattan a mon

From this article by Nicolai Ouroussoff : "But traumatic events have a way of making you see things more clearly. When Rem Koolhaas’s Prada shop opened in SoHo three months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was immediately lampooned as a symbol of the fashion world’s clueless self-absorption. The shop was dominated by a swooping stage that was conceived as a great communal theater, a kind of melding of shopping and civic life. Instead, it conjured Champagne-swilling fashionistas parading across a stage, oblivious to the suffering around them. The Chanel Pavilion may be less convoluted in its aims, but its message is no less noxious." Maybe it's just as well I didn't go inside! Here's my take on something even more noxious

Thank you to Peiheng Tsai for this cellphone image, taken in Union Square, NY, 1:18am on November 5 It's the day after the election. With the line "the election wasn't about color, it was about the economy" being bandied about, I, as a person of color, beg to differ. BARACK OBAMA: The Power of Positive Discrimination is my take on my FastCompany blog. In that post you'll see I also mention Little Person (that's dwarf or short statured person - but never midget) Dan who, like Obama, is doing great things for his minority group - by being out there, and being successful. Celebrate our differences, because as Obama shows, they're the true catalysts of change. Watch Dan in action . Speaking of little people, I saw one enter the same pizza place I was in. I found myself avoiding looking at him for fear of being rude - how many of us know that feeling? OK, now imagine you are that little person, feeling people's eyes shift away from you but knowing you are