Not That Profound

The first thing that caught my eye was three people standing in the far-right corner of the room, where one woman stood in a crucifixion pose while a middle-aged woman and a thin man with a thick graying Jerry Garcia-beard were scanning their hands over her like TFA agents at an airport. READ MORE

And just like that, in a hyperbolic blink, my daughter Paige has finished her first year of college and moved her belongings[1] back into her childhood bedroom. READ MORE

The Captain I know passed away on Sunday morning at age 48 after battling pancreatic cancer. He fought valiantly, but let’s be real: cancer is a motherfucker, and pancreatic is one of the worst. The Captain was my first cousin Jaime’s husband and my good friend, and I already miss him. But I don’t want this to be sullen or maudlin. The Captain would kick me square in the Richard if he knew I made this sullen or maudlin. READ MORE

On Thursday, May 5—a manufactured “Mexican” holiday that gives amateur drunks an excuse to get sloshed on watery margaritas and warm Coronas—I encountered said crowds in downtown Manchester during the city’s Taco Tour and I freaked out. My social anxiety swelled like a broken toe, then I had to go. READ MORE

In April of 2002, Green Bean Press, a small independent publisher in New York City[1], released my first full-length book—a collection of interrelated short stories titled “Frostbite.” I can look back at “Frostbite” now, two decades later, and say, with the objectivity that age affords, that the book had no business seeing the light of day. READ MORE

As I re-read the essay to discuss with my classes, in light of Will Smith’s “slap heard around the world,” which all my students were buzzing about, it occurred to me that—maybe—both stories were speaking to the same issue, something so ingrained in American males that it often goes unnoticed. READ MORE

It’s the day before your birthday so stop reading the news. Stop thinking about that megalomaniac waging war in the Ukraine as soon as the pandemic started to wane. Stop obsessing about gas prices, and inflation, and your daughter’s college tuition, and the fact that being a human being of modest middle-class means these days is absolutely untenable. After all, you’re a just speck of dust in the dust-coated chaos of an eternal abyss. READ MORE

If the Ancient Greeks had invented a god of middle-aged Gen. X guys, his name would’ve been Grohl. READ MORE