About 15 years ago, when I was doing a weekly commentary on a local Los Angeles public radio station, the management hired a professional photographer to take some publicity shots. They remain among the worst photographs ever taken of me, and they also remain among the first results that pop up after you Google my name.

Please don’t, though. They’re really awful.

They look like snapshots taken very early in the morning after a late night of drinking an ill-advised assortment of cocktails and eating fistfuls of salty snacks. Of course, there’s a perfectly good reason why they turned out that way, and I wish I could say it’s because the photographer was lousy. Unfortunately, there was only so much he could do with the splotchy, bloated face that showed up that morning, and I take full responsibility for the results. I only wish they weren’t just a click away.

That was, as I said, 15 years ago. But it was also, crucially, 20 pounds ago, and I have spent the past few years trying to get a really good, professionally done photograph of........

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