The Grizzly Ate Your Baby
Several years back, my buddy and I made a wrong turn on the way to Virginia. Appalachia is the kind of place with towns called Tightsqueeze, so you’ll understand that any wrong turn is...
Category: Humanity
Atlas mugged
I have to imagine what it’s like to live in a house with one bathtub and eight other people. I have to imagine a home that’s not even 30% of the size of the...
American Just Desserts
It was a duplex in a mid-1990s tract home neighborhood where all the siding was the same color and an old folks home sat 50 yards off the back porch. We had a concrete...
American sunrise
They called it Freedom Day, and I was skeptical. That’s what I’ve learned to become in my four decades on this planet. I was taught to feel pride. I was taught to feel exceptional....
Meals, Mugs, and me
Mr. John opened his door. I never know when he’s coming. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes I have to call to make sure he heard me knock. Thursday, it was as if he...
Mirrors & Mountains
My phone was on the bathroom counter while I brushed my teeth in front of the mirror. I stood there studying myself in the most mundane and unattractive of moments. My phone lit up...
Election Day 2016 from America’s Couch: A live blog
4:15am He came out of an indigo curtain, his buttons undone, his red tie hanging outside an open coat. The music was something out of a Hollywood exposition scene, neither dramatic nor any way...
Angry Birds America
I just read there is going to be an Angry Birds movie, and my first thought was, “What could that film possibly be about?” The game wasn’t some epic tale that was easily adapted...
The other part of the reflection
The brush at the old Palms poker room led me to my seat one late night several years ago. The seven-seat at the table was the only open chair in the room, and it...
Donald Trump and the Steel Panther System
I think today of Steel Panther. If you’ve not yet had the pleasure, Steel Panther is a rock band cut from the cloth of every hair metal band from the 80s. They wear garish...
Those people…
A storm is coming, but it’s not the one you think. Yes, there will be snow in the south. It will fall for hours. When it’s done, the schools will close, the grocery store...
Capitulation Nation
Oh, you’re mad at Sony for killing its movie? Hold on. It’s hard to type when I’m laughing this hard. I wouldn’t have gone to the theater to see The Interview, but I probably...
Mistakes
This is a story of two mistakes with eternal consequences. They happened almost exactly three years ago, but I’ve never written about them publicly. There are a lot of things that happen when somebody...
Remembering the first kill
This week in Arizona, a nine-year-old girl shot and killed her shooting instructor by accident. The instructor was teaching the little girl to shoot an automatic 9mm Uzi. Sit with those two sentences for...