Did it please to devote every February Slow Boat Media Facebook vignette to Black History Month topics? Sure did!
Might some readers regard them as affronts to the mosaic into which America has developed? Are you kidding!? Of course! Continue reading Echt Americans
Six Christmases away from Quarropas and I’ve just learned what had been the area’s “local radio station” has now become an on-dial sports talk destination. As if WFAN and the New York Metropolitan ESPN radio conduit insufficiently failed capturing bar stool jocks. Continue reading Cozy and Comfy
Once again, that most American of holidays is upon us. Thanksgiving. That day may be our finest national holidays because it commemorates nothing. Nor does it beg solemnity for anything.
Doesn’t Thanksgiving typify us? The fourth Thursday in November just insists we wallow in mindless gluttony while passionately pursuing socio-political points as we solidify family grudges. Continue reading Shallow Thanks
A Quarropas episode has been transferred to movie screens. This docudrama is making its way along the film festival circuit. Hopefully a distributor will acquire the movie and give it general release. Though factually based, and likely with poetic license taken, the effort will not portray my former hometown kindly.
On Father’s Day 2019, I performed an act my own late father might’ve considered sacrilegious. I attended a Dodgers game in Chavez Ravine.
To mitigate my baseball transgression I cheered for the visitors not the home nine.
Father was a Brooklyn Dodgers man through and through. The Los Angeles Dodgers could never have engaged his rooting interest. Continue reading Keeping True
Party people milled throughout Axman’s house. Then, he and an assemblage of housemates rented a structure only a cheery paint job saved from being judged Gothic.
This event occurred on a December 2009 night, in Quarropas. Our host had convened what we’d come to call “a gathering.” He scheduled “gatherings” once or twice a month.
From about the late 90s into the farthest aughts, how many party Friday and Saturday nights slid into late next morning inside his house? Looking back from June 2019? Too few and not damned near enough! Continue reading Antipodes: Aftermath and End
For the first time in my five years here in Nevada, the Yuletide has had a joyous feel. Not that the locals have brightened up the Mojave with glitter and approaches which correspond to the merriment derived from the period’s significance. After all, it remains bizarre seeing Christmas lights decorating palm trees. Continue reading The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Vernon is dying. He is a cousin who inquired about Edna Long three years ago. She was an unknown figure who appeared in one of our family branch’s turn-of-the-century census tracts. Turn of the 20th century.
The people who may’ve known about her, remembered her, they’ve been all good and dead way before curiosity aroused his present-day fascination with this stranger who’ll remain a mystery. Continue reading The Mohicans
Old Paint was wheezing harder than usual. After all the part swapping, repairs, and just general babying of that car, what finally forced my hand was a check engine light. Sure. It could’ve been a fouled sensor. Or maybe it might’ve been the first sign of the head gasket preparing to crack.
In any case, I read the yellow dashboard light as a clear warning from the gearhead gods. It became the straw which broke my camel’s back. Continue reading Old Paint Was a Lemon
Part of the job requires faking civility to visitors determined to be the biggest assholes as possible. It can’t be helped. It’s in their nature. Continue reading Schmendrick