Bowling in Central Park
931 Words. 4 Minute Read.
I recently joined the New York Lawn Bowling Club. I’m living in Manhattan for the summer and wanted an outdoor sport that required as little physical exertion as possible. And since there isn’t a club dedicated to smoking cigars in the shade, lawn bowling had to do.
The Breakfast of Degenerates
650 Words. 3 Minute Read.
I haven’t woken up to a three-shot breakfast since gamedays in college. In those days I’d stumble down the stairs in my boxers and there’d be half a dozen guys passed out - some sharing the couch, others on the floor using bunched-up sweatshirts as pillows - all snoring like hobos in a box car and reeking of cigarettes. I’d crack two dozen eggs, fill the toaster with white bread, and pour “morning glory’s” for the gang … vast amounts of Jim Beam, Coke, and opaque ice cubes in plastic cups from Sanford Stadium.
A Silent Movie in the East Village
862 Words. 3 Minute Read.
You have to remember that we were all there voluntarily. No one forced us to sit through a film of this nature. I wasn’t taken at gun point by Gene Siskel. Sure, most of us probably didn’t know it would be that quiet, but by that point we were in it together. And truth to told, when someone tried to cover a sneeze or silence a yawn, it was, well ... sort of welcomed. Ninety minutes of silence is a long time.
A Record Player in New York
1,000 Words. 4 Minute Read.
Similar to antiquing, I see these records and think to myself that someone enthusiastically went to a record shop with this exact album in mind. They’d been obsessing over it for weeks, like any other music freak. They couldn’t wait to get back home and listen to it, maybe with friends at a cocktail party or by themselves on LSD with bulbous headphones. And now, all these years later, it’s in a Greenwich Village shop with thousands of others, each with its own story.
Harold Bloom and His Soothing Idiosyncrasies
295 Words. 1 Minute Read.
Absorbing the idiosyncratic tone of his voice feels like a cashmere blanket draped over your temporal lobes. His prose warms your innards like crackling hickory logs, and before you know it, the anxieties of life wilt away.