The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I'm in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on 'Mary Poppins,' lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.

I don't actually watch that much TV, but I was obsessed with 'Dawson's Creek' growing up. And 'Freaks and Geeks.' And '8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.'

I have always been interested in abandoned cars. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a car, driving, and there's a car sitting in a pasture, totally abandoned. Or on the edge of a creek or something. I always wonder: why did somebody park it in the pasture and leave?

I started training at a local gym in New Jersey, and the day of my high school graduation, I packed up everything in my car and moved to Coconut Creek, Florida, where I trained with one of the best gyms in the world, American Top Team.

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.

Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.

And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.

Don't taunt the alligator until after you've crossed the creek.

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

And then I went to 'Dawson's Creek ' which is a show that was for better or for worse all about the language. It was a word-perfect show which I'd never had any experience with. And it was really shocking for me. I felt really hemmed in. At the time it wasn't my favorite working experience.

So for twelve miles I rode with Sherman and we became fast friends. He asked me all manner of questions on the way and I found that he knew my father well and remembered his tragic death in Salt Creek Valley.

After 'Freaks and Geeks ' I dealt with several producers who wanted to cover up all my beauty marks every single mole on my body. They tried to cover them on my first two episodes of 'Dawson's Creek ' and it just looked ridiculous so I had to put my foot down. But it's not something I'm insecure about.