If it loves wine as much as I do, there should be a cabinet for airplane-sized bottles.
Blog
-
Eyes on the Prize
pixabay.com September of 2000, and I am south of New Orleans, paddling a rented canoe up a long narrow body of water, a sort of canal. I now know it is called a bayou. I grew up picturing a bayou as a swamp. Rather, a bayou will often be surrounded by swamps, or will connect swamps, and for hours I have been admiring tiny alligators sunning themselves on fallen trees. Then, less than ten feet away, I notice a snout, almost submerged, and a pair of eyeballs tracking me. Big eyeballs. A big snout.
On a theoretical level, of course, I understood that little alligators must grow into larger alligators. But here is this thing, evidently longer than a Cadillac, floating between me and the take-out spot. It has a blank look. It appears to have no thoughts whatsoever, except for an urge to bite down on something.
By this point I have been canoeing for years, sometimes in middling whitewater. I have never fallen out. The bayou is placid as stale beer, yet I suddenly feel a great sense of – what? – focus.
I had rented the canoe from a tight-lipped guy who’d posted a flyer in a Treme laundromat. I arranged to meet him at a boat ramp. He unloaded it and minutes later drove away in his van, after promising to return in four hours. Like most rentals it was heavy aluminum, battered, and stable. Hot to the touch.
Now I can smell my lunch warming on the metal and suspect the snout can, too. I think of those clueless tourists who pose next to bison and bears.
Later, a ranger tells me this particular gator is 16 feet long, including tail. Standing side by side, if such a thing were possible, my head would be approximately even with its belly. Which is exactly the point. Later still, and for years afterward, PBS will run a station ID showing a crocodile launching itself like a Trident missile from a muddy watering hole and clamping on to a careless antelope. Which, again, is exactly the point.
-
Sound Pain
I heard these AM radio ads for a clinic called Sound Pain Solutions and I got all excited till I realized it won’t protect me from “Welcome to the Jungle” or free jazz or backup beepers or crazed terriers or Megabass or jackhammers or livid toddlers or melisma or leaf blowers or even Tucker Carlson. Apparently, it’s a Puget thing.
-
Slim, fast.
I’ve definitely slimmed down. Only problem is, those things are so tiny that I’m always hungry. Some gravy would help.
-
What They Wanted
Remember back before the election when that restaurant owner in West Yellowstone told ABC News that he wished Trump would win the election and fire 1,000 National Park Rangers?
Remember, in November of 2025, when black voters told exit pollsters that they were switching to Trump because they wanted him to strip the name of Medgar Evers from a U.S. Navy Ship? Remember the hedge fund manager who told the WSJ that he would gladly vote Republican if Trump would just impose a tariff on uninhabited islands near Antarctica?
Remember the tradwife mommy at the Trump town hall event who demanded that 20 percent of food inspectors be eliminated? Remember that choir director in Minnesota who wrote a letter to the editor saying her Trump vote depended on his commitment to handcuffing immigrant children?
Remember the dude ranch owner near the wildfire-prone Sam Houston National Forest who told NPR he could only support Trump if more than 3,000 Forest Service workers were axed? Remember that Indiana history teacher who posted on Facebook that she only wanted one thing from the new president? To bulldoze the East Wing of the White House?
Remember?
Nah. Me neither.
-
Handyman Special
photo by Mark So the kitchen tap was dripping under the sink but I couldn’t fit under there to loosen the nuts to replace the gasket so I went into the bedroom and cut a hole in the drywall to stick my hand through but it turned out the fitting was PVC glued to old metal pipe so I decided to upgrade that section but then figured I might as well do the bathroom while I was at it which connected to an outdoor spigot so what the hell but that meant prying off a length of siding which splintered as it came loose and it was 80-year-old siding and I knew I’d never get a replacement to match so I peeled off the whole south end but then I noticed a crack in the foundation and…
Funny thing is, that guy Dale on the YouTube fixed his leaking sink in 12 minutes.
-
Not Including Tip
Sure, it’s useful to know how much the battle will cost, but it would be more useful to know when it will begin and how much the bail bondsman will charge.
(Also, those draft 16-ouncers seem a little pricey.)
-
I Was a Camera
May, 2000: Mt. Prospect Illinois. I’m standing on a sidewalk near a Metra rail line near a stopped train near a bundle on the tracks. A 23-year-old male, it later turns out, intentionally stopped his car, left the door open, and stepped in front of the train.
The phrase blood on the tracks, always lurking somewhere inside my skull, is finally applicable to real life.
Policemen, looking unhappy, walk the siding, marking bits with little flags. Firemen stand around in groups. A cop finds a sodden red tennis shoe at least 100 yards from the point of impact. “Won’t they let you get any closer?” asks a bystander.
“Why would I want to get any closer?”
A photographer from the Tribune shows up, says he remembers a dog that was hit by a train in Vietnam and survived with two legs. A photographer from the Herald arrives. We all make the obligatory nervous jokes, snap a few pictures. The Herald guy says his pictures won’t run anyway. “I don’t know what your photo policy is, but we don’t run suicides.”
“You have a photo policy?” I ask. “Cool.”
-
Greetings
I wanted a Spiritually Dead card to send a friend, but that rack was sold out. This will do in a pinch.
