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Becoming a father incurs a lot of responsiblity and challenges, but the most rewarding aspects of fatherhood outweigh anything else. You notice that through your own children you’re able to become a child again and that’s an amazing turnaround since becoming an adult means having to tone down or leave behind certain aspects of your childhood.

Lately my daughter Zoe and I have been spending time watching cartoons, mostly because at 15 months she’s starting to enjoy them moreso than when she was younger. Her favorite prime-time cartoon is The Simpsons and whenever that familiar Danny Elfman tune carries itself through our apartment she’s immediately attentive. She dances to the theme song and then for the next half-hour (or 15 minutes, thank you Tivo!) she just sits there quietly and smiles, occassionally pointing to the television and bobbing her head up and down like a baboon.

A co-worker of mine shared with me that he enjoyed watching a show called The Backyardigans with his daughter, Maddie. He mentioned that the show, which stars a bunch of computer-animated animals (and one alien named Uniqua) depicted various pretend situations like pirate adventures. At that point I programmed Tivo to pick up on a season’s worth of episodes hoping it was as cool as my co-worker had described. The fact that it promoted imagination was an immediate attention grabber for me since to this day I still tend to sway towards my creativity to carry me along, especially when life throws it’s curveballs.

To me, it’s a wonderful thing to be spending time with my daughter watching these shows. It makes me happy to see her dancing along with the music and casually glancing back to me waiting for my reaction. Through her I am able to revisit certain parts of my childhood and that in turn makes me nostalgic for the past but appreciate the future.

I recently purchased the entire Adobe Creative Suite about two months ago, patting myself on the back for investing in software which helps aide in my creativity. A few weeks later, as probably everyone is aware, Adobe announced a new update — available in May — to the Creative Suite, dubbing it CS2 (or appropriately Creative Suite 2).

One of the coolest features included in the update is the Vanishing Point, a tool which allows you to digitally “clone, brush, and paste elements that automatically match the perspective of any image area.” Since I had purchased it in February I figured I’d qualify for the free upgrade which Adobe calls the “Post Announcement Upgrade”.

Apparently the only people who qualify for the upgrade are those who’ve purchased CS 1.3 between April 1st and July 31st, 2005. What confuses me is the fact that noone would purchase the original CS when they could have the Creative Suite 2 for the same price, so I propose that Adobe revise their free upgrade policy, allowing those who’ve purchased previous versions of their software within 90 days before the announcement to qualify, not the other way around. According to one of the salespeople I spoke with at Adobe their policy can account for a certain amount of time before the announcement date, but they aren’t allowed to disclose that information.

Adobe, I love your software but your upgrade policy needs some tweaking.

For the big name celebrities in Hollywood who will eventually retire someday there will be a mansion or private getaway waiting for them. However, what happens to the lesser known celebrities, musicians and writers when they retire?

The answer is the Motion Picture and Television Fund Country House, a retirement community that houses character actors, reoccurring extras and other celebrities. Every resident has more than a handful of stories to tell, tales that describe mingling with celebrities like Elvis Presley, Grace Kelly and Jack Lemmon and memories full of love, laughter and most importantly years of effort.

83-year-old character actor William “Hal” Riddle is a resident of the community and his story reads like a childhood dream.

Growing up in Kentucky, Riddle had dreams of making it big in Hollywood. More often than not he would skip school to attend showings at the local theatre, basking in the glow of Hollywood’s magic. At 11 years old, Hal fell in love with a young silent film star by the name of Billie Dove, a crush that would last for the next 60 years. Mustering up enough courage Hal wrote a letter to Dove and received an autographed photo with the message “Greetings! Billie Dove”.

Throughout the years Hal has collected several celebrity (and Hollywood) paraphernalia. When he retired in 1995, and moved into the Motion Picture and Television retirement community, he dusted off his pictures and hung them on the wall, admiring most of all the autographed picture from Billie Dove.

Over the next several months Hal reminisced of his past experiences, including; a variety of bit parts in movies, doing three pictures with Elvis, testing the pilot Beat the Clock with James Dean and of his roommate Jack Lemmon. All of these experiences never quite leveled with that of his admiration and love for Billie Dove, something that he endured for the greater part of his life.

One day he received a call from an employee at the Motion Picture Retirement home. She told Riddle that she had heard from various members of the community of his infatuation with Billie Dove, and much to his surprise she mentioned that Billie Dove was a resident of the Motion Picture & Television Fund hospital, less than a 5-mile walk from Riddle’s cottage.

The very next day Riddle walked to the hospital to visit his childhood crush and despite her ill-health and considerable aging (she was 96 years old) through his eyes he saw the same woman in the picture, youthful and extremely beautiful. As Hal described, “..I could see the essence of her beauty still. I was shaking like a leaf.”

Riddle confessed everything to her, including his boyhood crush, his frequent days playing hooky and watching Dove in Adoration and how much the picture still meant to him after so many years. Towards the end of the visit Dove requested to see Riddle asking him if he would like to visit her again.

Over the next few days Hal Riddle and Billie Dove formed a friendship and much more than that in fact. According to the hospital staff, Dove would ask for her hair and lipstick to be done by the nurses prior to Hal’s visit. Billie Dove would sit silently in her wheelchair as Hal would wheel her around the the home carefully listening to her many stories of Hollywood life.

Over time, Hal could tell her health was getting worse and shortly before he was to leave for Alaska she made him promise that he would return to her, afraid that he was going to leave her. When Hal returned it was on New Years Day (a year since they had met) and when he went to visit her the nurse informed him that she had passed away.

However, despite the sadness, Hal realizes that he was blessed with the comfort of his resolution; to finally meet his childhood crush. In Hal’s words;

When you stop and think about it, it seems ironic. I guess the world has a long tail. You never know when an 11-year-old boy in Kentucky is going to write a fan letter to a star and years and years later get to be her friend. It’s a magical wonder.

When I was kid, whenever my family and I would go on vacation I’d always order the same thing at restaurants we’d eat at. I had my Roast Beef Sandwich phase where I’d order nothing but Roast Beef Sandwiches with a side order of fries, sometimes seasoned and sometimes not. Before that there was the Grilled Cheese phase, golden brown on both sides with a huge dollop of ketchup on one corner for dipping.

It became something of an inside joke; “What will Erik have this trip? Will he succumb to the same kinds of food or will he try something different to mix things up a little?”. Never one to disappoint I’d rarely break the pattern of not ordering the same thing at meal time but on occassion I’d try something different. That was then, this is now, but I’ve found that childhood quirks stay with you, no matter how much time passes.

Even to this day I’ve noticed patterns in what I’ll order at restaurants and most of the time it’s just food I’ve become comfortable eating, like Clam Chowder for instance. Nothing adds to a meal — at least in my opinion — like the soothing warmth and taste of thick chowder topped with soup crackers and a dash of salt and pepper. Eventually I might grow tired of ordering clam chowder with every meal but most likely it’ll be replaced with a different phase.

Do you have any food phases?