tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55415592011-04-21T17:50:21.332-04:00One boy's quest discloses a wider, weirder world. Dogs. Windows. &c.Nemonoreply@blogger.comBlogger611100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1088558598087565942004-06-29T21:19:00.000-04:002004-06-29T21:23:18.086-04:00

I never liked Coach Cash, especially. Or perhaps I should say I never really trusted him, which maybe amounts to the same thing, when you’re fifteen. I didn’t trust anyone who smiled that much. I didn’t think grown-ups should care whether or not we liked them. Respect was all that mattered, I thought. And it’s certainly true that I didn’t respect Coach Cash. God, fifteen. I thought I was the

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1084406559400836102004-05-12T20:01:00.000-04:002004-05-12T20:02:39.400-04:00

Hard to believe my time here is almost at an end. Hard to believe three years have passed since I arrived one June evening in the Virginia suburbs with a carload of clothes, a guitar, and no prospects to speak of. I will always remember Nuria racing barefoot across a shady lawn and jumping on me with a hug. Because I needed that so badly then from someone. I was exhausted, depressed—a wordless

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1084229686680979182004-05-10T18:54:00.000-04:002004-05-10T18:54:46.680-04:00

Shortly before the end of the universe, my fiancée and I found ourselves entering that long, straight stretch of purgatory known popularly as the New Jersey Turnpike. It had been a tense eight-plus hours on the road, but when I spotted first toll plaza interrupting the flat line horizon, I felt the tight coil around my heart relax a little. That green-and-white Turnpike ticket meant we would soon

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1081262331095173372004-04-06T10:34:00.000-04:002004-04-06T10:41:33.796-04:00

I. Happiness equals Girl plus Gum. I.i. Behind any Happiness and its Gum, a Girl is always lurking. I.ii. That same Happiness, without the Girl, would just be Gum. I.iii. To repeat: Happiness is always the sum of some Girl and her Gum. II. What, then, of a Girl without her Gum? That's No Fun. II.i. And a Girl plus Fun? Gum. II.iii. Therefore, No Fun plus Gum yields Girl, by proposition I, two

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1079973152611821692004-03-22T10:46:00.000-05:002004-03-22T11:35:00.450-05:00

Of all the fine conveyances that have conducted me from Point A to Point B, perhaps none has been so tranquil, so meditative, as the glass train. Even on an Apache helicopter lilting over the rice paddies--even watching the sun unscroll on the water below through a lens of pot-damage--you still have engine noise to contend with, and the distant possibility that you'll be called to fire this gun

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1077566980385269482004-02-23T14:56:00.000-05:002004-02-23T15:11:40.733-05:00

I was just a fat little sausage of a paisan' when that big beautiful boat came sailing up the river and into port, I'll never forget it. By way of carrier pigeon the duomo and therefore the whole city had already heard of its new capitano and the heroic exploits thereof but still that hardly prepared us for the sight on a blue day of the white sails puffing out and beneath them, balanced on the

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1076719996749600832004-02-13T19:52:00.000-05:002004-02-15T11:45:31.780-05:00

Once upon a time, the term “novel” was a catch-all, a descriptor for imaginative works of narrative prose or verse that did not conform to existing genres (e.g. the chronicle, the history, the epic, the fairy tale). In a way, then, the novel has always been experimental, pushing at generic boundaries even as it defined them. Although they may be canonical today, the earliest novels—Don Quixote

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1076422876123194612004-02-10T09:21:00.000-05:002004-02-10T09:23:03.060-05:00

In the dreariness of February, the anus of the annus, this writer finds himself adrift, as his protagonist so recently was. I hope to post some book reviews this weekend, but we'll see...

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1075127767711805562004-01-26T09:34:00.000-05:002004-01-26T09:37:39.360-05:00

So long it had been since I’d heard of the boy. Leaves had dropped, snow had fallen in America; still, in my mind’s eye he was adrift at the windless center of the sun-wet sea. Because, having left off with the pirates’ vicious sea-chantey, I was sure it would be either silence or death for our hero—remaining in his barrel until the pirates had accomplished their grim design, or walking the plank

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1074291071376148562004-01-16T16:52:00.000-05:002004-01-16T17:12:33.810-05:00

The Green Room, with its beanbag chairs and TV/VCR combo and comforting posters of animals and musicians, belonged to us kids, but the Yellow Room was my dad's. It was rare for the door to that room to be open, rarer still for me to find myself in there with him, amid the stacks of coffee-ringed papers. My dad disappeared in there, to sit, I guess, in his green leather swivel chair and type, or

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1073000620043666722004-01-01T18:39:00.000-05:002004-01-01T18:44:47.186-05:00

Perhaps you’re sitting in Starbucks right now, at a small table all your own, reading this sentence. Me, I’ve been trying for years to avoid Starbucks. I’ve had more success with the actual boycott than with articulating to myself the reasoning behind it. Not that I’m totally sans reasons. Resisting the pull of Starbucks seems like the responsible, if not the radical, thing to do, right? I mean

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1072231892191684762003-12-23T21:02:00.000-05:002003-12-23T21:16:31.280-05:00

True Story: One winter night in St. Louis, returning unhappily from a trip to somewhere warmer and sweeter, I wound up in a cab driven a Polish man who had been a professor of history in Krakow before fleeing in the early 80s. Of course that's not the first thing he said to me. The first thing he said to me was “Do you read?” I had been staring through the black glass of the back window,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1071874747351409282003-12-19T17:55:00.000-05:002003-12-19T18:00:02.263-05:00

Well, I'm off on an odyssey for the next week or so. There are sure to be some New Years reflections here soon, so check back. Until then, let us be like Ebenezer Scrooge; that is, let us do it all, and infinitely more. Peace, people on earth.

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1071283454220585062003-12-12T21:19:00.000-05:002003-12-12T21:45:01.700-05:00

I’ve always enjoyed the New York Times’ use of the word “Notable.” The phrase “Notable Book,” of course, does not indicate whether the book is notably good, or notably bad. Even better is the word “Intriguing,” as deployed in People’s “Most Intriguing People” List. Not having read more than a dozen books that came out this year, I can’t compile a “favorite books” or “best books” list. But I can

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1070841648775565812003-12-07T16:51:00.000-05:002003-12-07T19:06:30.450-05:00

In honor of yesterday's trip through a blizzard to the Jersey shore, where the scheduled Springsteen Christmas show was snowed out...and in honor of my being swamped by assignments, applications, and work...and in honor of the season, I present you with this, a festively packaged excerpt from an aborted draft of an essay on the Boss and the Man upstairs, which I've been commissioned to write for

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1070322776945702652003-12-01T18:52:00.000-05:002003-12-01T18:53:33.373-05:00

Time unveils each new pair of lights cut by black trees to be not what we’ve awaited, the transport to our neighborhoods, but rather the conveyance of others, like us, stooped and eye-weary, prone as we are to error. Of course, there are those differences that give rise to envy: for example, they are in motion and we’re still as telephone poles, hung with books and hoods and baggage. But

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1069289345565624872003-11-19T19:48:00.000-05:002003-11-19T19:49:30.140-05:00

Do not send our boys over there any images of nude or partially clad women. Iraq is a Muslim country, where nudity or partial cladding is considered immodest. Please respect our hosts! Do not send any pork or pork-related products. Muslims believe that animals with cloven hooves are unfit for human consumption! Yes that includes Bac-Os! Beer, whiskey, and other distilled grain beverages are out

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1068767284006988132003-11-13T18:43:00.000-05:002003-11-13T18:49:31.420-05:00

Dear Editor, Please accept the enclosed story for publication in your fine review. I trust you’ll find its coming-of-age themes as timeless as the eloquence of its tastefully understated prose. It’s just the kind of thing I know you’ve been searching for, through all these barren years. Don’t be alarmed if you find yourself looking at my name and mumbling quietly: Garth Risk who? Who Risk

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1067817063639493122003-11-02T18:48:00.000-05:002003-11-02T18:53:26.800-05:00

The new Guided by Voices video is a mash note to none other than Beatle Bob, St. Louis' favorite rumored kleptomaniac and former U.P.S. man. To which we respond just as we did when we saw Bob at shows, especially when they were our shows--even as those less stout of heart complained of the brutality of his elbows, the distraction of his personality, the monomania of his ambitions: You go, girl!

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1066865314253835782003-10-22T19:27:00.000-04:002003-10-22T19:30:46.033-04:00

This is what happens when you AutoSummarize a Hamlet soliloquy and feed it through Bill Gates' thesaurus. Summary Amid the lobs and arroyos of unpleasant affluence To kick the bucket, to snooze-- 'Tis an accomplishment To give up the ghost, to siesta-- To forty winks--conceivably to hallucinate: ay, there's the massage, There's the regard. The teaser’s damage, the overconfident man's noise

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1066776286340469852003-10-21T18:42:00.000-04:002003-10-21T18:44:45.866-04:00

Everything from the 40th anniversary issue of the New York Review of Books is available free online at www.nybooks.com. If you've never had either the time, or money, or the tolerance for pretentious intellecutalism, to read the New York Review, you've been missing a lot of great, if inessential stuff, as well as a lot of crap. In the great category, check out Joan Didion's piece on Bush II.

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1066701049369033702003-10-20T21:45:00.000-04:002003-10-20T21:50:49.590-04:00

There are three types of bad movie: bad bad (Maid to Order), so-bad-it's-good (To Grandmother's House We Go), and, beyond that, so-bad-it's-fascinating. "Kill Bill," ostentatiously, well, billed as "The 4th Film By Quentin Tarantino," transgresses these boundaries, as well as many others. At times, it's just awful. At other times, it's fantastic. Ultimately, however, both the ridiculous and the

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1066052635778465482003-10-13T09:18:00.000-04:002003-10-13T09:43:55.503-04:00

One foine day a-poiratin' what did I see? (Yo, ho, blow the man down) But a sweet Arab schooner a-sailin' for me! (Yo, ho, blow the man down) Heavy with hogsheads and red pepperpots (Yo, ho, blow the man down) To could give the immaculate Herself the trots! (Yo, ho, blow the man down) Now here's this first mate with his second-class hag. (Yo, ho, blow the man down) I'll flash 'em my cutlass if

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1065652682341893092003-10-08T18:31:00.000-04:002003-10-08T18:38:01.953-04:00

Well, it's nice to see the democratic process returned, via bloodless coup, to the hands of those for whom it was designed: the insanely wealthy and those practiced in the thespian arts. You can say what you want about Arnold, but California just got the governor she deserved. It kind of makes you wonder where else the Republicans might want to spread the progressive principles they've always

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1065060704472753102003-10-01T22:08:00.000-04:002003-10-04T15:21:40.296-04:00

First, a confession: I approached Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude with high expectations--not impossibly high, but perhaps high enough to bias my reaction to the novel. I first learned that a new Lethem book was forthcoming from a contributor’s note in Harper’s, where Lethem this spring published a wonderful essay on the nearly forgotten critic Edward Dahlberg. I added “The Fortress of

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1064444677403508252003-09-24T19:01:00.000-04:002003-09-24T19:04:37.476-04:00

Sadly, what with work and other writings and the dog and graduate school applications and so forth, the man behind the hot face has been finding it medium-difficult to update this blog more than twice weekly. So that's what I'm going to aim for: one Wednesday update and one weekend update (apologies to Saturday night live, and to all those yearning millions around the globe who have come to

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1063845003123041052003-09-17T20:19:00.000-04:002003-09-17T20:30:25.110-04:00

Through the long quiet hours of the night the boat rocked, slapped on both sides by Mediterranean waves mild as a mother's hands patting a baby to sleep. In his barrel, Hot Face was actually stifling, protected from the breeze as he was. Each hour the all's clear from the crow's nest roused him from whatever semblance of slumber he'd almost fallen into. Until just after five a.m., when,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1063417492457936922003-09-12T21:44:00.000-04:002003-09-12T21:44:52.413-04:00

Goodbye, Johnny Cash. You will be missed.

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1063325238043410552003-09-11T19:07:00.000-04:002003-09-11T20:10:35.960-04:00

(Let me open this brief excerpt from some stuff I’ve been mulling over by saying that I’m not trying to pass judgment on anyone’s life. It’s precept I’m sure I’ll violate over and over again before I reach my conclusion. But it seems important to me from the outset to acknowledge that I’ll fail to make good on my aims. And that I don’t believe that the inevitability of failure is a good reason to

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1062936507507681522003-09-07T08:08:00.000-04:002003-09-07T08:08:27.560-04:00

Fall is one of my favorite seasons here in Mt. Pleasant. Maybe it’s the light in the afternoon, or the atypical dryness in the air that makes the smells stand out distinctly. Maybe it’s that fall is the shortest season. I personally date the start of fall from the first time the mercury drops below 60 at night, and mark the end of it at Dec. 1. This year, fall will come early, or so it felt

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1062637704304140692003-09-03T21:08:00.000-04:002003-09-03T21:08:24.446-04:00

The heat lingering in his cheeks from their second, and last, kiss, he lowers himself into the basket, like some recalcitrant cobra resisting the charms of a winsome tune. Through woven wicker, the lights of the boats are visible, bobbing on the surf. He looks back up through the dark oval of the basket’s opening, at the angelic eyes that beam down at him. He doesn’t have to say anything; for a

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1062433884164077422003-09-01T12:31:00.000-04:002003-09-01T12:31:24.183-04:00

From the parking lot of Giants Stadium, you can see a whole lot of America. The white lines painted on the asphalt run off to the east, toward the vast meadowlands and the broken skyline beyond. On Saturday night, the Empire State building was lit up in red, white, and blue, and a low, flat cloud formation almost touched its tip. You can see the industrial parks and warehouses. You can see the

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1061865142524737072003-08-25T22:32:00.000-04:002003-08-25T22:32:22.543-04:00

A: Like any good Rapunzel, she downed her hair. Q: Who is Clare de Lune? A: They were where Clare and Hot Face met. Q: What were the darkened docks, where the hulls of ships knocked together in the shadows? A: 72.3 degrees Centigrade. Q: What was the temperature of Hot Face's face when he looked for the second time on her unveiled face, and for the first on the moonlit mass of hair she was

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1061650050596613202003-08-23T10:47:00.000-04:002003-08-23T10:49:37.586-04:00

More of the real Hot Face perhaps later today, or at the latest tomorrow, not that anyone cares. Right now I wanted to note that last night I witnessed one of the most balls-out rock n' roll events that DC has witnessed in awhile, courtesy of the Washington Social Club and the Carlsonics (I ducked out during Thee Snuff Project to attend a lame party thrown by that other venerable DC institution,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1061508382720576092003-08-21T19:26:00.000-04:002003-08-21T19:29:59.323-04:00

After surveying the Democratic field for the ’04 presidential primaries, among whom the ostensible frontrunner is Joseph I. Lieberman (the I stands for icky), Elise and I decided that maybe the celebrities running for office trend is maybe not so bad after all. However, it’s hard to think of celebrities who are any more deserving of the presidency than Gephardt et al. Here’s our preliminary list

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1061268824881688552003-08-19T00:53:00.000-04:002003-08-19T00:57:08.873-04:00

Tonight the stars are out and innocents are dreaming and cicadas are chirring in the minimal humidity and, for a Monday night, should be right with the world. I’m writing, aren’t I, and this is what I want, isn’t it, and if the answer to both of these questions is yes, then what are these nagging things in my chest like moths blindly battering a naked bulb? Other wants, I guess. Like the want to

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1061047666634061152003-08-16T11:27:00.000-04:002003-08-16T11:27:46.646-04:00

It is not the soft rain of pebbles against her window, nor the insistent whisper of her name that wakes her. It is not the distant barking of the weather dogs, nor the ambient lambence that drifts in when her father's lamp is lit in the next room. It is not the scent of her would-be lover wafting up from the street, although since she saw him last it has insinuated itself deep into the recesses

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1060901110119289312003-08-14T18:45:00.000-04:002003-08-14T18:49:39.940-04:00

[translated from the French] And now ladies and gentlemen if you'll direct your attention to the left between the two large potted palms there you will see the facade of a house where the love interest of a certain leading man I don't need to name because I think we all know who he is and besides we've been through this libel suit already used to live. Now if you look closely at the shutters of

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1060793304813354502003-08-13T12:48:00.000-04:002003-08-13T12:53:10.830-04:00

While I wait for the next bolt of inspiration--if you could call it that--to motivate me to continue my chronicle of Hot Face's wandering, and in honor of my recent discovery that my neighbor Vickie is a total Springsteen nerd, I thought I would say a few words about my obsession with the Boss. It all started when I was five or six, the year Born in the U.S.A. came out. I think I had already

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1060610674311285862003-08-11T10:04:00.000-04:002003-08-11T10:04:34.266-04:00

I had occasion this weekend to think seriously about the generally shitty state of the union known as marriage in our age and culture. First of all, in planning my own wedding, I have to invite twice as many people, because everyone in both our families is divorced and remarried. Then you have to try to make sure that those awkward interactions between former spouses are avoided. Secondly,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1060352079736639722003-08-08T10:14:00.000-04:002003-08-08T10:14:39.770-04:00

When last we saw Hot Face, he had but barely escaped from the crazed clutches of the diabolical Dr. DeMoto! What's this? He's heading for the docks, hands in pockets, caressing a scrap of advertisement plucked from the pages of a Tinseltown Tabloid. But not so fast, O Hot One! Do you think the boorish bureaucracy of these decrepit colonies keeps a stack of exit visas ready for peniless,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1060109863306345482003-08-05T14:57:00.000-04:002003-08-05T14:57:43.376-04:00

First off, I wanted to get this out of the way: The 25th Hour is the best movie of this year. Of course everyone hates Spike--you can come up with your own explanation for why. But as I stood before the gleaming rows of movies at the video store last night, stricken with the VHS Anxiety of one who's been burned too many times, I realized I just wanted to watch the 25th Hour over and over again,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1059940049625862962003-08-03T15:47:00.000-04:002003-08-03T15:47:29.500-04:00

At the sound of the latch, DeMoto turned from his patient, drill still in hand. The boy, nearly too tall to fit in the doorway, wore an impassive expression, though inwardly he was locked in a dogfight with his capillaries, trying to keep the color from his cheeks. “Je veux partir,” he said. “Go, then,” DeMoto growled hastily. “You can see I am busy?” “No,” the boy said. “I mean I want to go

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1059750973373495082003-08-01T11:16:00.000-04:002003-08-01T11:16:13.440-04:00

Heat—old nemesis—stole over cheeks. Not even wind down there could cool them. Must have looked a perfect mess, can see that now. W/ head like big tomato on skinny neck. & here is the jeune fille, soft & quiet. Dune by starlight. Eyes, wide-open, color of canal. Lazy blue. Or green. Shame I saw in them? Maybe at first. Me: grinning idiot looking on what no men bar her fr. & bro. were to see. W/

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1059453219661015972003-07-29T00:33:00.000-04:002003-07-29T00:33:39.586-04:00

I am still unclear on whether California election law stipulates that signatures on a candidacy petition have to come from registered California voters, or U.S. citizens, or what, but I hope that you'll consider supporting my old buddy Derek Teslik in the gubernatorial race. He'll make a fine governor, and certainly can't do worse than Gray Davis! Perhaps this will be the start of bigger things

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1059407142536618552003-07-28T11:45:00.000-04:002003-07-28T11:45:42.456-04:00

Tooth cleanings: 412 Cavity fillings: 537 X-rays: 321 Mandible shatterings: 17 Crownings: 53 Maxillofacial restructurings: 4 Molar enhancements: 22 Root canals: 190 Cosmetic smashings: 13 Underbite-to-overbite adjustments: 41 Overbite-to-underbite normalizations: 41 Tongue enhancement surgeries: 8 Scrapings: 787 Gougings: 619 Pokings: 692 Deep-gum drillings: 48 Total cranial replacements: 1

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1059224297583062732003-07-26T08:58:00.000-04:002003-07-26T08:58:17.436-04:00

He's been idling on the docks a lot lately, leaning like a knife blade into the wind. He's been watching the storefronts for any sign of her, any sign of change in the static stare of the building faces. He's been staying away from the dentateria longer than the errands he invents would keep him, and if you looked closely today, you might see an Indian burn on his wrist, where Dr. DeMoto has

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1058641351456187882003-07-19T15:02:00.000-04:002003-07-19T15:02:31.493-04:00

I took a few helpful notes while I was in New York, so that those of you in the bass-ackward heartland could keep ahead of the fashion curve. First of all: Queens is the new Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the new Manhattan. Manhattan is the thinking man's queens. The Bronx is the poor man's Westchester County. And Staten Island is the sportsman's paradise. Or something like that. Basically, Brooklyn: so

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1058227398593851042003-07-14T20:03:00.000-04:002003-07-14T20:03:18.540-04:00

There is a girl. Isn't there always a girl? There is a girl down by the canal, where the barges dock. Among the sailors. Among the whores. Amid clouds of foul air and fouler language. She is, he thinks, like an anemone blooming in a barnacle colony. He has watched her on weekdays, hurrying, veiled, out of and back into a shop run by a brother, or father, or cousin, does it really matter?

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1058137395651260082003-07-13T19:03:00.000-04:002003-07-13T19:03:15.670-04:00

Halfway through the summer, now, I've started to get pangs of that wistful feeling that time is slipping by when I'm not looking, as though I were "it" in a game of red light/green light. At moments of ferocious clarity, such as after a late night electrical storm, I turn and stare time directly in the eye and time stares back, still, to let me know both that it's leapt forward when my back was

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057873022462530422003-07-10T17:37:00.000-04:002003-07-10T17:37:02.396-04:00

“His name sounded Latinate, but Dr. DeMoto worked with this ruthless efficiency I would later come to associate with Germans. By the end of our time together I remember wondering if he was in fact a doctor at all. With his casual cruelty, he would have fit right in at the little orphanage where I grew up. Though, come to think of it, he had this thick mustache that might have looked incongruous

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057788153277039232003-07-09T18:02:00.000-04:002003-07-10T13:13:39.266-04:00

I am a fiendish collector of book titles. Books, too--yeah, I'm the guy who actually goes to the library book sales and looks through every godforsaken box of mildewed self-help manuals, hoping to find something exceptional (I used to be this way with records until I ran out of money and space). But I've found that collecting titles--just keeping a little list of things you hear about offhand,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057612037548816982003-07-07T17:07:00.000-04:002003-07-07T17:07:17.680-04:00

He settles himself on a chair in the corner beneath a busted fan, as far away from the other supplicants as possible. He keeps his head down mostly these days; he’s memorized the stitch of his linen orphan pants. He stretches a skinny arm toward the coffee-table, upon which at some point some Samaritan arrayed old magazines to help the patients be patient. In the fullness of time, they’ve become

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057589920175088572003-07-07T10:58:00.000-04:002003-07-07T11:43:16.180-04:00

Now don't get me wrong. I appreciate the Barry White gag as much as the next guy. When, for example, Cool "Buck" Wheaton bombed the entire city of Providence with slightly modified Andre the Giant stickers reading "Barry White gets da pussy," I laughed as hard as anyone. Late on the night of the 4th, however, as we channel-surfed at Zal's apartment, I ran across CNN coverage of the great man's

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057496795347719382003-07-06T09:06:00.000-04:002003-07-06T09:08:11.590-04:00

Last night around four the phone rang and some drunken hooligan started slurring sweet nothings and issuing rash promises and generally making love to my answering machine and I thought, hey, if Howard Dean could get this guy on board as a telemarketer, I think America might really develop a taste for the spicy Vermont sausage, if you know what I mean. Really, Derek, it was sweet. In response,

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057496344549822262003-07-06T08:59:00.000-04:002003-07-06T08:59:04.600-04:00

Waiting to be discovered? Wait no longer! Open casting call for young male ingenu, Will accept only Caucasian, gringo, gaijin, &c. "Ethnics" and Irish need not apply for "Talkie" detective/buddy/period drama/slapstick flick To which Garbo's name already attached. Must be: leading man type, a la Valentino but sans swarthy sensuality: Slow to laugh, slow to love. Height a plus. Great smile a plus

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057495651034034842003-07-06T08:47:00.000-04:002003-07-06T08:47:31.103-04:00

The bell above the door jingled merrily when I entered, as though in counterpoint to the tableau of human degradation laid out on the moth-eaten chaise lounges. A fat Francaise, red-faced from the heat, glowered at me from above a lime-colored muumuu. A wizened old drunk grinned at me toothlessly and reached up to pet the dead parrot perched on his shoulder. The rest of the patients were children

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057344396019824792003-07-04T14:46:00.000-04:002003-07-04T14:46:35.943-04:00

"Dangerous? The boy I am remembering? I hardly think so, or at the least, hardly was he seeming so, standing there on the wayside, in the sand, in the moonlight… very pale, this boy. Like a nightbloom in the headlights. Of dogs I saw none--that is, until I had halted my autotruck. Very dark, this dog, no? The boy…yes, that’s the one: slender, white, of features most delicate. To be frank—will you

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057321855740132322003-07-04T08:30:00.000-04:002003-07-04T08:30:55.810-04:00

I confess: I have an obsession with trash magazines. Sure, if you visit me at the Hot Face Chancery in DC, you’ll find on my coffee table the kind highbrow fare calculated to make you think me witty, urbane, and in-the-know: Harper’s, McSweeneys, the New York Review (oh ho! The New Yorker is beneath me), The Oxford American, Martha Stewart, that kind of crap. But I have to force myself to slog

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057250828696148182003-07-03T12:47:00.000-04:002003-07-04T08:51:53.660-04:00

I got a dog last week. I'm wondering when Tom Waits got his first dog; if I knew that, I would know whether having a dog should make me feel old and tied-down or drunk and restless. Anyway, this one seems to like me. I found him near a blue highway in West Virginia. Reasons why he's hotter than I am: 1. His fur is black, but with this reddish patina. Absorbs heat. 2. He might have scabies. How

Nemonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541559.post-1057248796959473252003-07-03T12:13:00.000-04:002003-07-03T12:30:06.440-04:00

In the sordid maternity wing of a hospital deep in unmapped Algeria, a young mother-to-be prayed for the Lord to mark her child with some gift--make this child a great leader of the people, she murmured, wincing from pain. Give this child, O Lord, great courage, intelligence, or strength. If, in your infinite wisdom, you see fit, make this child invincible. At least, grant this child, O Lord, a

Nemonoreply@blogger.com