Month: December 2005

  • There Was Nothing Wrong With His Life, Really

    He’d sit up in the darkness staring across the inlet at the lighthouse on its pile of rocks, tossing its feeble light out into the fog rolling in off the lake. It was a ridiculous and hokey metaphor for exactly where he was in his life, but, what the hell, it was oddly comforting. The…

  • Bees, Chanting, Etc.

    Ruckert lived across a pasture from an order of monks who were famous for their gingerbread, their honey, and their singing. They’d supposedly sung at the White House once upon a time, and had made a few records. The had an orchard out behind the monastery, where they kept their bees, and Ruckert often saw…

  • Off-Season's Greetings

    I’m trying to crawl back into baseball, which essentially means crawling from the wreckage of last season, when various nagging injuries cut the year short for me and led to disappointment and then flat-out indifference. I’ve never in my years as a fan had a season like 2005, and I’m hoping that it was nothing…

  • On (Off) the Air

    I’m away from the desk this week. In all the sturm und drang of Christmas–I understand there’s a war on it–I failed to mention last week that I had a local radio appointment you might have been interested in. Anyway, I had a delightful time yesterday hanging out with the gifted and gorgeous Kerri Miller…

  • Listen Up, You Little Nippers

    There was a time, believe me or don’t, when machines didn’t have memories. They opened cans, maybe, or suctioned dirt from carpets, and that was plenty wonderful. We were happy as fucking clams when we no longer had to trudge out to a shed in the backyard to relieve ourselves. And put this in your…

  • Easter On Christmas Eve: The Return Of Uncle Jumbo's Playground

    –Illustration by James Dankert Here’s a new wrinkle in the gray, clanging days before Christmas: Uncle Jumbo has been playing miserable pet store Santa Claus, wrestling squirming cats and dogs and even the occasional bird or lizard in my lap while a wrinkled and alcoholic little temp-pool elf tries to snap photos for somebody’s sad…