Routines, Rituals, and Writers
Sean MurphyWinston Churchill famously remarked: “My vices protect me but they would assassinate you.” And he managed to achieve a thing or two in his time, decadent proclivities be damned. But…
ALL HAIL THE QUEEN
Everyone is posting this (and why shouldn’t they?), and I’m happy to join the crowd—with love, respect, and appreciation. I’m sure, when I first saw this, age 10-ish, I’d heard…
Aretha: The Queen of Us All
ARETHA FRANKLIN, 1967, Atlantic Records publicity portrait. Debate will—and should—rage forever regarding royalty and who can claim it: who is The King? Elvis Presley is who white people crowned, Chuck…
Washing Dishes as Antidote for Apathy (Revisited)
Help wanted sign on the Mexican border. Tom Sietsema, the excellent food critic for The Washington Post, wrote a fantastic piece about dishwashers (in general) and his experience, as a dishwasher,…
Welcome to Machine: Why ‘Dead Man’ is Jim Jarmusch’s Masterpiece
Johnny Depp is going to be gone someday, and for those enjoying his work posthumously, an assessment of his enigmatic career—bookended by the cotton candy of 21 Jump Street, and…
How to Kill a Cliché: Celebrating Sam Shepard (One Year Later)
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:…
The Catcher in the Rye, 67 Years On
She nodded. “Make it extraordinarily squalid and moving,” she suggested. “Are you at all acquainted with squalor?” I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it,…
My First Time, Revisited
July, 2015: It was my great pleasure to guest-post at The Quivering Pen, a fantastic site for writers (and readers) curated by David Abrams (himself an excellent reader and writer:…
Rebel’s Rebel: RIP Anthony Bourdain
I'm gutted, like seemingly everyone else in the world (for all the right and obvious reasons) by the sudden loss of Anthony Bourdain. In addition to being sad, shocking, and…
VCLA in the Fairfax County Times
I'm very grateful for the growing excitement around Virginia Center for Literary Arts. This week, we were featured in the Fairfax County Times (text below). Want to get involved? Join…