I was born a clown, and in retrospect my parents were incredibly good sports about what must surely have been on a number of levels a shock and a disappointment. They’d been trying for years to have a child, and they accepted me immediately as a blessing and loved me unconditionally for what I was. … Read more
For many months, on her way to and from school each day, Gloria had paused at the pet shop window to gaze with a combination of adoration and desire at the pretty little accordion nestled there in wood shavings and newspaper confetti. Each night at the dinner table she would beg her parents to let … Read more
Every town and city has its share of genuine characters and eccentrics, but I think you could say that it’s somewhat easier to get a real feel for the personalities of such characters in a smaller town, where there are so few public secrets and mysteries, and where what might be mere sidewalk spectacle in … Read more
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
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