As a boy, I only saw my father every other weekend when he’d come pick up me in Jacksonville and take me down to his house near Gainesville. My father was a racist. I don’t think he really thought of himself as a racist, but he was. And I could have easily become one too, but for my mother who raised me the rest of the time. She was not a racist. In fact, as the result of my father…
Yesterday, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys died. Of cancer. He was 47. I wasn’t much of a Beastie Boys fan, but it’s sad that a young man died of cancer, nonetheless. And it makes me wonder. I am 47. Cancer doesn’t run in my family. My grandmother had it, but as far as I know she’s the only one. Her son, who is 75, smokes two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day. No cancer. I grew up in Florida…
Don’t color outside the lines. Don’t dilly dally. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t give me that look, mister. Don’t cross the street without looking both ways. Don’t throw it right down the middle of the plate! Don’t cry over spilled milk. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so. Don’t turn your back on me, young man. Don’t cheat. Don’t do drugs. Don’t screw this up. Don’t have unprotected sex. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t…
On May 8, 2012, I am going to a polling station in Charlotte, NC, to cast a vote against taking people’s rights away. That’s right, there’s an amendment on the ballot designed to remove certain rights from certain people and the only way to stop it from happening is to vote against it. How something like this is even up for a vote in America in 2012 is beyond me. I’m not going to write about which people this proposed amendment…
To be a good American is to be a contributing member of society. And to be a contributing member of society means being a functioning part of America’s commercial engine. At our core, all Americans are resources of money. Pie charts that everyone wants a piece of. Restaurants, Doctors, Lawyers, Car Makers, Tax Collectors, Cable Companies, Computer Companies, Hollywood – you name it, to them we are all just these little pockets of oil that they mine. Valuable, but exhaustible…
I looked at my watch. Ken looked at his. It was still too early, so we continued to hole up at Mike’s Tavern off Route 9 – a dark den with a cigarette machine, a juke box, and a television over the bar. The television was on. The bartender was watching a Mets game and chain smoking. “You know why I like baseball? Ken asked. “Because I don’t have to watch it on TV.” He took at swig from his…
