January 2012
1 post
Envelope Drawings by Mark Powell →
I love these.
December 2011
6 posts
1 tag
I Took My Dog to a Chihuahua Playgroup (Seriously) →
I have never abused my dog. I’ve never beaten her with a stick, but she’s afraid of sticks. Nor have I hit her with the empty box to a printer cartridge, a large woolen throw pillow, an iPhone stylus, an asthma inhaler, a bra or an Ikea lapdesk. And yet these, too, are things that cause her to curve her body into a little beige comma and creep backward, eyes down, as though each item is laced with...
Compulsive Shopping Just Sucks
A lot of people seem to think compulsive shopping is a joke. I can hear a beer-bellied former frat boy saying to his buddies, “Don’t all women have that disease?” Hardy har. The reality is that as with any compulsion, the compulsion to spend can be just as destructive as the compulsion to drink or gamble or shoot up.
I have a family history of compulsive spending, and without getting into...
4 tags
Steampunkers! Justin Bieber Is Co-Opting Your... →
Justin Bieber has released a new Christmas video — which would normally be a lamentable but inevitable fact of the holiday season. But he has done so in “steampunk” fashion. God help us.
4 tags
Coming Out of the Closet About Being Jobless →
I decided to be honest with the readers of the Philly Post about the fact that I’m on unemployment benefits. I’ve been hiding it for too long, which is a shame because it’s such great material.
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Funemployment Tales: Of Beagles, Meaningless... →
At Philly Post I asked readers to share their unemployment stories with each other. The first man who replied is a Scottish dog lover.
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Why Republicans Won’t Get the Jewish Vote →
They can talk about fidelity to Israel all they want, but the GOP is the party of Christianity. And Jewish Americans are more secular than ever.
November 2011
16 posts
4 tags
Occupy Philly Has a Strong Voice →
The deadline came and went, and the occupiers were still there. Amanda, with her reddish spiral curls and big silver earrings, was in the center of the throng, as usual. Sitting cross-legged on the ground in a sea of protesters, she was participating in the call-and-response ritual called the People’s Mic that the occupiers employ at their meetings. …
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A Four-Step Cycle for Political Junkies →
When you start voting at 18, you get your first exposure to the cycle of political hell. If your candidate wins, it’s a four-step cycle: hope, jubilation, disillusionment, despair. If your candidate loses, it’s only two steps: hope (during the campaign) and despair. Either way, you wind up feeling despair, so what I’m thinking is, why not start at despair and work your way back? ….
5 tags
What to Wear When Speaking Publicly About... →
I’m performing tonight at the First Person Festival, which is now in its 10th year. Because I’m a first-person writer willing to vomit forth any tidbit of revelatory personal information, people always assume I’m participating in the Festival. In fact, they used to ask me a bit derisively: “So I guess you’re in the Festival, right?” At first I used to think, “No, you jackass,” but then I started...
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What Lurks in West Philadelphia →
If you’ve been paying attention to University City politics these days—and I know you have because it’s been such a slow news month—you’re familiar with the catchment issue. But in case you’ve been caught in the tractor beam of Michele Bachmann’s gaze, I’ll sum it up: There’s an elementary school run by Penn and lots of people want to live nearby so their kids can go there. Consequently, houses in...
3 tags
When Do You Age Out of Urban Outfitters? →
I don’t know why I even go into Urban Outfitters. It’s not like I’m the target audience for the store anymore. (Warning to young women: If you want to wear any article of clothing ironically, DO IT NOW.) There is nothing I’d like more than to wear a t-shirt with a cute dog on it and the words, “PUGS NOT DRUGS.” But I no longer have the context. I live in fear of being one of those women in her...
5 tags
What If McQueary Caught Sandusky With a Little... →
Would he have acted any differently if the child being raped in the shower weren’t a boy? Click the above link to read my point of view at the Philly Post.
What Jonathan Franzen Knows About Main Line... →
Lately I can’t stop thinking that everything is meaningless. I know that sounds depressing, and it is the kind of thing I used to think when I got depressed. But I mean it now in an existential way—or I would if that didn’t sound so pretentious.
This habit of thought kicked in when I finished Freedom, the latest book by Jonathan Franzen, who has been praised for bringing literary realism back...
2 tags
Traveling Through the Dark
Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her...
3 tags
Euthanizing the Little Gray Mouse
In my old apartment at 43rd and Spruce, the spackle crumbled, the refrigerator’s cold purr sputtered to a stop, and the wires twisting out of the walls sparked when I walked by. When the new refrigerator arrived, my landlord neglected to take the old one out, so I draped damp clothing on it—damp only because my shirts and pants had been rejected, despite countless quarters, by the inferior...
4 tags
“As soon as I get home, we’ll have a party at the farm and begin building...”
– Vince Fumo, via prison email
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Oh Dear: Newt Gingrich Returns →
And he says the Occupy movement is anti-Semitic. But is it just a ploy? Click the above link to see my piece about it at the Philly Post.
4 tags
Solution to Divorce Woes: Don't Get Married! →
I just don’t know why people get married these days. It’s so much easier not to. Want proof? Click the above link to read about it on the Philly Post.
October 2011
6 posts
The Homeless at Occupy Philly →
4 tags
I'm Going to Buy This Because I Miss Steve Jobs... →
Debunking Myths About Occupy Philly →
4 tags
Occupy Philly Is Happening →
1 tag
September 2011
10 posts
6 tags
My New Old Love: El Ajedrecista →
3 tags
Letter to Milton Street
This week I had a conversation with someone who moved to Philadelphia six years ago. He talked to me about your candidacy for mayor as though it were not a completely preposterous idea, as though you haven’t played the Billy Carter/Roger Clinton foil to your brother John for many years now. My friend was ignorant of your history as “Philly’s foremost flibbertigibbet,” as the Inquirer’s Paul...
3 tags
4 tags
HP: Making Solyndra Look Like a Good Bet →
Morning Crush: Project Utopia →
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Morning Crush: Tampon Flash Drive →
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Live Blogging the Google Antitrust Hearing →
4 tags
NAO Robot Is Practically a Person →
1 tag
August 2011
2 posts
4 tags
5 tags
July 2011
3 posts
“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”
– Harlan Ellison
June 2011
3 posts
The Art of the Public Apology
There are a lot of apologies being issued these days, and I feel they’re lacking in quality.
Take Anthony Weiner, for example. It’s surprising that the congressman hasn’t read A Politician’s Guide to Public Apologies (“Whatever your scandal, you’ll know what to say!”). Rule No. 1: Keep it simple: Go to the podium, look somber, pause while the camera pans to your loyal wife who looks like she’s...
Barnes Museum Fight Is Disproportionate to...
This month, the Barnes Foundation shuts its Merion doors for good. Unfortunately, until sometime in 2012, the artwork from the museum will be unavailable to visitors. Fortunately, we have a vain chance that people will shut up about the whole thing for a while.
For a city that suffers so many grievous social ills—poverty, funding cuts, horrific public schools—it’s something of a mystery why...
May 2011
1 post
5 tags
Chris Christie's Image Problem
In American politics, we often talk about the public being “ready,” as though history is standing in the vestibule, tapping its foot impatiently, while the voters finish applying mascara. So far we’ve been ready for a Catholic president (Kennedy), a black president (Clinton—er, Obama) and a female almost-president (Hilary). We were ready for a Jewish vice-president, but thank god we didn’t have...
March 2011
2 posts
Philly's Fight Against Corruption Gets Its Heroes
Rumor has it Philly Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey might move back home to Chicago. Ramsey came to Philly by way of Chicago (with a stop in D.C.) in what seems to be an ongoing public-servant exchange program with the Windy City. But the Chicago Sun-Times’s Fran Spielman quoted “a source close to Ramsey” last week:
“The Chicago Police Department is his home department in his home town. Who...
So Charlie Sheen's Bipolar, Eh?
The New York Times. Time magazine. The Sydney Morning Herald. CNN. ABC News. These are just a few of the media outlets that have recently theorized, uncritically, that Charlie Sheen may have bipolar disorder. It’s odd. How do the journalists know?
As far as we know, no treating doctor has ever diagnosed Sheen with bipolar disorder. Sheen has never said he has bipolar disorder. He has never been...