It’s funny what you remember decades after a memorable news event. Consider the intense controversy over John Lennon’s claim in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. Futility Closet sent me back to that time with one its “miscellany of compendius amusements.” Christian groups from Southern Baptists to the Vatican went nuts, [...]
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I’m an unadulterated college football fan. My love for the game has remained steadfast even as my interest in sports in general has sharply waned. For decades I attended Florida State games, as did my brothers and father. We often suffered through intolerable heat and humidity, a family bond of sweat and devotion. Many times [...]
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When we were kids, my brothers and I spit a lot. Our spitting styles varied in volume, range, and sound but had the same goal: create tough-guy facades. In those days of grappling with budding masculinity, I could not have foreseen that the spit I sent flying so often would mean so much now. Saliva [...]
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Thankfully no one can see our dreams. In these impenetrable realms we have no choice but to watch bizarre and disjointed narratives starring ourselves in roles not of our choosing. Like everyone I suppose, I want to attach meaning to my dreams. But aren’t they random shards of memory reassembled into stories that never were [...]
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A compilation of old-time Christmas gun ads dusts off a cobwebbed memory. I was in the seventh grade. “What do you want for Christmas?” my parents asked. I knew they knew and this was a dance of formalities. So I paused as if deliberating before answering. “A .22 rifle.” They said nothing, and I felt [...]
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Now this is old Florida: Daytona Beach, 1904. More than six decades later, Daytona occasionally beckoned me, especially during Spring Break, a rockin’ happening then but sedate compared to today’s debauched version. The Daytona Beach of my memory, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was overcrowded, the sands jammed with cars, and Highway A1A [...]
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Forty-one years after the fact, I’m still incensed that John Wayne won the best actor Oscar for his starring role in the ho-hum True Grit, despite Dustin Hoffman’s mesmerizing portrayal of Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. But after watching the trailer for an upcoming Coen brothers remake of True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges in the [...]
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Nearly a decade ago, a sudden medical problem made me afraid I was going to die on the spot. What had I done to deserve the infamy of croaking in Costco?
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Today is World Water Day, an event intended to draw attention to serious problems but for me evokes nostalgia. That’s what happens when a childhood is spent immersed in a Central Florida lake back when the water was clear and clean. Some days my brothers and I would swim so long that I imagined gills [...]
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We had crowded into a building filled with tables filled with wine. As we — wife and another couple — snaked through lines of people and sampled the wares of artisanal vintners, rain began drumming on the roof like it does in Florida, not Oregon. The sound drowned out the chatter. Wind swept through open [...]
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I can’t imagine a more poignant or tragic portrayal of classroom chaos than that depicted in the French film The Class. Fictional but shot documentary style, the story shows a teacher’s persistent but futile attempt to reach students mired in pubescent rebellion and complex culture clashes. Throughout the film I kept thinking of my school [...]
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In February on a rare sunny day, I helped friends dig up and move a Japanese laceleaf maple from their backyard to their front. No chance the tree was going to survive the unavoidable mugging at our hands.
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