About a week ago, the New York Times published a cute feature called “The United States of Thanksgiving,” which profiled a signature dish for the Thanksgiving table from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
And then Minnesota lost its damn mind. Continue reading ‘With Thanksgiving safely behind us, I am still puzzled by #grapegate’
The thing about the internet is everyone is an expert, and everyone has great advice, and almost all of it is mostly “helpful.” But it can be hard to know just how (or who) you have to be to succeed.
Everyone knows we’re not naturally endowed to survive. We’re not good enough on our own. Are you kidding me? We need Lifehacker and that list of 10 places we must poop before we die, and … well, you won’t believe what this rapist said to his victim, and her response was so perfect, if this 10-second video doesn’t make you cry you have no pulse.
Before the internet, we were practically painting our cave walls with our own shit.
But the only way to keep one’s head from exploding from the choices is to make a few decisions every day. Take what works and forget about the rest. (Do you see how I’m giving you advice about advice? Stop me before I hurt myself.) Continue reading ‘The internet doesn’t need to be so overwhelming’
The short answer is, the Jimmy John’s No. 6 vegetarian sub may very well have saved my life.
On the evening of Sept. 23, 1997, I put myself in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. That is to say, an ambulance and some paramedics put me in the hospital, but I’m the one who started it.
It looks kinda like this, except they dont do sprouts anymore. (Courtesy of JimmyJohns.com
I remember this much before waking up on a gurney as I was wheeled into Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Mich.
“And you put it in here?” I heard her ask as I hopped off the last step down to the subway. She was pointing at the change slot on the turnstile.
The man in the booth answered. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew what he said.
“You put it where it says ‘coin return’?” she asked.
No. That’s the coin return button, he explained.
A newbie. Marvelous. Continue reading ‘‘And you put it in here?’’
Thursday afternoon, on my way to the post office, I passed the fenced-in front grounds of a Catholic school in my neighborhood. The school day was over, so I was surprised to hear a woman’s voice inside the fence over the sound of my headphones.
She held the leashes of two dogs with one hand and her phone with the other. The dogs seemed agitated and restless, but she ignored them, carrying on as if she were talking to a girlfriend about her date last weekend or a sale at the Acme.
Ten paces further I saw a group of people clustered around a tree, each of them looking upward. None of them was wearing a coat, despite the snow and the cold. Glancing upward myself, I saw a cat, totally exposed in the leafless upper branches.
Two teenage girls were calling up to the cat, who seemed to be in no mood to come down. They held something up to it. It was white. It looked like a snowball, but I assumed it must be something else. Surely they were trying to coax it down with with something that would actually attract it.
“She’s scared. She senses the dogs nearby,” someone said.
No kidding. The dogs are as plain as day, and no more than 30 feet away. I guess it’s good that the woman is holding her dogs back, I thought, but as long as they’re there, whining and yipping, that cat is going to stay put. Doesn’t anyone watch cartoons?
It’s tiresome to see so many people blame The Media for blowing this Terry Jones thing up into something bigger than it should be. As if The Media is some sort of insidious, evil force desperate to manipulate reality. It’s such a cheap, thoughtless and simplistic cop-out. The Media. What does that even mean?
Over the recent weekend, Philadelphia got its second-worst snowfall ever (since they started keeping such records in the early 19th century). If forecasts are correct and we get another foot or more today, we’ll be on track to break a record for annual snowfall.
So, we pull on our boots and dig ourselves out.
With only 14 feet of sidewalk in front of our house, it’s no big deal to shovel and salt our walk and the neighbors’ on either side. On Sunday, half a dozen people on the block took up their shovels and started hacking at our tiny, narrow street. There’s no chance of getting a plow around the corner, so it’s down to us.
There was some real community spirit out there for a few minutes. I didn’t know anyone’s name, and we didn’t even all speak the same language, but we all had a common purpose. Kids were bouncing around like puppies. Neighbors were talking.
There are not many places you can shift two and a half feet of snow. There’s only so much room between the snowed-in cars parked along one side. We were forced to dump a lot of it on the curbs, knowing we’d have to tidy up the sidewalks again.
And then the daisy chain was broken.
Continue reading ‘Philly’s Snow Panic Brings out the Best and Worst’
... but enough about me 