College football is much like a junior high gym class. The big kids with premature mustaches — Alabama, Ohio State, and the like — strut around trying to outdo each other in pull-ups, 100-yard dash times, and unabashed nakedness around shower time. They have their two big cliques: the Big…

The Inspiration for Amadeus This play was written in c. 1832 by famed Russian playwright, Alexander Pushkin. It is (obviously) in the public domain. I am posting it here in case some other nerd might be interested in it. Curiously short, the play was yet the inspiration for the 1984…

AirBnb, VRBO, Neighborhoods, and the Stranger Next Door IMPORTANT TO KNOW: Your feedback is needed soon. The city’s Quality of Life, Arts & Culture Committee will vote on its recommendation for the regulation of short-term rentals on May 17th. That recommendation will go to the full City Council for a…

Elemenogram A word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase and adding the letters “L,” “M,” “N,” and “O.” For example, racy and normalcy. Can you think of any other elemenograms? (Hint: Think of a word that contains “l,” “m,” “n,” and “o,” and work…

At various points in the past year my son, daughter, father, and pregnant wife have all been in diapers of some form or another. I had heard of the so-called Sandwich Generation, generally defined as those who are simultaneously caring for aging parents and young children. I just never thought…

Sorry, I don’t really have my elevator speech down, but if you have a minute… It’s sort of a coming age tale, a bildungsroman if you will. Actually, now that I’m thinking more about it, it’s more of a roman à clef of sorts. But also a picaresque. Does that…

(And a few suggestions.) — Greetings fellow Freedom Fighters. And thank you, Comrade Melshoy, for that gracious introduction. I will try to be brief, but I beg you all to understand the import that I feel my words bear for us: the Resistance! As regards the Collaborators... Yes, yes, boo to them indeed! But as…

The 2010s Ended With COVID & Biden’s Victory. When did the others? — There’s a quote, oft-repeated in Poor Richard’s Almanacks, Guinness Books of World Records, Federal Registers, VH1 Best Ofs, and other definitive cultural retrospectives, that a given decade doesn’t really end until a year or two into the next. This year was an exception. The 2010s For Americans, the 2010s began to end…

Let’s Agree to Disagree — We can all agree that Abraham Lincoln was wrong about everything. If so (and it is certainly not) then he was wrong in positing that a house divided against itself cannot stand; thus, a house divided against itself at least might stand. In that case, and assuming you — we…