The key to a long life? Eat plenty of fatback. That’s what Josie Myers Flowers — or Granny Jo — told me. I was fortunate to receive that life-altering bit of advice at her 100th birthday party at the Friedberg Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, or as my daughter referred to it before we arrived, the Free Bird Moravian Church, a possible indication that we need to spend more time in a house of worship and less tuning in to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gold and Platinum.”

Stephen Hawking has always been among my favorite astrophysicists.

When people don’t participate in cultural norms, we tend to get this you-must-be-from-Mars look in our eyes.

Next week I am going to get tuberculosis, be called to jury duty and be kidnapped in an elaborate plot to avoid going to work for, oh, the next three months.

So I go home after another night in the studio, just a few hours removed from being interviewed by this very paper – thanks for dropping by, Uriah! - and I turn on my television, crack open a beer and set about cooking something edible without setting the smoke detector off. (Guess which one of these I failed at.) During commercials, and before I turned my apartment into a Hamburger Helper flavored Cheech & Chong movie, I saw the question that will forever haunt my mind.

I wish I had a nickel for every question like this: Scott, as a non-certified financial planner, can you tell me whether I should use my upcoming tax rebate to pay down enormous, crippling credit card debt or should I put it toward a Panasonic 65-inch flat-panel HDTV so I can sit on the couch, turn off my brain and forget all about my enormous, crippling credit card debt? 

And the accompanying art of justifying the ticket price

Next week my old friends Michael, Jim, Dwight, Ryan, Toby, Pam, Angela, Meredith, Jan, Phyllis and all the rest will stop over for a reunion of sorts as it has been a solid six months since I’ve seen any of them.

Having a mid-life crisis? Feeling like you haven’t done much with the time you’ve been given on this Earth? Well, paying attention to Kenny Chesney won’t help. If anything, it’ll probably cause you to go even grayer from the injustice of it all.