I often wonder whether, as sometimes seems obvious, we live in truly horrible times, times unlike any others ever seen. The worst of times. The absolute worst. Or I wonder (and, admittedly, this is a real possibility) if that kind of thinking is just the grumpy old bastard in me raising his bumpy old head.… Read More Something Old, Nothing New
Pretty much every morning, for the past two years, the First Amendment champions at The New York Times have kept us up to date on the grim totals of the pandemic with all manner of charts and graphs and statistics. In the 21st century business of journalism, this is known as “data journalism:” the gathering,… Read More The End is Near
When I was in my late teens, sittin’ around waitin’ for my life to begin (while, as Springsteen sings, “it was all just slippin’ away“), I wrecked the family car. Drove it off a country road not far from our house on the way to taking my little brother to some kind of music practice.… Read More Poor, Poor Me
The cold at Paul Brown Stadium that winter day, as I sat there shoulder-to-shoulder in utter climate shock, was the kind that instantly stiffens muscles and sinks so deeply into bones that it takes months to ooze out. Every exhale, every scream from the hardened crowd produced a cloud. Applause, when there was any, was… Read More Cincinnati … Super Bowl
Probably 15 minutes or so into one of the latest Netflix blockbusters, a satirical hammer to the skull about disasters that human beings so blithely and comically ignore — ha! climate change, ha! silly politicians, ha! the pitfalls of sudden fame, ha! a comet destroying Earth, ha! we’re such dunderheads — I knew that we… Read More Remember When Movies Were Good?
During my first semester of college, in between learning to catch a screaming frisbee behind my back (I should have been in class) and drinking unfathomable amounts of beer (I probably should have been studying), I wandered through a slightly advanced English class — trust me, it wasn’t that advanced — in which I was… Read More If At First …
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