Pro sports are so, so boring. They make me want to go take a nap. And the games take so long! I would rather spend those four hours sitting in my dentist’s waiting room browsing through weeks-old Us magazines. I would rather get an oil change. I would rather steam-clean my carpets in August than [...]
Author Archive
Bonus playlist Wednesday: stoned soul picnic edition
(Check out the complete soul food mix series: Dinner, Dessert, Redux, Leftovers.) So, yesterday was the first day of summer. How did you celebrate? I spent the morning working in the garden. In the afternoon I went for a haircut and ended up getting nearly twelve inches cut off, the most drastic change to my [...]
Siddhartha on the prairie
The American midwest is the last place I expected to find Buddha. It’s too pragmatic, too meat-and-potatoes for a spiritual practice whose ultimate goal is elimination of the self. The people here are friendly, solid, circumspect, sincere. For nearly twenty years I have lived like an expatriate, shrouded in my New England cynicism and snark. [...]
Read yr idols
Hard to believe this book is twenty years old. It still thrums with energy and danger. Half a lifetime ago, I discovered it at a friend’s house, devoured it, and started saving up to buy it myself. This was in the days before Amazon and Google Books. I had to take a bus to the [...]
Excellent TED talk
Roger Ebert on the human voice. Guy is so incredible. More biscuits! Let’s bump Beck!
Quelque chose de scintillant est dans votre avenir.
It hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that when you go out for Chinese food in Montreal, your fortune cookie will be in French. But there it was (and still is, tucked inside my wallet from just a few nights ago): “Something sparkly is in your future.” Sparkly. It’s the word I use to describe a [...]
Who knew World Lit was so hard?
In a student paper on the Aeneid: “Like our class discussions, the gods have a small sense of sympathy for mortals.”
