Esther dropped me an email a couple days ago asking how I was doing. She also said that she was surprised to see me in Detour magazine, a glossy men's fashion rag. I was completely flabbergasted; what the hell would a troglodyte like me be doing making an appearance in some fancy-dan periodical? I knew that they took fancy scenester party photographs to augment their mostly ad-oriented page count, so I figured I just showed up in the background of some assy new media party, blitzed out of my gourd on something or other. But the truth was much stranger.

I found a newsstand that carried the magazine (the May 2000 issue. The back of Sean Penn's head is on the cover.) and doled out the $6 for the glossy piece of trash. I started flipping through from the back page, scanning all the photos for signs of my bulbous mug. Eventually, I came upon the above picture of me holding down my old desk at Word, with my trusty talking Ernest doll wedged between my computer and monitor. It was part of a photo essay by photographer Steven Ahlgren on people in corporate environments, full of sad-looking men in shirts and ties wearily holding down their desks. I'm a little confused as to the whole point of the thing, but I'm the happiest looking person there, so I guess that counts for something.