Okay… I am absolutely addicted to Twitter. Every time I talk to someone that is active online, I talk to them about Twitter. I love the fact that it forces people (myself included) to edit themselves to 140 characters. If you are one of the few people who still doesn’t know what Twitter is, just click on the the word Twitter — anywhere in this first paragraph — and you’ll see some explanation from around the web. [Read more →]
You won’t find corned beef and cabbage on my St. Paddy’s Day menu (not that there’s anything wrong with that)! Here’s what I’m serving this year. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! [Read more →]
To: The imbeciles that support Prop. 8
Personally, I don’t have an overwhelming desire to get married. It’s just not something I feel the need for in my life. I have a girlfriend, a beautiful daughter, a home that we own together, cars, shared bank accounts — getting married at this point feels pointless to me. I don’t subscribe to the notion that you meet, you date, you marry, you have kids — and that’s the way it is — that’s the natural order of things. It doesn’t seem to be a very sound plan and when you consider the divorce rate, it kind of makes me wonder why in this day and age, that formula isn’t challenged more. [Read more →]
Before hearing about the movie, I’d read the Watchmen graphic novel and wasn’t impressed. It was included in Time Magazine’s list of 100 best novels of all time; whatever. I planned to stick with Frank Miller (Sin City, 300). But leaving the theater last weekend, I was blown away. [Read more →]
10. Never received promised commission on green beer
9. Still awaiting remake of Darby O’Gill and the Little People
8. Every St. Patrick’s Day, when they dye the Chicago River green, it just looks like pond scum
7. On his day, number of people fraudulently claiming Irishness just to get a kiss
6. Only saint whose name is associated with massive hangovers
5. Compared to Saint Nicholas’s helpful elves, St. Patrick’s leprechauns are nothing but a bunch of troublemakers
4. After you’ve heard “Top o’ the mornin’” a few million times, you’d kill for a simple “Hello”
3. When St. Patrick’s Day revelers get sick on green beer, they look like Linda Blair
2. Hasn’t had his Blarney Stone kissed in years
1. Snake bites
It is perhaps the most famous first line of all — the one that begins Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” [Read more →]
Ahhh, ‘tis almost St. Patty’s Day, and ‘tis almost time for us Irish to further perpetuate the Irish stereotype of drinkin’, singin’, laughin’, and then fightin’. As the ides of March come creeping closer, we Irish get all the more excited about putting our livers to the test on the 17th. [Read more →]
Of the friends I’ve asked about this, those who have read any of Updike’s four Rabbit books have either read them all, including the novella in the story collection Licks of Love, or they stopped, as I did, with the second book Rabbit Redux. The last two novels of the tetralogy either seemed just too much more Rabbit to take, or too long, more than 1,000 pages combined, to consider making the investment. I fell into the latter category until Updike passed away last January. I’ve since read Rabbit is Rich, and will eagerly move on to Rabbit at Rest soon. [Read more →]
For years, I traveled to Las Vegas with friends for the opening round of the NCAA basketball tournament. I know, some of you are wondering why you didn’t realize that they played the games in Vegas. They don’t. Our time in Vegas was spent in the sports book at Luxor, watching and betting on every game played during that opening weekend (there are 48 of them). There are 3 to 4 games on at a time for the whole weekend, aside from some minor breaks here and there. Drinks are free (tipping is necessary, of course), and food comes from the food court upstairs. The days would begin at 5 am, when someone would head down to the book to reserve some seats. [Read more →]
10. Not tall enough to ride on Space Mountain
9. From the back, often being mistaken for Tom Cruise
8. Too many people asking, “Hey, where’s Snow White?”
7. Never cared for green beer
6. Too many people thinking that nasty Rumpelstiltskin is one of them
5. Found the title of the movie Little Women to be very misleading
4. Frequently kidnapped by people who think they’re garden gnomes
3. Complete lack of female leprechauns makes reproduction a bitch!
2. Job market sucks for the vertically challenged (well, it sucks for everybody, but the vertically challenged especially)
1. Hate being classified a “fairy”
I’m home sick today with the flu. Watching Woody Allen’s funny, but dated Bananas, I notice a laughing Eudora Welty’s brief cameo. She gets a big kick out of Woody sticking his cap in her face. Ah, Eudora. You saved my life. [Read more →]
I am a man. I’m not a woman, and I’m not a boy anymore. I am a man, and it is noticeable in several areas of my life. The movie-watching experience is one of those areas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a macho man who can only watch action movies and slapstick comedies. I cried watching Terms of Endearment and I loved Thelma & Louise, but I often find myself at odds with a woman over our opinions of a movie. [Read more →]
Dear Ruby,
I’m unemployed, but looking, and I’m doing okay with unemployment and my savings. I’m a single guy who’s always lived within his means, so I know I’ll survive until I find something. Even though I didn’t do anything wrong and I know there are so many people in the same boat, I don’t know if I should date. It’s like I shouldn’t even ask if I have to be cheap about it. My friends are split down the middle — half say to wait until I’m working (which could be months) and half say go ahead and ask. If I ask someone out for a low-budget date, am I a loser?
Sincerely, Dateless in Depression [Read more →]
Survivor is filming in the Brazilian Highlands this season. I believe we are in the 18th season and much like MTV’s The Real World Brooklyn, it’s stagnating. Don’t get me wrong, I still watch it. I just love me some Jeff Probst. And watching these people scramble to form alliances and dig for hidden immunity idols just hasn’t gotten old yet. I think one more season and I might be done. Maybe. Nah, probably not. [Read more →]
September 3, 1999
I dream I am involved with three boys in a plot to blow up a resort area. I want to back out, but one boy is dragging us with him in the wake of his evilness. I find I have to take a leak, so I remove my pants and underpants and rush for the men’s room. Then, I run to the pool area, swim across the crowded pool, speed through the parking lot, and leap, pantsless, behind some rocks. I’m thinking the bomb should have detonated by now, but I’m glad it hasn’t. [Read more →]
Locally grown sweet potatoes will only be in season for a few more weeks. Eat them while you can! Besides being delicious, they are one of the world’s most nutritious foods. They’re rich in fiber, potassium, and Vitamins A, C, and B-6. Try to choose sweet potatoes with a darker orange flesh — they are better for you than lighter ones because they have more Vitamin A. [Read more →]
I first heard of the Abbé Mugnier (1853-1944) in an essay Somerset Maugham wrote about the journals of the French writer Paul Léautaud. The Abbé, in his shabby soutane, was a fixture in Parisian literary circles. He knew everyone and just about everything about everyone. Leautaud was outspokenly anti-clerical and, finding himself in the company of the gentle abbé, took advantage of the situation to mouth as loudly as possible all manner of blasphemies. Unperturbed, the Abbé Mugnier whispered to him. “God will forgive you, M. Leautaud, because you have loved animals.” Leautaud at once became silent, embarrassed to realize the Abbé knew that the cranky atheist often went without food in order to feed stray dogs and cats. [Read more →]
Sally did not meet Suzy in a large auditorium where a nominal, fifty-dollar fee was charged. That pink event saved breast-cancer patients in Africa even as it rescued American women with professional degrees. But Sally met Suzy on the shelf of book. At a location near you, she saw all the other consumers attending to this section of the store, and she knew she ought to go there too. Wherever the others are, go there. Just because you would never go to that section doesn’t make it wrong, and if millions of purchasers were leaving the Super Bookstore in a state of euphoria, it couldn’t only be the cinnamon chai latte or French press at work. [Read more →]
Sunday I am in the TKTS line on Broadway for half price tickets and a young man is hawking Blithe Spirit starring “the legendary Angela Lansbury.” He seems like a nice young man and Angela Lansbury is a famous actress, but she is not legendary. Now, if the Gryphon or the Pushmi-Pullyu were in the play, then the word “legendary” would be appropriate.
Come to think of it, I would enjoy seeing the Pushmi-Pullyu in the Angela Lansbury role.
I began my writing life several decades ago as a book reviewer, but I’ve largely kicked the habit. It isn’t that reviewing isn’t important or interesting; it is a vital democratic conversation about books, journalism, ideas, and imagination. As a young aspiring writer I fell into it easily, maybe too easily. But after reviewing a few score volumes as I have tried to do — carefully, generously, critically — one tends to get a bit of genre fatigue. One tires of praising and of scolding. And having written a couple of books myself, and seen them (fairly and unfairly) praised and scolded, the urge to judge others diminishes even further. [Read more →]
