San Francisco's Race Problem
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, which serves the San Francisco Bay area is having some problems. In the last 90 or so days, three attacks on its riders have been perpetrated by a group of teenagers. The attacks have included robberies, beatings, harassments—you know, general mischievous teenage behavior gone terribly awry.
The hooligans haven’t been caught. And part of the reason for that is BART’s fault. It’s not releasing the surveillance videos.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of July 9, 2017
• If you’re mad that Patton Oswalt is engaged a little more than a year after his first wife died, you’re a jerk. Simple as that. Who are you to understand one person’s heart and how it heals and what it needs and how it loves? You need to reduce your desire for outrage and leave people alone.
The Opening Campfire: An (alternative) Introduction to "A Camp Story" – Author's Cut
My biggest concern, beyond not knowing anyone and just generally hating camp, was that I was going to spend a summer in the woods surrounded by swarms of big, disgusting, loud cicadas. It was 1990 and the 17-year cicadas had taken over Chicago. I had killed so many with such bloodlust that I convinced myself the winged beasts in Decatur had gotten word of me and were plotting their revenge for their brethren.
Notes from the Post-it Wall – Week of July 2, 2017
• Liberal rage confuses me. From day-to-day and outrage-to-outrage, I’m less and less sure about who is pissed at what and why. I’m thinking about joining the Klan. At least I know where they stand.
I Just Fixed Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Ride
If Disney wants to make up for any wrongdoings, it can stop making Prates of the Caribbean movies.
Notes from the Post-it Wall – Week of June 25, 2017
• Success is by design. And when it comes to design, some people have terrible taste.
Who's Afraid of Hedy Weiss?
The artist makes art. The critic deconstructs that art so that people who don’t understand art can try to pretend to understand art. The artist and the critic are not on the same team. They are opposite sides of the same coin. And the opposite sides of the same coin can never see eye-to-eye.
The Pristine City Clerk Worker
No one likes having to go to the Office of the Chicago City Clerk. Not even those who get paid for being there. The desk workers on the first floor in the City Clerk’s office are of the same ilk as DMV workers. They are always tired, annoyed, smarter—yet dumber—than you, wield a surprisingly unnatural amount of power and have a general disdain for a good majority of humanity. And who can blame them? They work for idiots and get dumped on by the citizens who elected those idiots all day long.
Notes from the Post–it Wall – Week of June 18, 2017
• If my approach to being a dog parent is any indication of how I’ll be as a parent to a human, I’m going to wake the kid up to snuggle with it and throw things at its face.
Remember Watergate, or Else
So history is repeating itself here. In the early 1970s, we had a president pulling a Brock Turner on the Constitution, and today we, allegedly and potentially, are witnessing the same thing happen.
Eric Trump’s Bedtime Prayer
Notes from the Post-it Wall – Week of June 11, 2017
• Is the old waitress at the café who is calling me sweetheart flirting with me? Because it’s working.
Notes from the Post-it Wall – Week of June 4, 2017
• All this talk about Wonder Woman being the first major motion picture featuring a female superhero… Uh, hello, sheeple! Is Barb Wire not major enough for you?
A Decade in Chicago, Ten Years of Mastering Disappointment
Finally, after a decade of imagining it, I had arrived in Chicago. The Big City. Home. Although I didn’t look the part, I was ready to take the place by storm. Within three months, it was clear that instead, Chicago was going to bend me over its knee and spank my ass red with the rotten corpse femur of Daddy Daley while I helplessly, and more and more self-destructively, took the beating like a frightened little bitch.
Wonder Woman Movie Leads to Gender War and Potential Human Extinction
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of May 28, 2017
• When I see an American flag as a decal on a pick-up truck window or a bald eagle presented as frightful and violent instead of regal on a decal, hat, t-shirt, etc., I get a little nervous...
The Moment Before Blowing Out the Birthday Candles
A birthday wish is not something to be taken lightly. This is not a simple loose eyelash or a shooting star you’re wishing upon. This is your birthday wish and you only get one for the year. It needs to count.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of May 21, 2017
• Some of my Facebook friends are trolls. Some of my Facebook friends troll the trolls. It can be fun to watch the fight play out but it also reminds me that some of my friends are real pricks.
Our Two Children
Yet, there’s a part of us that will rejoice in Donnie’s failure. It will cease further damage done to our nation, and in a way, it rights our wrong. But we still have Hillary to worry about. Hillary is the kind of daughter who loves her parent just enough to put us in an old folks home so we won’t get lonely in our dying days. But it’s the old folks home right off the highway with the orderlies who sweat in our soup.
This New Job is Making Me so Emo, I Could Cry
In less than one week, I will show up to an office with lots of cubicles and paid time off for its employees, a Human Resources Department and company-wide team building events. This is a full-time gig. It’s a W2 kind of gig. I haven’t had a gig like this in almost seven years. And I’m looking forward to it in the way 16-year-old David looked forward to going on a date with that girl who finally showed some interest in him. And I’m an emotional goddamn wreck over the whole thing.
...that, as we age, good footwear is more important than a girlfriend.