Misc Tag

Mother’s Day is an especially tricky holiday for the best of us. It’s even worse when your relationship with your mother leaves something to be more than desired. And it’s the hardest thing to see‒ Facebook posts from friends that love their mothers, each one a special story about their mother and the things they’re doing to repay them. Stories about the way they never can. And scrolling through each one becomes a chore because you don’t have your own to add. This is the life of someone with aRead More

“Merry Christmas!” “Happy Christmas!” “Happy Hanukkah!” “Happy Kwanzaa!” “Happy Holidays!” “Festive Pagan Solstice!” Whichever greeting you prefer this time of year, odds are, someone will be unreasonably butthurt by it. “How dare you have a different upbringing from mine…” they’ll scoff, while lumping you in with the real terrorists, with their filthy, minimalist, “war on Christmas” Starbucks cups. Damn heathens… But no matter what their self-righteous, butthurt poison, we can all agree on one thing: our friends, families, co-workers, mechanics, pets, dentists, and Jimmy John’s delivery guys have disappointed usRead More

Record 31: Monterey, Sunday, July 5th, 2015. Day. Old John does his crossfit exercises on the wharf’s edge. He does them at sunup, not only for the sake of adding a, yes, hint of drama to the retelling of his daily crossfit undertaking, but, he will tell you, because he is infatuated with the sun, and its location relative to him mid-burpee. When asked why the sun is so arresting to him, he will tell you to think of a world with no natural light. A world artificially lit inRead More

Record 30: Temecula, Friday, July 5th, 2013. Day. On the weekends we ride our Schwinn mountain bikes through the park and smile. Mother is the leader of the Schwinn bicycle trips and she signals where to turn left and where to turn right. She does this because she is the leader, and leaders of Schwinn bicycle trips know where we turn. We all smile. And follow. We sip from our individually customized plastic water bottles during our rest period at the alcove, shaded by California sycamore trees. Father explains toRead More

Record 29: San Francisco, Saturday, July 5th, 2014. Day. Here ye here ye all you radders ‘n rollers! Dat Bar: BAR is straight opening its doors TONIGHT for an unofficially and totally incomparably lit 4th of July after-soiree! That’s right, it’s that summer season of sippin’, so trip on in for a coupla brews and kickback with Dat Bar: BAR’s in house groove dude, DJ dubblaLICKAbron! He’ll be lettin that bass drop all nite dear brahs and brahdesses, and word on the street is DJCM’s crushin’ the illest brat-pop dubwaverRead More

Record 28: Sacramento, Friday, July 5th, 2013. Night. The locker room is a church at halftime. Winning or losing, it doesn’t matter. It’s where we come together for reassurance. For motivation. Hope. At least, this is what I’m told I should believe. There’s the smell of sweat. Old Spice. Axe body spray nonsense. Cedar from the open window. But this is all familiar. Tonight, there’s a sting in the air. Something sour in the space between our heads and the cement ceiling. My players, the kids, they’re sucking air inRead More

While half of the high school is off shopping, the other half is busy cramming, because AP tests are in May. The beginning of May, to be exact. All of their preparing and studying comes down to this final day, the test day– where how you do is the determining factor of if you’ll be taking that class in college or not. It’s a time of stress, kids cramming and quizzing each other in the hallways, teachers telling other students to shut up because they’re trying to help their kidsRead More

Magic isn’t real anymore. Gone are the days of widespread witch hunts and divine prophecy (in the US, anyway). We no longer live in a demon-haunted world—now we have the technology to access an infinite amount of information anytime, anywhere. Google made a computer small enough to fit in a contact lens and your predictive text knows you better than you do. We’ve come a long way since bleeding people to cure them of diseases that had more to do with “sinning” than with medical phenomena. Next time you bustRead More

This one goes out to anyone who is living in an American city that is being overtaken by invaders from the planet Hip; this is for the lonely, who haunt dark corners of mainstream venues secretly watching their favorite unfortunately popular bands; this is for the silent casualties of fashion, who actually want more than a single gear on their bike because it’s freakin’ easier to get up those hills; this is for the few of us who eat GMO food and never talk about it; this is for theRead More