August 23, 2017
Charlottesville Fabulous
My big brother lives in Charlottesville. We grew up together in Groveport, Ohio, rode the bus with a girl whose dad was a Columbus cop, whose grandfather was a World […]
June 22, 2017
Minor League Season Begins—Again
People asked Ron Shelton, again and again, if he was going to write a sequel to Bull Durham. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, and I’m glad he didn’t. […]
June 5, 2017
Touchscreen Headstone: Speculations on the Digital Afterlife
“Eterni.me wants to rely on the real substance of twenty-first-century life: online activity. There are other companies that offer related services: Legacy Locker and Entrustnet allow users to nominate an […]
July 25, 2016
Majestic Waste
Jay Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne (2011) album was a watershed moment in hip hop, specifically, and American culture broadly, though to say this is a bit redundant, […]
July 20, 2016
La Fin du Monde at Bristol Bar
There was a bar called Bristol. On the corner of 4th and Summit, all brick with a couple window walls, a former speakeasy back in the Prohibition days, when the […]
June 29, 2016
Burger Night at the Farm
Last Friday, we stopped out at the Bread and Butter Farm in Shelburne for their Burger Night. A long gravel driveway and an army lugging lawn chairs, beach bags, diaper […]
June 25, 2016
Memory is Elsewhere
“I want you to tell me a story ‘bout when you were a little boy,” says my four-year-old girl every night. I tell her things I remember, and things I’ve […]
June 21, 2016
The Greatest Decade
The Warriors are not greater than the ’95-’96 Bulls, who still have the best win-loss record of all time when you include the postseason. The Warriors have reached heights that […]
June 20, 2016
Summer in Vermont
Saw a red and white hot air balloon floating over Winooski on my run by the river this morning. Crossed the footbridge and greeted a woman with one of those […]
June 8, 2016
What Life Is All About
Just finished Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Here are four things the sordid, elegant, contemplative, coke-infused pages of this wonderful book made me want to do: […]
June 6, 2016
The Data Mine of Rap
The Raplyzer is a computer program that automatically analyzes rhymes from rap lyrics and ranks rappers according to their Rhyme Factor. Created by Eric Malmi, a doctoral student in Computer […]
May 24, 2016
Shroud, Telltale, Stern: Fantasies of Sailing
This summer, I’m going to learn how to sail. I’ve only taken one lesson in the past, on the water at Hueston Woods in Oxford, Ohio, in a little Sunfish, […]