...is what I'm enjoying most today.

The Good, the Bad, and the Invisible
Dirty Chairy
Benchwoods of Madison County
Every Which Way but Lucid

There's gold here, what am I missing?

1

After Columbine, there was a certain unwritten list (maybe the faculty's version was actually written, come to think of it) of candidates for Most Likely to Take Us All With Him.

Atop my list was Keller.…

His words are the offspring of Bayou mushmouth and a constant, routine imbibing of alcohol that has neither started nor completed in what I can only assume has been years to possibly decades. His dialect on my New England ears provides a baneful challenge, but his gregariousness and cartoonish application of the stereotypical "coon-ass" character I've so desperately sought stay my sweating palm around my tape recorder for what has…

A stagecoach was parked not far from where he stood, his left hand shadowing squinted eyes against the midday sun and the sharp desert sand riding a constant gale. He looked over at it every few minutes, regarding with somehow removed fascination the two women who sat just inside the shade on the driver's box, talking. The whole time, talking, never looking up.

He wondered if he could do it; just stand in attendance as all decent folks did, but not watch the man being led to…

I recognize how simple it is: I could block your Facebook statuses, ignore your comments, or just not get on facebook so often; I could.

Yes I know, you all are in college and the world is unfolding before you in such vibrant newness that you can see clearly that you are indeed the first responders to the emergency that is "Societal Ills" against which you and your indie bands and expensive, hydroponic, trust-fund-caliber weed are Earth's only hope.

I…

One should be careful not to confuse another's failure with his own victory.

Everyone else is just as scared and confused as you are, and the less they seem to be, the more they are.

A sly smile and good manners will take you anywhere you want to go.

If you can laugh off insults, you win.

All rules are made up, laws are just opinions of how to keep safe, and theories are bandages to help curious people sleep at night; they are…

She waited until his video game character died, and acted quickly enough to snare his attention before he could select "Continue."

"What if ..." she bit her lip, a nervous trait she'd developed, but also an effort to amplify her cuteness, here, "I told you that ... I dunno ... I've kind of got Baby Fever?"

He stared quizzically back at her, glossy, narrowed red eyes numbly scanning her as if searching for the remainder of her statement, and then burst out…

1. I became a professional theatre actor at age 10 and performed internationally within three years.

2. I received varsity letters in basketball, tennis, and chess.

3. I am legally blind in my left eye.

4. At a gentlemen's club one time, a group of dancers paid me to get on their stage and strip.

5. I am allergic to shellfish but I eat them anyway.

6. I am a proficient freestyle rapper and I have won a few contests doing so.

"Forty-eight years is a life time, and this company, Mr. Holderman, will forever be reflective of that life you gave it." I had been petrified when they asked me to conduct Mr. Holderman's retirement presentation, but I was the only one with any real media editing knowledge, and not a body in the firm had ever been the stand-up-in-front-of -people type; that's why we lived in cubicles.

I wish so many things, given the advantage of retrospect, but chief among those is the…

1.

"Howard" to the bravest, and "Haywire" to the rest of us, had had enough, and suddenly lunged from the seat of his bike, and flung his cheap bottle of R&R Canadian whiskey farther into the horizon than I could see.



"Do you even know a Justin Bieber song, you ignorant pile of semen-slurpin ass clown? You been talkin' shit about that little bastard for fifteen goddamn minutes and I bet you my nutsack for your fingernail you can't sing me one…

The number of 20-somethings to serve as Production Stage Manager for a New York, Actors' Equity Association Showcase are countable on one's phalanges yet there I was, Southern as a cotton bale, no college degree, and just 22 years old being allowed into that select group. Mom and I'd had some damning theological battles during my early premarital fatherhood, and had quit talking from time to time as a result, but I had to call her to tell her that I was on lunch break, standing on the front…

Without

As he shut down the mower and dragged the sweat from his forehead with a swipe of one taut bicep then the other, his sleeveless undershirt nearly invisible from sweat, she watched him guiltily from the front window, her heart knocking slowly but so hard she thought she could see her left breast moving. The young man -- who's she fooling, the boy -- had finished quickly of course, since there really wasn't any work to be done on the lawn since his last mowing…

First, there is the Idol stage where we recognize there is an item we want and unlike those before it, this is the possession which will finally make us whole.

Second, we bring home the Ornament, for that is what it will be; we will not use this thing, or not as much as it seemed to us we necessarily would upon taking ownership of such a jewel.

Third, it is The Damn item, for wherever it is, it is not in the right place and someone needs to retrieve The Damn…

If I put a teaspoon of my chili on your shoulder, your tongue would crawl out your ear to get a taste. My chili isn't even my best dish.

Like a solid fifty percent of married couples, the missus and I dream of one day owning a restaurant -- her confections, my entrées. That's probably as realistic as my former goal of winning an Oscar by the age of 25 (which, I didn't do, believe it or not). No matter, the kitchen is a magic place, and what better start or destination could a…

He snorted an ironic snicker to himself, as one would snicker to his dearest kindred in a time when he knew they, and only they, shared a unique epiphany. The unrepentant chill of the morning's air dared to lock him to his bedclothes. It was for naught; that special day had come and, comfort or pain, he had to be somewhere else, for someone else, for it was a special day.

No other mortal carried the weight of his knowledge, nor bore the seal of redemption so…