It’s pretty obvious by now that I’ve run out of gas. I think everybody has run out of gas. The only thing more depressing than a baseball team playing out the string in late September is a baseball team from which you expected big things playing out the string in September. It messes up your … Read more
There will come a day, mark my words, when every conceivable disappointment will meet in a giant hangar somewhere in Kansas. Every dashed dream and broken heart from all over America will converge there on the edge of some dusty little town to awkwardly mingle and avoid eye contact. Just as in Vegas, in the … Read more
I was surprised to see last week’s New Yorker, the Style Special, for a couple of reasons. First it was poly-bagged with a supplement called “Fashion Rocks” (more about this in a moment), and second, because it contains what I first thought to be one of the bigger flubs in New Yorker history. Considering that … Read more
I live my life in shrinking orbits, which move inward from the things of the world. Perhaps I can never fully silence my heart, but that will be my attempt. I am shadow boxing with God, around and around this small, dark room, and I have been plodding in circles for a thousand years. And … Read more
Time stands still And we and things go whizzing past it, Queasy and lonely, Wearing dogtags with scripture on them. —James Galvin, “Two Horses and a Dog” We’ll be all right if nothing goes wrong with the lighting. —Robert Frost, from “It Bids Pretty Fair” All day words were swirling, assembling themselves, unbidden, in inspired … Read more
Amid all the news of the End Times, you may not have noticed that the New York Times Magazine introduced a new department last Sunday. They are calling it “The Funny Pages.” They are not funny. The most obvious attempt at what would normally be called humor was Elizabeth Gilbert’s confessional essay on yoga, in … Read more
I see where there is a new biography of Mark Twain, and I intend to clean out the office to see if it might have arrived while I wasn’t looking. It is my shameful practice to deal with most of what I receive here in the mail by stacking it in small pillars that lean … Read more
It all started when celebrity journalist Ken Baker saw Saddam Hussein getting a dental exam on TV. “I thought, Hmm. You don’t see people getting their mouths examined on TV very often. Then I thought, What just happened? This is weird.” Hussein’s capture, carefully packaged for television and announced just when missing WMDs were becoming … Read more
The new school year is upon us, and with it, a fresh start at shoring up the moral levees that keep back the roiling waters of sin. The Minnesota State High School League has banned “midriff-baring” cheerleading uniforms, and we feel conflicted—and not because of any confessed perversion. This is one of those touchy issues … Read more
When it’s snowing and everything is white, it looks like an Alaskan weather station,” said Chris Lange of his office building on Garfield Avenue South in Minneapolis. Even in balmier weather, the headquarters of Mono, the two-year-old advertising agency co-founded by Lange, is striking enough that people will stop in “at least once a week” … Read more