Archives

Of Pilgrimage

    Sometimes with a little concentration it seems almost possible to hear the groan of the planet beating into the solar wind, iron-melt churning around its core, seas sloshing in its holds, or to imagine 20 billion distant galaxies fulfilling their own complicated orbits like fate. And here I am, I think, sitting on […]

‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Not Just “a Bootleg ‘Scooby-Doo’”

    I often despair of Netflix but was cheered by the recent release of They Cloned Tyrone, a quasi-sci-fi, detective-revenge, dark comedy focused on three characters: Fontaine (John Boyega), a drug dealer taking care of his mom and a young boy; Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), a sex worker; and Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), who is […]

Technology and Stories

    It might seem appropriate that one of the stories that have come out of the release of the movie Oppenheimer is that when it is shown as director Christopher Nolan intended, it arrives at the movie theater as a 600-pound, 11-mile-long strip of film. How Nolan intended it, in 70mm format, can only […]

A Brand Ends But the Idea Remains

    I am not trying to hold back the tide they say will lift all boats, nor do I mean to impede America’s economic hegemony. But I am a very bad consumer: I no longer value owning most things, and I am averse by long bitter experience to being in debt for them. I […]

Encountering ‘The Bear’

  My younger son likes to cook and has an interest in those who work in kitchens for a living. He loved the Marco Pierre White memoir Devil in the Kitchen, and the movie Burnt, said to be inspired in part by White. Recently he turned me on to the Hulu series The Bear, about […]

Elvis Is Still the King

    Wherever you start from, Hammond, Indiana, is far away. Having spent the time to drive up the interstates, past the Chicago Transit Authority Repair Shop and the Norfolk Southern Railroad Calumet Yard, over the Calumet River, along the Chicago Skyway Toll Road, past the Hammond Port Authority and the Water Works, under the […]

Happy Day, Fathers

    I am handy at finding right words for right places, often by intuition and sometimes by a dim sense of the rags of poetry in them. When a word comes to mind that seems odd for the context, I look at its archaic meanings before I discard it in case it can convey […]

Kevin Will Never Stop Looking for Love

    Kevin is a peacock who ranges freely among several farms in rural Southern Illinois. “Kevin is nuts,” says Lee, who lives on one of the farms. “He likes to boss the chickens around.” Kevin “belongs” to the farm family across the county road and fields. Lee hears that people think peacocks are pretty, […]

Betting on Armageddon Then and Now

    I told a friend about my wager with the preacher’s son, and he agreed it was a solid bet. My third-grade classmate Mike was the son of an evangelical preacher who also worked for the phone company, I remember. He believed in the imminence of the Second Coming and all the disruption to […]

Off On Some Trip

    Todd was near the end of his set by the time I got to the winery. I raised my hand in greeting as I entered, and he said, “Hello, Sir,” into the microphone. I was not sure he recognized me. We went to high school together. He was a class officer, polished and […]