Hollywood is a side gig; mainly, Michael Beran rescues wild animals, those he keeps for education and entertainment, and meanwhile rescuing people from wild animals. Now he joins Rocky, a Eurasian eagle-owl of magnificent proportions with a diva’s temperament, and the bird flaps huge wings in token protest.
Elvis got slicker over time. Graceland, the home Elvis proudly bought when he was twenty-two years old, finished with his first movie, presenting the key to his beloved momma with a flourish—has gotten slicker, too.
A man sights out the window at the Texas Schoolbook Depository, Dallas. Photo by John Griswold. I would bet that at least once every day of the week (except Monday and Tuesday), there is a young guy with a beard and wraparound shades on the back of…
Robert Washington grew up in St. Louis. In 1974, when he was sixteen, he heard Elvis Presley in concert. Three years later, he was celebrating his nineteenth birthday in U.S. Marine Corps boot camp when word came that Elvis was dead. The coincidence felt significant.
For a while, many swore he was alive. He had faked his death to escape their love, the burden of which they freely acknowledged. Now that he is, someplace, eighty-seven years old, that notion has faded.
“You cannot understand America until you have been to Graceland,” a friend recently informed me, and I took it as a dare. This trip, timed to hit the end of Elvis Week, the day the King died (though no one could be sure) is an exploration for me, but a pilgrimage for most. Ribald as Chaucer, exhausting as the Camino de Santiago, solemn as the hajj.
CPAC audience during Donald Trump’s speech, August 6, 2022. Photo by John Griswold Donald Trump’s keynote speech at the end of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) in Dallas last Saturday ended with a scripted, dystopian litany of all he says is wrong with America under a Democratic…
Leaving one’s legs and underarms fuzzy is the new feminist statement. Yet the curious and disturbing appeal of prepubescence is still dictating the most private and uncomfortable shave of all.
In elementary school, as a fund-raiser, we kids were sent out to sell 16-ounce boxes of Bachman pretzels for twenty-five cents each. It was easy to sell lots of boxes because everyone loved them. My mother had to stop me from eating whole boxes at a sitting.
The words we speak influence how we see the world both figuratively and literally, psycholinguists tell us. Certain words even trigger involuntary eye movements.