Cecil Vortex
I defy you
to name me that movie one better be wouldn’t male lead with neil patrick harris. with neil patrick harris. with patrick neil harris.
Stalin’s Sexy Man-Apes: Sergei!
Yesterday we announced our multi-part world-exclusive inside look at “Stalin’s Sexy Man-Apes” — the quartet of part man, part ape creatures that everyone’s been talking about. CIA officials advised me to start by sitting down with Sergei — the oldest and most even-tempered of the four man-apes. With his extensive debriefing complete, Sergei recently relocated … Read more
Stalin’s Sexy Man-Apes
In the mid-1920s a team of Soviet scientists led by a soft-spoken man named Ilya Ivanov began work on a secret project aimed at developing an army of ape-human hybrids. Picture a squad of these creatures attacking Berlin. Joseph Stalin did. “I want a new invincible human being,” Stalin was reported to have instructed the … Read more
Bean song
Counting beans, one for every word you said today. A waterfall of frozen lima bean conversation. Bright bean rage. Soft, velvety heirloom beans. Bean opera. Beans buzzing in a thick glass jar. Where do all these beans come from? — these beans, with no apologies. And why is it that you find yourself at this … Read more
The Greatest Almost Entirely True Work Story Ever Told
It was another busy day at Amalgamated Skills — “Where we bring you the skills that you use to do things better than you would do otherwise, if you didn’t have the skills that we bring you.” Rhett Kronkhead, the ever-flustered Production Manager, was in a blood purple rage. “Confound it!” he hollered, shaking a … Read more
Looking back
He described his life as a series of tasks filled with the description of those tasks how he’d cut the boards what he did in the cotton gin how he’d made the metal bracings for the chair in the front of his house that you saw him in most days. It was like asking a … Read more
Are You Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Over the last year or two, a loose cabal of aliased co-conspirators has been using this site to tackle challenging books en masse — everything from the dread pirate Gravity’s Rainbow to the surprisingly Spanish Don Quixote. We call these experiences “Deathmarches,” despite the increasingly rabid protestation of my erstwhile nemesis, Itto Ottagami. The fifth … Read more
A whole new TV genre (don’t you dare close your eyes)
As some of you already know, I’m taking a hiatus from the 9-5 life so I can spend more time walking my kids to school and working on my writing. Whenever this has come up in conversation, the question back has been: “Hunh. OK. So what are you going to write?” And it’s been a … Read more
Crow Daddy
It’s long past time we end this charade. This intricate dance designed to mask your competence at faxing. As if it’s something to be ashamed of when we both know it’s a source of strength. We should celebrate it. Our dance should celebrate it. Instead we dance this shabby lie.