Who’s Your Daddy?

Everybody has a favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger quote. In “Kindergarten Cop,” the Governator is a cop masquerading as a teacher in order to find a drug dealer. He plays a little game with the kids, saying, in trademark cadence, “You tell me: who is your daddy and what does he do?” I just watched the clip…

Mise en Scène

At the beginning of my sophomore year, Mom called one day to give me a phone number for Professor Eugene McCreary. Professor McCreary—“Gene,” as I’d come to know him—was the brother of a dear friend of Mom’s from when my father taught at Emory, around the time I was born. Though Gene and his wife…

Nuclear Family Blast

About a year ago, I drove to visit my brother, Ben, at the group home he’d recently moved into. It was about an hour to the Finger Lakes town, a significant improvement on the two-and-a-half hours I’d needed to drive to see him at the State Hospital in Binghamton. It was a beautiful day. I…

Polaroid

Let go of the little distractions
Hold close to the ones that you love
’Cause we won’t all be here this time next year
So while you can, take a picture of us
— Frank Turner, “Polaroid Picture”

The Story of a Band

Once I had a grand vision: The Musicians and The Madmen. It would be an ultra-competent bass-guitar-keys-drums quartet…

Dumped

“The mind will change, and change shall be relief.” — Edgar Bowers, from Amor Vincit Omnia

The first time I was dumped, it was by letter. She sent it, then got on a plane to go on a European vacation with her family. I was 15 and thought I was in love. She used lyrics from the America…

Bizz-Buzz-Bang-Whack-Crash-Gesund

49 has always been my bète noir numérique. Why? Why, oh, why…

I was a mathlete in high school, and a pretty good one. I thought, perhaps, that I was A Great Mathlete. I went to the State Mathletes Meet a few times, and on all three occasions, I got my ass handed to…

Everybody’s Other Mother

I wished my friends’ mom a happy 72nd birthday the other day on Facebook, saying, “Happy birthday to everybody’s other mother,” because that’s what she is to dozens of us, maybe hundreds. She and her husband always kept an open house when we were kids, and still do. On a visit to my…

The Bottom of the Bowl

This phở is Cambodian, or Cambodian-American, and I love it. The truth is, I am a phở whore, seeking and eating it all over, everywhere I go. When my food photographer friend, Kurt, hipped me to this joint a mere 10 minutes from work, I went the next day. The restaurant is a family…

Recreation Park

Five or ten years ago, a friend sent a YouTube link, saying, “check out the singer and bass player in this band.” OK. The band was from Atlanta. The singer was a girl the friend had fooled around with in college when we were all at Brockport. The bass player was Danny, who’d been my best pal for a…