Bahamian rhapsody
(Nassau, Bahamas)–My cab driver from Paradise Island drove a coffee can with wheels and a squeaky horn. He careened around the corners in the Bahamian slums and drove like I was late for the...
Author: Brad Willis
Double dipping, as explained by Joe Henfield
(Paradise Island, Bahamas) — You have to imagine the thick Bahamian accent and a guy who looks a little like Jim Brown. That’s Joe Henfield, a private limo driver in Nassau. He doesn’t have...
Year five
(Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport)–I was nervous at this time in 2005. I’d been asked to spend a week in the Bahamas writing about poker. I’d been asked by people that I held in such high...
Plugged in
I’ve been home since Tuesday. My bags are not unpacked. This and the fact my wife did the laundry before we left for home makes packing for my flight tomorrow a lot easier. It’s...
Rapid Eye Reality’s 2008 superlatives
Let’s just get this out of the way. I wasted 2008. Among my other thirty-something (and forty-something friends), talk of “how fast the year went” has recently become a frequent topic of discussion. For...
Punked
(Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport — Ten minutes ago) I couldn’t tell if the family in front of us was Amish, Mennonite, or some funk southern combination of the two. The wife was dressed in traditional...
Advice from the most honest one in the room
Norman Rockwell was an idealist, or he lived in a time before hyper-consumerism and ease of travel made the holidays one giant reason to drink. Sweating, honking, cursing people fill the streets and malls...
Otis resolved
I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. I think they are a product of the overly-ambitious and the generally lazy. The grand promises are lip service to self betterment that are usually forgotten by the...
Now with an ascot!
Saturday night, I grabbed my iPod and set about chopping up onions and jalapenos while listening to a friend tell me stories. He told me one take about an evil Eastern European woman who...
Getting sharp
I have the old man and Ikea to thank for getting my mise right back en place. The old man sits in the back of a family hardware store on Augusta. He comes in...
911 calls and the media
Updated to include comments from WSPA news director Charity Worley told her family she was going outside to warm up her car. It was 6:30 in the morning in the North Carolina mountains around...
Deconstructing the deconstructed
I’ve recently been in communication with someone who knows somebody I used to know. Yeah, that’s vague, but I don’t see any reason to further beat somebody while he’s down, so there’s no reason...
The 500 Club Redux
Quite a few of you submitted your choices for your own personal 500 Club, so I guess it’s only fair that I pass on the original list. You can click on the link to...
Early warning system
My kid cannot keep a secret. I don’t think he even tries. Despite being an exceptionally intelligent child, I’m not sure he grasps the idea of confidence. To him, secrecy means you tell somebody...