Princess and the 21st Century Space-Age Mattress
Pete, my roommate, is a strikingly handsome guy; he’s tall, blonde, strong, jovial, and he’s equipped with what a girlfriend of mine once described as, “A face to die for.” My girlfriend. She said that about Pete, to me. Thanks, honey. Pete’s got this problem, though. Pete only dates crazy people. I know what you’re thinking: “Women, am I right?” No, you’re wrong. I mean, wait, Pete dates women, yes, but not in the “all women are crazy” sense. The women Pete finds are straight-up...
Read MoreBarbarian Soiree
“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.” – Luke: 12:37 I text my girlfriend: “Maybe the menus are carved in stone.” A sophisticate in the waiting area talks on his cell, and gapes at a meat slab on a rotating spit. A teenage boy with jeans tighter than a court jester’s leggings detaches from his phone and snorts as a meat-bearer—they call these guys “gauchos”—passes him. Here at the bar, the carvings in the crown molding have all the refinement of a shore of bludgeoned seals. And that wainscoting? With the decorative edges?...
Read MoreDear Mr. Shakespeare
Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Sir, some are convinced that your wisdom and creative genius are unsurpassed; others believe someone else is writing those so-called masterpieces that bear your name. To point 2 above, I say “Sir Francis Bacon? Christopher Marlowe?” To point 1, I say “Baloney!” I have waded through your most recent bloodbath, Macbeth, which you recently proffered for publication. Having recovered from several nightmares about drowning in an ocean of blood, I am ready to respond. Since I can’t address every weakness in this lurid “historical”...
Read MoreThe Truth About the Expulsion
An Address Delivered at the East Orange Women’s Conference First of all, I wanted to go. Adam was the one who wanted to stay. If it was up to him, we’d still be there, spending eternity in mind-numbing peace and tranquility, every day sunnier and cheerier than the previous. Sure, it was Paradise, but Paradise gets old real fast without any contrast. Besides, it wasn’t Paradise with a guy like Adam. Bloated with his First Man persona, he thought it was he and only he who should name all the creatures that walked on land and swam in the sea. And they were the most boring names....
Read MoreChoices
“…if poets (often lacking God, less often lacking cats)…” – Dan Chiasson I’ve often heard that politicians own dogs and we with creative natures tend towards cats, and I wonder why. Do politicians need clear emotions, eyes filled with slavish devotion or rage on the verge of attack, while we of poetic bent have become accustomed to the blank, disinterested...
Read MoreThe Secret History of Walter Mitty
The movie starring Ben Stiller tells the story of Walter Mitty, whose daydreams constitute his secret life. The story is from James Thurber, an iconic humorist who died in 1961, leaving behind a passel of great yet mostly forgotten cartoons and essays in The New Yorker, plus the one short story for which he is best known, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” (a brief delight which made it into many high school English textbooks, but was mostly skimmed over by jocks on their way to football practice… since they already knew on which cheek their buns were buttered, having no imagination to...
Read More