This post started out as a way for me to explain the revolution in Egypt to my kids. But then it changed. From the moment we’re born, until the moment we die – life is hard. Physically, psychologically, emotionally, politically, in love and in war, in sickness and in health, forever and ever – life is a long lesson on enduring hardships. We crackle to life in a fit of energy and gestate in the safest place we’ll ever know…
I saw Black Swan last night. No, I’m not going to ruin it for you – and yet, I hope that this mini review is not so vague that it’s confusing. But first I want to say that I’m not a hype guy. Because of the hype swirling around Black Swan, I expected to leave the theater shaking my head and cursing the critics. Boy was I wrong. Black Swan is the story of Nina (Natalie Portman), a dancer in…
You can’t walk into a corner store these days without the police blotter newspaper slapping you in the face. What was originally designed as a shameful deterrent to criminals has become something like a badge of honor. Who else is buying these papers, little old ladies trying to keep their neighborhoods safe? Right. It used to be that sex sells. Now it’s mugshots. If mugshots didn’t sell, my local ABC affiliate wouldn’t rotate them in the marginalia of their home…
(originally posted on New Year’s Day, 2011) I grew up in the deep south – below I-10, east of the Mississippi River. During my childhood, I remember having to eat pork (usually ham), black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year’s Day. For luck. Collards symbolized money; pigs root forward (not backward, like, say, crawfish); and there’s something about how black-eyed peas sustained a group of starving soldiers during the Civil War. “It’s tradition,” we were told. For the record…
1) Michael Vick should have a dog. I believe that everyone is capable of change, and everyone deserves second chances. And if there’s one beast in the world with the ability to transform humans, it’s the dog. Vick’s no dummy. I think he knows how badly he fucked up. And I can’t imagine that he is still capable of such heinousness after all the forced therapy, public outrage, etc. I don’t think he ever understood dogs in the first place…
In the Spring of 2010, I did something terrible. Our youngest daughter, Cozette, who was 6 at the time, was gathering flowers of weeds that were beginning to overrun our yard. The good shepherd that I am tried explaining to her that weeds are lies, and that their flowers are deceptions to keep us from pulling them up by the roots so that they don’t steal the nutrients from the grass. She smiled up at me and said, “But grass…
