Blog

Frankly, I’m surprised shit isn’t tossed at that thing more often. Military Island — a red, white and blue neon-stiped, brush-steel box — sits astride a wedge-shaped slab of concrete between at 43d Street between Seventh and Broadway. It is, quite literally, The Crossroads of the World. There are no fences, no barricades, no sentries…

“I ran down Elvis Presley Boulevard beneath a sky bruised purple and gray and orange at the edges,” I scribbled in a journal entry dated October 21, 1996. “It’s the type of sky that removes roofs indescriminently.” “It’s rumbling now, waiting to break, I’m sure, just as I step from the tour bus to the…

“It always rains when I’m at Graceland.” Thus began my journal entry (the old fashioned paper kind) on Monday, October 21, 1996. The dateline was Memphis, Tennessee. Just thirty-six hours earlier, I’d hatched a half-baked (actually, I was really baked), last-minute plan to squander the weekend prior to my start date at MTV News on…

I posted to this site every single day in February. Midway through the month, I realized that I had a streak going, and resolved to see it through. There were plenty of opportunities to regret the goal, usually when — as Abbi went to bed — I remembered that I hadn’t posted yet. Instead of…

We took the day off, reserved the rental car, packed the ski pants, and even MapQuested the route. But alas, it was not to be. You’ll recall that Abbi and I were planning on spending the weekend in Vermont with Chris and Meg Abad. We were going to ski by day, play beer pong at…

I wrote “Leap Year” fifteen years ago, in the deep, dark winter of 1993. Syracuse winters were brutal. It’s nation’s snowiest metropolitan region, averaging 114.6 inches a year. I happened to be there for three of the top five worst years, the penultimate being the year in question in which 192.1 inches fell. That’s over…