Brad Zellar My first night in that shitty motel room in a tiny Wyoming town I was exhausted and wiped out on malt liquor and I slept in my clothes on top of the bedspread. All night I dreamt of potatoes on a conveyor belt, an endless river of potatoes. I’d driven straight through, twenty hours, to … Read more
Remember that time you threw your heart from the window of a speeding car? Was it burning? No, not that time. It was just heavy, a sodden wad of plumbed meat. It felt like a water balloon coated with grease. It couldn’t have weighed more than a softball, and it bounced once on the shoulder … Read more
Trust me, even when I go away, I’ve got nowhere else to go. I’m always around, a lurker in my own life. The end of the baseball season is always a painful thing for an obsessive/compulsive man who is a complete slave to routine yet has very few habits –with the exception of bad habits– … Read more
October, before it had a name. Still, though, a month of low iron skies and protracted sulks and cold rain and bursts of crisp radiance that never lost their ability to dazzle and surprise. A flash of revelation even as the hammer fell: We will miss this world when it’s gone, or when we are. … Read more
Melissa Fay Greene made her big splash with National Book Award finalist (and perennial book club favorite) Praying for Sheetrock, a social history of a tiny Georgia county struggling to come to grips with the challenges and ramifications of the Civil Rights movement.In all of her work, Greene combines meticulous historical research withthe dogged chops … Read more
Paul Muldoon is a curious character, even by artistic standards, andhe’s been on a serious roll of late. To his growing list ofaccomplishments—including ten collections of smart, allusive, and oftenvery funny poetry, as well as a Pulitzer Prize—he recently landed theprestigious (and influential) gig as poetry editor at The New Yorker.That’s all impressive scuttlebutt in … Read more
Hey, Presidential wannabes, it’s time to cry uncle. You’re all toast. Chuck Norris: King Maker
Snapshots from a drive home from work while listening to the new Ween album, which is fantastic if you like Ween, and I do: Three shiny balloons trapped in the branches of a tree above a baseball diamond. A long strip of aluminum foil tumbling like an acrobatic hallucination down the middle of LaSalle Avenue. … Read more
What are the essential songs for a first-rate jukebox? If you were to find yourself locked up for the rest of your days with a trio of fourteen-year-olds and a bunch of musical instruments and amplifiers would you join the band or bash out your brains with a tambourine? Have you ever heard clearly conspiring … Read more