Brad Zellar On the first cool nights in late summer the old tribe of mountain giants would dig themselves out of the dirt and come down into town to watch the strippers. This was an annual occurrence that had been going on since the go-go bars first opened sometime in the 1950s. By the late years of … Read more
Look around and tell me what you see? I see the usual things, the too-muchness. I see the fuzzed scrim of darkness falling, the green world receding beyond the window screens. I see, everywhere I look, patterns and textures, sprawling across the upholstery of the furniture. The geometric chaos of the rug beneath me. I … Read more
The man who ran the Giant Wash was an obsessively neat character, inordinately conscientious, officious even. German, he seemed, like someone stepped right out of one of August Sander’s portraits. I’d heard it intimated that he lived with his elderly mother somewhere in the neighborhood, but this may have been mere speculation. Customers were always … Read more
Holy Moses, this Liriano kid looks like he might be for real. I’m going to be out of commission for a stretch, and I intend to spend some time during this hiatus trying to uncover another team in recent (or ancient memory) that had two such dominant lefties in its rotation. Ordinarily a handful of … Read more
For the last several weeks I’d been staring at decidedly long odds and almost liking what I saw. The math didn’t look very good, but it was starting to look like there was at least a possibility that it actually might eventually add up. The Twins had played an unreal stretch of baseball. The pitching … Read more
By the time I got to the River Park, Jurosz was gone. An hour or so earlier I’d encountered a couple of tweaked out ranch hands at the Taco John’s in town, with Jurosz’s beat-to-shit little trailer attached to the hitch of a pick-up truck. There was no mistaking the trailer, with its corroded aluminum … Read more
A horse emerged from the woods, sleepwalking through the fog, its eyes literally closed. The hooves of the sleepwalking horse were long and yellow and curled like the toes of elf shoes. There was lightning in the blue windows of a treehouse, where scientists were hunched in the dark over their secrets, boiling the world … Read more
Lord, open my heart, said Moses, and give me the courage to surmount this hardship. Untangle my twisted tongue, that I may speak, and be understood. —The Koran, 20:26-28 I’m still standing outside the Yukon Club, wearing that ridiculous hat, teetering in the bright sunlight. I can barely stand up. I have to think hard … Read more
Thales, the son of Examyas, has met a harsh fate in his old age. He left the court of his house at night, as he was wont, with his maidservant to view the stars, and as he gazed, forgetting where he was, he came to a steep slope and fell over. Thus the Milesians lost … Read more
Last of all arose the age of hard iron: immediately, in this period which took its name from a baser ore, all manner of crime broke out; modesty, truth, and loyalty fled. Treachery and trickery took their place, deceit and violence and criminal greed…The land, which had previously been common to all, like the sunlight … Read more