Bullies

I don’t know many people who have the balls to stand up in front of a group and lead them somewhere. Leadership is always hard to find, let alone leadership of kids who don’t want to go anyplace, and will be uncomfortable for significant parts of the journey. When people who do have the cajones […]

The Tour

Halfway through, I crossed the street and went into the first bodega. The second one, there were some guys on the stoop in front and it was unclear if that was a business or a money laundering operation. A bodega on Staten Island, near the salt warehouse, is a lot like a grocery store in […]

Annotated Bibliography

“The party was ‘a failure… The problem was that nearly everyone got dead drunk immediately, and vomited, or cried, or slept most of the night.’ [Beauvoir] was surprised when, several days later, everyone said ‘how nice it was.’” — Simone de Beauvoir, Deidre Bair Simone de Beauvoir is my current object of admiration. There are […]

Block

Writer’s block is not real. When people say they have writer’s block, what I think they mean is that they are unwilling to write a lot of stupid crap. Or that they have suffered a stroke, and can no longer think or communicate in words. One of those two things. I was in New York […]