ST. AUGUSTINE, FL-

I have nothing against Disney World on general principle. I’m just genetically disposed to hate all theme parks. They remind me of airports, except without the complimentary sodas. There’s a lot of waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and then something mildly exciting happens, and then more waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and then your ass starts to hurt. At least when you leave an airport, you have better odds of not being in Orlando.

My biggest complaint with Disney is the lines. The only reason I’m going to stand in line for two hours is for a re-re-release of Empire Strikes Back with a bonus Boba Fett fight sequence and some gratuitous Carrie Fisher nudity. I sure as hell won’t do it for a chance to sit in a rusty mine cart submerged in oily water and gaze at animatronic mannequins dressed like drunk pirates.

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ST. AUGUSTINE, FL-

I’ve spent most of my life in big cities. Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. And for some reason, I’ve always felt safe. I’m not sure why, because I’ve lived in some unsavory places. I’ve rented apartments in neighborhoods that people with college educations tend to avoid - neighborhoods populated by surly hookers who won’t take no for an answer and guys with swastikas carved into their necks and elderly women suffering from night terrors and a seething hatred of “negrahs”. But I never felt like any of them would ever kick down my door or accost me as I waited for the bus. They were just local color, and if you caught them at their creative peaks, pretty damn entertaining. Spend a leisurely Sunday morning at your local slum diner, munching on a rubbery omelet and listening to a man with an eyepatch explain to his waitress how the mayor is spending our tax dollars to create a doomsday laser, and you suddenly remember why you never bothered to get cable.

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ST. AUGUSTINE, FL-

My grandfather was a doctor. And for at least a few hours, he was convinced that I would follow in his footsteps.

I was seventeen years old, and aside from a brief flirtation with veterinary medicine, utterly uninterested in any career that involved scalpels and touching guts. I had discovered the joys of writing snarky op-ed pieces for the high school newspaper, performing in Woody Allen plays for the drama department, and smoking clove cigarettes with my girlfriend in her bedroom as we listened to Smiths’ records and complained about how much the suburbs “sucked balls.”

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ST. AUGUSTINE, FL-

1. Blurbing yourself

2. Burying the lede

3. Coaxing Salinger to come out and play

4. Coming up with a gripping plot twist

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(no longer) SONOMA, CA-

Not long ago, I received a letter from the City of Sonoma, informing me that my license to operate a rickshaw business had expired. This came as something of a surprise, as I wasn’t aware that I had a rickshaw business.

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SONOMA, CA-

Growing up, I thought I might want to be an animal doctor someday. Not because I had any interest in veterinary medicine. I was just a fan of Dr. Dolittle, the 1967 musical with Rex Harrison. As far as I knew, all veterinarians wore top hats and sang their prescriptions and had exotic patients like a llama with an extra head coming out of its ass.

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SONOMA, CA-

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is probably best remembered as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The author penned dozens of stories about his eponymous character, published in The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1905, and a novel entitled The Hound of the Baskervilles. But Holmes was only one small part of Sir Doyle’s prolific writing career. He published 50 books during his life, spanning such diverse genres as historical romance, science fiction, military history, and spiritualism. He was one of the most popular pulp fiction writers of his time, delighting readers with tales of mummies, dinosaurs, ghosts, and classic characters like Brigadier Gerard and Professor Challenger.

And then, on July 7th, 1930, he dropped dead.

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SONOMA, CA-

My introduction to the tyranny of grammar came from an unlikely place. In my senior year of high school, I wrote a semi-fictional short story for my girlfriend. It was about us, or at least a couple that vaguely resembled us, if we were ten years older, considerably more well-read and regulars at fashionable Manhattan bars. It was a piece of crap, not to mention a total rip-off of Woody Allen. But I’d cast her in the Annie Hall role, so I thought she’d look past the obvious plagiarisms and appreciate the sentiment.

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SONOMA, CA-

I’ve been dumped by a lot of women in my life, but not one of them has ever thrown a drink in my face.

I’m not sure why this should matter, but it does. When my relationships have fallen apart, it’s usually been quiet and civilized. They’ll calmly explain their reasons, or just stop calling me until I figure it out on my own. It’s never been a big dramatic blow-up. Just once, I would’ve liked one of them to end our relationship with a bang, like throwing all of my clothes out on the lawn, or walking over to me at a public gathering and slapping me hard across the face, screaming something like “You worthless son of a bitch!”

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SONOMA, CA-

Bart’s full name is Bartholomew Jojo Simpson. Milhouse’s full name is Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten. Krusty the Clown’s full name is either Herschel Schmoikel Krustofski or Herschel Pinkus Yerucham Krustofski, depending on which episode you believe.

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I have a great-aunt in upstate New York that I see several times a year, and I still refer to her as “You know, what’s her name. It starts with a P.”

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SONOMA, CA-

Hello, Iran.

So I hear you’ve got some issues with porn. Actually, word on the street is that you want to make it illegal. Your parliament had a meeting last Wednesday and apparently decided that the production of a pornographic film is a crime punishable by death. Is that right? I just want to make sure I’ve got my facts straight. And is it true that the vote was 148-to-5 in favor of shooting all porn stars in the back of the head? Wow. That’s a pretty overwhelming victory. What happened to the five guys who were pro-porn? Did they stand up and give a really inspired speech like, “What this nation needs is more chicks with dicks and hot cum-gargling action?” I mean before they were taken out back and stoned to death.

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SONOMA, CA-

Like every summer, my brother and I drove up to visit our dad’s grave. And like every summer, we waited to see if the dog would show up again.

It’s not the kind of thing we talk about with a lot of people. What could we tell them? “Well, sometimes my dad comes back as a dog.” No, they don’t want to hear that. It makes them uncomfortable. And they never know what to say. “Oh… how nice… well, when you see him again, tell him I said hi.”

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SONOMA, CA-

“This wine tastes like hobo balls,” I said, loud enough for the entire room to hear.

Even as the words left my mouth, I knew that it was a horrible, horrible mistake. It’s not the sort of observation that a civilized person should make, and certainly not while partaking in a posh wine tasting. The other party guests just stared at me, too stunned to respond. I smiled and tried to laugh it off, saying something like, “Whoops, wrong crowd.” I hoped that my unfortunate remark would eventually be forgotten, but the damage had already been done. I’d crossed a line and there was no turning back. I had just demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was a man unable to hold his liquor.

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SONOMA, CA-

I spent an entire afternoon watching back-to-back episodes of “I Love The 80s” on VH1, waiting for them to mention something, even in passing, that actually mattered to me. I finally gave up in disgust, and rummaged through a closet until I found my tattered copy of the Replacements’ “The Shit Hits the Fans” bootleg. But listening to it didn’t make me feel smugly superior to the mainstream as it’d done so effectively during my teens. Instead, it just sounded hollow and distant, like hearing an echo from very, very far away.

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SONOMA, CA-

I sat in the car for several minutes, just watching the crowd slowly file into the bookstore. I wanted to join them - a part of me even felt like I deserved to join them. They were there to see Ron Jeremy, the plump porn star who was in town to promote his new autobiography, The Hardest (Working) Man In Show Biz. It wouldn’t have been completely bizarre for me to stroll inside and take a seat next to Ron. After all, I had devoted a year of my life to helping him write his book. But I also knew that doing so would’ve been a little awkward. It was Ron’s moment in the spotlight, and there was really no point in my being there. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was like a surrogate mother who had decided to crash her kid’s birthday party.

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