When I was in my teens, my family went to a swimming pool a few blocks from where we lived. It was a community pool, and we paid a fee each year to belong. I remember many hot afternoons hanging out at the pool, swimming and playing games in the water and getting out for …
If there’s an acronym I’m getting really tired of seeing, it’s GOAT. Greatest of All Time. For one thing, it’s completely meaningless. There is no way to compare athletes from different eras, and in many instances, the Greatest tends to be someone more people have seen recently. And comparing from sport to sport is even …
There’s usually one person in Congress — in both parties — that folks in the opposition can look at and find it very easy to ridicule. This year’s Republican Party provides a plethora of candidates, any one of three who would be high in the pantheon. Sometimes the ridiculous ones make it to the Senate. …
“Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya …” When someone wants to accuse someone else of being naive in their dealings with others, they accuse them of thinking we should all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.” I wonder if any of them even know what it means. I was 11 years old and spending a week at Camp …
We used to be so damn goofy. In the fall of 1969, I had friends who were in a fraternity at George Washington University. They had a game they played called the Eating Contest. It’s not the same food as the picture, but you get the picture. To succeed, you had to eat 10 McDonald’s …
Here we go again. I hate to admit it, but one of the defining things in my life has been weight loss, but I’m pretty sure that I have lost more than 500 pounds in my life, despite being a skinny kid. I think I was 22 the first time my weight topped 200, and …
I am surprised at how mixed my feelings have turned out to be about Billionaires in Space. My first reaction was completely negative. I was annoyed that there are people so rich they could toss billions of dollars at what is really little more than a cool hobby. Then I had the satiric reaction. Hey, …
One man’s kitsch is another man’s … classic tourist attraction? And one man’s clickbait on Facebook is my unfortunate addiction. I’m pleased to report I have finally stopped looking at sites that attract viewers with lies, like “see what (some gorgeous actress) looks like today” and then seeing pictures of 75 other celebrities but never …
Welcome to Donald Trump’s America. Or it might be more accurate to say welcome to Vladimir Putin’s America, courtesy of his useful idiot Donald Trump. Don’t kid yourself.; It was four years of Trump in the White House and nine months of him lying that left us where we are today, looking back at a …
“Isn’t it pretty to think so?” I just don’t get Ernest Hemingway. I love the last line of “The Sun Also Rises,” mostly because Robert B. Parker has used it in at least five different Spenser novels. But as far as Hemingway’s oeuvre, give me Thomas Wolfe or F. Scott Fitzgerald any time. When it …
