Rebel posts that don’t fit the mold.
I don’t really care for outdoor music festivals. For one thing, I am a hundred and seventeen years old, and it is something that young people do, like smart drugs, the Banana Sprite Challenge, and being a well-dressed neo-Nazi. It also robs being outdoors of its major appeal (peace and tranquility), …
The Coachella Music Festival has been in the news lately, partly because it’s just that time of year and there’s never enough content to go around so somehow an overpriced outdoor concert is transformed into ‘news’, but mostly because of allegations that Philip Anschutz (the owner of AEG, the entertainment …
Recently, a meme was going around that your real age is 100 minus the number of bands playing at the Coachella music festival that you’ve actually heard of before. In my case, this turned out to be 63 — a good number, placing me (as in real life) right at …
As I’ve discussed endlessly in this space, one of my favorite things about the right-wing persecution complex that’s been so carefully cultivated by conservative politicians over the last 50 years or so is hearing people complain about things that are not only not actually happening, but are the opposite of …
When I started drinking, there was no such thing as “craft beer”. If you didn’t like the weak, watery, tasteless crap that passed for beer in America, you did one of two things: you found a bar that carried foreign beer (Guinness, usually, maybe something exotic from Germany or, if you were …
2016, the little year that absolutely could not, is almost over, and with the exception of people for whom it was a raging success — morticians and neo-Nazis, in the main — most of us are eager to see the end of it. Starting out, as all years do, with …
As a reminder to my readers, during the 1980s, I penned a column for the New York Times entitled “Life’s Little Construction Worker”, in which I passed on to impressionable subscribers wisdom gathered from my father and his drinking buddies. The column lasted for just over three years, at which point …
Well, look at this! It’s the night of the very first and very exciting presidential debate, in which Hillary Clinton, a woman who embodies the American ideal that if you want something really bad people should give it to you and not ask a lot of annoying questions, and Donald …
Six months ago, if you had a grown adult wearing a t-shirt with a children’s character crash into you in a public place because they had their face buried in a cell phone screen and weren’t’ paying attention to their surroundings, odds were pretty good they were just using Duolingo …
My friend Tom Block is in serious trouble and needs our help. Let me tell you about Tom. He’s smart , funny , a great storyteller , a terrific writer , and a critic of unusual insight . He’s lived a life many of us would love to lead. Most recently he took …
OLD TIME RADIO FAVORITES Where Creeps the Shuffler! From the Casebook of Kidneypunch O’Sullivan Oh, Those Bulczywyczs! The Aaron’s Basinet Polish and Badney’s Consumption Grease Old-Time Variety Hunker-Down Hour Around-the-Barn News Farmer Seth’s Country Comedy Chiaroscuro Li’l’ Jinx and the Hard Luck Soup Kitchen Kids Trag McCrunley, Wharf Detective Weepie & …
Today is the Fourth of July, America’s national holiday. Longtime readers of this site will know that every day on this year, I post a little sermon about the state of the country, always trying to follow the advice of the late, great Paul Fussell, who wrote, in BAD, or, the …
A TAXONOMY OF REALITY PROGRAMMING COMPETITIVE SHOWS: * People compete to win money > People compete to win the right to continue being on television * People compete in a performing talent show > People compete in a performing talent show with or against celebrities * People compete in a …
I don’t usually like going to public appearances by artists. I don’t normally like readings; I don’t normally like director screenings; and I don’t normally like writer Q&As. You’d think that I would; I used to be in the celebrity interview game, after all, and there’s nothing like talking directly …
SERGEANT’S DUTY LOG Week ending 04/29/2016 31 incidents of jawin’ with intent to slanderfy 26 incidents of reported sinful doin’s involving minors, blood kin, livestock and tree hollers 16 incidents of a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ 9 lynchings without a permit 8 incidents of Katie-bar-the-door Saturday night dust-ups 6 incidents of ee-legal …
