On Loving & Losing Man’s Best Friends
Sean Murphyi. Schnauzers look at you. I mean they really look at you. Not through you, only people do that. If dogs, in general, are correctly credited for living entirely in…
The Death of an Indestructible Dog: What Quinzy Taught Me (Revisited)
Portrait of the artist as a young pup. Wait, did I say artist? I meant barbarian. No, that's neither fair nor accurate. It's difficult with Quinzy-- he was many things,…
RIP Walter Becker, Your Work Here is Done
RIP Walter Becker. Not many musicians were involved in a run as productive and consistently sublime as Steely Dan's. My life, in short, would make much less sense without his…
Donald Trump: The Man in America’s Mirror
i. Orwell, Again (Obviously) Even before the Reality TV circus American politics and, by extension, American life, degenerated into late last year, George Orwell was the go-to guy for…
August 26, 2002: Reflections on 15 Years
Fifteen years fails to satisfy, on both arbitrary and aesthetic levels. It's not long enough to be a significant milestone; it's sufficient time to satisfy the import it has accrued.…
Washing Dishes as Antidote for Apathy
Tom Sietsema, the excellent food critic for The Washington Post, wrote a fantastic piece about dishwashers (in general) and his experience, as a dishwasher, on 8/7/17. I highly recommend this piece…
How to Kill a Cliché: Celebrating Sam Shepard
Lee: …That’s stupid. That’s one a’ those?—?whadya’ call it? Whadya’ call that? Austin: What? Lee: Whadya’ call it when somethin’s been said a thousand times before. Whadya’ call that? Austin: Um?—?a…
Celebrating Sam Shepard and the Artistic Life
First off, before reading anything I have to say, do yourself a favor and check out this beautiful, eloquent tribute from Patti Smith. Sam Shepard is one of my literary…
July 28, 1979: The Long Way Home (Revisited)
If I ever need to check myself and consider what a privileged life I've led, I simply need to recall that moving across town in the summer of '79 was…
July 20, 1969 or, One Small Step for Man’s Mind
Listen: there are people who actually believe that the moon landing never happened. Lots of people. Not that it didn’t happen, necessarily, but that it was an elaborate, carefully staged…