Safe
There is a song that the naked ladies with the ukeleles played, and it is haunting me. They sang the chorus a capella as they thumped their thumbs against their ukeleles, and it had the word “night” in it, and it’s the only song I want to hear right now. And it sounds like another […]
Read MoreDeja Vu in Death Valley
Recently I was in Death Valley, looking for the nearest liquor store and feeling most peculiar. My skin felt like it was about to burst into flames, but it was the nagging sense of deja vu that was really bothering me. There was something about this town and its few buildings that was oddly familiar, […]
Read MoreTravel Advisory
The media loves to report on how porous airport security really is, but I can tell you firsthand that if you take an army regulation ammunition box, slap a skull and crossbones sticker on the side of it and fill this box with wires, batteries and electronic devices, your will get a reaction out of […]
Read MoreResearch
Blog! said Greg Daly, so I blog. Normally, Greg Daly drives the van, but he’s resting in the backseat and Franz is driving. I’m here in traffic in southern California, drunk, in a van with a six-person rock and roll band. Normally, they’re an eight-person rock and roll band, but some people have to work, […]
Read MoreBarney
Naturally, I celebrated the overly mythologied beginning of this vile empire by hiding from a misogynist cockatoo in the hills outside of Portland, Oregon. It wasn’t too hard to hide, since both the cockatoo and I were in the mansion of the Kentucky Fried Chicken scion, and there was plenty of room for both of […]
Read MoreTravel Wardrobe Neurosis
So I’ve been busying myself making money and laying plans to entertain you with tales from places not New York this summer. I’ve made so many plans I’m exhausted just trying to pick a flashlight for each of them. How do you pack for a week of camping on the West Coast followed immediately by […]
Read MorePromises, Promises
I promised you neatness, I promised you nausea. I promised you a wedding and a war and a volcano. I promised you Dr. Michael S. Cohen and his magical wall-mounted ear-vaccum. Here are the first two. The others require true love, proper attire, hundreds of thousands of people and their equivalent tonnage in tanks, landing […]
Read MoreNeat
I don’t put much stock in astrology. There have got to be more than twelve kinds of people in the world, and I hear the astronomy in those days wasn’t too accurate. But much to my chagrin, one of the cardinal rules of my own sign, Virgo, seems to apply to me and many other […]
Read MoreNausea
(Warning: in this essay I will reveal a plot detail of the novel Indecision. I can’t decide if this is a major or minor plot detail, but I’m leaning towards minor. Ish. If you prefer to consume your media with no prior knowledge of plot, do not read on. Read this instead.) Reading the novel […]
Read MoreTune-Up
Part I It’s time for my annual tune-up, in preparation for my departure to points unknown. Yesterday was north-of-the-neck day. I had my mouth, eyes and ears probed, examined and cleaned. I managed to cram three doctor’s appointments into one muggy day spent tooling around the North Shore of Long Island in my parents borrowed […]
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