Thankful is not my default setting. Open up the panel on my back, and you’ll find “Critical,” “Curmudgeonly,” “Crazy,” and “Skeptical Skeletor,” but “Thankful” is practically a hidden button, squirreled away in a tiny recess that can only be reached via a modified paperclip, like your car’s time-setting function. It’s not that I don’t have a thousand things to be
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“Double double, toil and trouble, these be bands to reduce you to rubble. An aural potion to fill you with fright, drown in these sounds on Halloween night. If you dare to take a listen, they’re sure to make your cake-hole glisten. Drool as you duel with undead waves, and pray you don’t stumble into an early grave.” – The
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Hey Ghoul, have you got plans for Halloween? Because I’d be terrified to spend it without you. (Pause while I wait for the phone to ring, and the people in charge of the Ryan Gosling meme to tell me that I’m everything they’ve been searching for.) No? OK then. Want to spend Halloween night in the Paris Catacombs? This isn’t
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I guess I just like having my face melted. It’s the only conclusion, really. Blistering rock and roll, spicy food, mind-liquifying literature, and looking directly into the Ark of the Covenant: I’ve done it all. Being the thrill-seeker that I am, I’ve done it all nearly to death. Oh, the tales my tummy could tell. There was the time I
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“We do not know why this happened. We do not know how this happened. But again, to confirm, 13 are dead in rural southwest Oregon.” – CBS News Now the local anchor is speculating that this might be the greatest number of people killed in one event in the state of Oregon. True or not, that’s still 13 bodies, and
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From this day forward, whenever I have the blues, I’ll pray to St. Jodorowsky. For last night, as it was likely written in his original 3,000-page manuscript for “Dune,” I had a religious experience while watching the documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune.” It is entirely possible that my viewing of this documentary, based on the cult filmmaker’s failed attempt to bring his
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Damn I hate Downward Dog. If it was an actual dog, I would put it down. Every time the yoga instructor indicates that it’s time to transition into this position, I want to euthanize myself. Whatever sadist thought of this shoulder-grinding aberration of bodily positioning was a sick dog, and deserved to get Old-Yellered with extreme prejudice. The fact that
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Mary Ann and I bought our house in North Portland nearly five years ago. While I was excited about the diversity of folks living in NoPo, and we both dug the proximity to our jobs at the time, truth is it was all about the Benjamins. This was one of the few places two firmly middle-class folks could still afford
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“You gotta know when to boule them/ Know when to school them/ Know when to play a card/ Know when to flail. You never trade your token/ Unless you’re in the Viper Pass/ There’ll be time enough for cackling, once the ship has sailed.” – “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers (in an alternate dimension where Fireball Island, aka Ile Boule
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You wouldn’t think a show set in post-Katrina New Orleans would be a smile factory. Perhaps that’s the alchemical magic of TV right there: It can take an experience that must have been hell to live through and turn it into something so life-affirming and brimming over with infectious groove that your squirms turn to funky grooves. Soon, you’re dancing
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