Giggling at hell
There’s a man who makes birdhouses. He’s a jolly guy, the kind you’d think would be good to suit up as Santa come December. He’s a craftsman who hits the southeastern arts festivals, sits...
Essays from an american mutt
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...
This is our home
The kid’s shot to right field was the kind that made you gasp. It came off the bat like a laser, and it didn’t matter that little leaguer was barely 70 pounds. The ball...
Marriage and the power of luck
She nibbled, and I didn’t understand why. I came from a family of people who took fresh bites of their food before fully swallowing what they’d just chewed. Michelle, a petite girl who played...
Gratitude, by degrees
If I’ve learned one thing this weekend, it’s that gratitude comes in degrees. I was unable to be in Beverly Hills on Friday night, and I honestly don’t know if I would’ve had the...
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...
Thanks for sharing
I started Rapid Eye Reality in 2001 when my friend Susannah pulled me aside at a wedding and said there was this thing called a “blog” that I might find interesting. Since that time,...
The people you know at Christmastime
I was still in my pajamas late this morning when the doorbell rang. Unshaven, unshowered, and a bit of a melancholy mess, I thought, “I’m not going to answer that.” I was in no...
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...
Threadbare troubadour
Getting old is easy. It happens without your permission. It happens on its own. It’s literally effortless. The hard part is finding any good in it happening. Something happened last night, and it made...
My dog swallowed what?
I learned a new word this weekend: radiopaque. It’s not the kind of word you just throw out over coffee, or really, in most polite conversation, but it is the kind of word you’ll...
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...