Stirring the concoction, our Satan-clown reminded us that we were free to go ride our bikes or play ball but, it we wanted the Frisbee, we’d have to earn the ten dollars—first come, first served.
Zen and the little blue box
By coincidence, during the week following the video, an associate showed me a ring she’d received. She couldn’t contain her joy. I asked. It was a Tiffany.
About the power of symbols
During his twelfth birthday party, his father gifts an authentic Dodgers’ game jersey. His son goes wild. Seconds later, the grandfather stomps angrily out of the house leaving everybody astonished.
Obscure references lend credibility, especially when you make them up
> Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley used to mail the exact same birthday card to each other every year — they’d just cross the other one’s name out and send it back with a thousand dollar bill enclosed
Three fingers tickling the air
His saffron robe was more practical than beautiful — clean, dull, comfortable, loose. He was hot and tiny. A slight submissive bow, hinged at the waist, presented beads of sweat from between the stippled hair on his shaved head. Two cupped hands extended a prayer card.
Sunday dinner at the DiGiulios
Unafraid to discuss the shape of her uterus in front of company — and the size of her children’s heads — she effectively induced a collective guilt trip among her adult children with the intent of getting each to pick up the phone to call more.
One man's silly secret to writing an online dating profile
The fact that he wrote prolifically, with an uncommon blood alcohol level, begs an analysis of the benefit of a disconnection from sobriety.
Burning man at Burning Man
At the time, I was a burning man who would have loved to drive to Burning Man and lived for a week in a suffocating hotbox. Romance drives whatever.
A didgeridoo full of goo
The skull-ringing aftermath of sprinting into the side of a dumpster at full speed. A fastball slamming into the solar plexus, in ultra-slow motion. A didgeridoo full of goo.
Two thousand words from the future
The following essay was created using guidelines learned while attending a technical Meetup at a Philadelphia-based SEO agency called From The Future.
Every scar is cool
Scars are best measured in laughter and vomit. There is that awesome ability, owned by a select few, to vividly depict, in words and undress, a forearm folded in half from a failed stunt or a nose ring ripped off by a blessed infant.
Daily affirmations and anonymous encouragement taped to the back of a stop sign
Among a list of affirmations with which I’ve become familiar is the following: “In the end, everything is going to be alright. If it ain’t alright, it’ ain’t the end.”
Willem de Kooning’s women have jacked-up teeth
I’ve been enamored of de Kooning’s Woman series since I discovered a black, linen-covered book dedicated to the entire series in the back of my college library in 1980.
Flames, bikers, bras, jaws, Jack, Lemmy and liquor
The first time I saw a barkeep set a stream of vodka on fire, along the length of a wood bar, then dance through the flames, there was a twenty-foot stuffed great white shark, covered in hundreds of lacy bras, hanging above the top shelf liquor.
I met a German vegetarian in an Italian butcher shop
He thought it unfair that he was required to stand in line at all, because he wasn’t going to eat the turkey. He’d long ago become a vegetarian. Gunter went on to suggest that his in-laws like to mess with him because he’s been having “das coitus” with their daughter all these years. I doubled over at his choice of words.
“Das coitus.”
Corn. Mashed potatoes. Das coitus.
Art + money + object = fetish
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of defining the precise line over which an artwork crosses from being a object to an asset.
Ferried on the fingertip wings of an angel
As I see it, one must be ferried on the fingertips of an angel. Any successful startup executive who tells you otherwise isn’t telling the truth or is oblivious to the angel.
Cyclops @ night
Painted on a large piece of plywood that was bolted to the doorway of an abandoned brick building, I wasn’t expecting the phone to capture anything but darkness and, looking back, I have no idea why I tried to take the picture.
Nietzsche was wrong about almost everything
Despite a deep respect for the Existentialists, Nietzsche’s outlook was a little too negative. Besides, philosophers are the worst kind of writers — the kind who believe they’re own fiction. Kind of like Ayn Rand, only not as funny.
A singular reason to hate social media
When confronted by a Facebook photo of someone I barely know holding an overly clever craft beer, beaming with a thumbs-up smile while sitting in front of a bloody porterhouse steak, I always hope the meat thermometer was broken.