A while back, I was saying I thought my old friend Ana Marie Cox deserved to be writing IN the New York Times, rather than being written ABOUT in the New York Times. (I haven’t seen her novel yet, but the fact that she even wrote one hints at the fact that she has some … Read more
I’ve been reading with interest Ann Bauer’s provoking story at Salon, “Food Slut.” More interesting than the piece, to me, has been the somewhat predictable but volumous flamewar that has erupted among readers who are arguing the finer points of food criticism as it appears in most modern glossy magazines, many of them sawing on … Read more
I was surprised to see, by way of MNSpeak, that a new local beer brewery has arrived called “Surly.” That’s a brand already known to dirt-bag bicyclists and gas-huffing bike couriers here and everywhere. The original Surly is, of course, a homegrown steel-and-wool bike operation affiliated with Quality Bike Parts out in Bloomington. The original … Read more
I’d rather have a boa for governor than a snake When Jesse Ventura was governor, we cringed at his many postures, and often his costumes, which sometimes included a feather boa. Someone once said to me on a day on which I was sporting a pink shirt, “You must be sure of your sexuality to … Read more
Good to be back. Funny how a week away can recharge the batteries, and the fear and loathing of a return to the office–how many fires to put out? How many angry emails and phone calls? What unfortunate mistakes revealed? What oversights in the budget, and disappointments on the spreadsheets?–quickly dissipates in the good will … Read more
Dead, the slender bug astonished with its complexity of sprung parts and the volume of its viscosity, the evidence of a supreme and comically-mad engineer’s attention to detail. One of God’s little basement projects. The poor little dude. What did this skittering mystery hope to find on the other side of the room? Perhaps the … Read more
He’d sit up in the darkness staring across the inlet at the lighthouse on its pile of rocks, tossing its feeble light out into the fog rolling in off the lake. It was a ridiculous and hokey metaphor for exactly where he was in his life, but, what the hell, it was oddly comforting. The … Read more
Ruckert lived across a pasture from an order of monks who were famous for their gingerbread, their honey, and their singing. They’d supposedly sung at the White House once upon a time, and had made a few records. The had an orchard out behind the monastery, where they kept their bees, and Ruckert often saw … Read more
I’m trying to crawl back into baseball, which essentially means crawling from the wreckage of last season, when various nagging injuries cut the year short for me and led to disappointment and then flat-out indifference. I’ve never in my years as a fan had a season like 2005, and I’m hoping that it was nothing … Read more