A New Year’s wish
My three-year-old son just fell asleep on my chest. It’s gray outside, spitting little wet snowflakes and rain on cold ground. It’s the kind of weather that makes you sleepy no matter how much...
Author: Brad Willis
Dads
My dad died a year ago today. I was in China when it happened. In the hours I struggled to get back home from halfway around the world, I remember wondering how I would...
Election Day 2012: Live from America’s Couch
2:48am–Before I go personal, let me offer this objective view of tonight’s election: Nate Silver and his 538 model are literally the most important thing to come out of tonight’s vote. You may not...
Mastodon Weekend 2012: Evolved
I didn’t think I needed medical attention when the first guy leaned over me and asked, “Are you okay?” I told him I was and that I just needed to catch my breath. He...
The crying Tough Mudder and the wicked art of Someday
It was just after 10am. I was midway up a California mountain and standing in a group of 200 people so pumped up on testosterone and adrenaline that the simple act of guttural primal...
Vice Presidential Debate: Live from America’s Couch
Scroll down for updates throughout the night The fact that I’m doing this again speaks to one of two things. Either I have a criminally inflated sense of ego, or I was so disappointed...
First Presidential Debate: Live Blog from America’s Couch
Scroll down for updates I’ve got a great couch. It’s shaped like a U and stuffed with down. It sometimes pokes me in the hindquarters with actual feathers, which I’m sure probably qualifies me...
Second grade soldier
My son learned to roller skate less than 48 hours ago. He’d be ashamed to admit it, but there were tears at first, but then lots of skating. Twenty-four hours earlier, I took him...
Finish line
“I am as nervous as I’ve ever been.” That was my son this morning, up before the sun for his first youth triathlon. At eight years old, he would be among the youngest of...
What they don’t tell you about parenting…
is that one night everything will go perfectly, the boys will eat their dinner without complaint–with compliments!–and offer almost no protest at bedtime. You will pour a glass of wine, sit down to watch...
How to make a Moscow Mule
The fiber swam-viscous, milky, sexual-on the other side of the amber glass. I pressed my eye as closely as I dared. My heart felt precious little shame as I thought, “That must be what...
Choir robes, $25,000 shrimp and grits, and the modern Presidency
I am a fallen believer in the power and will of a modern President. I should admit that from the start. I have no enemy in the office, and I have no friend. There...
Using John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck died in 1968, four years before the landmark Furman v. Georgia capital punishment decision by the United States Supreme Court. It was the first moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S....