"Football is the most popular thing in America. Not the most popular sport. The most popular *thing*." -- Scott Van Pelt* * * * *Football and I have a long-standing history. I've spent the last twenty years attempting to care about it, and it's spent the last twenty years being totally incomprehe...
New Hardcover with dust jacket
I applaud myself on having consumed only two candy bars during the process of reading this book. However, seeing as I read this book mostly over the course of a single day, that may not be something to brag about. I advise you to read this book while at a very safe distance from any candy sources...
Should Steve Almond bother you? Should you find it condescending that he’s got a reading comprehension test on his website? Should you get the icks from Almond’s writing about teaching the sexy, sexed-up female students in a writing workshop very much resembling his own at Boston College? Should ...
My girlfriend Carol is very good at knowing what short stories I will like, and so it came as no surprise to me that I liked this book pretty much the moment I picked it up. Maybe that's over-stating it a bit, but actually, the cover is bizarre and awesome, as are the stories. While maybe young...
Chow and Other Stories A HAPPY DREAM HENRY WAS OUT in front of the Brattle waiting for his sister, Marla, who was late, on the verge of standing him up actually, when he saw a woman zip across the street on a ten-speed bike. This was crazy. It was early February, the roads were still layered with...
ON THREE I was on an airplane watching television, which is not a statement that would have made sense even ten years ago, but there you go. Thank you, America. Among the suite of channels was the NFL Network, which I predict will soon be the world’s most popular cable channel and will spawn a se...
The Boris McCutcheon Story In the spring of 2003 I went to a Mardi Gras party at the Somerville VFW Hall. These guys started playing. They sounded like a Confederate marching band set loose inside a New Orleans brothel. There were, by my count, only four musicians on the bandstand, but that seeme...
It was the fourth and final game of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox, and I was living in a dust-caked apartment in Somerville, just a few miles from Fenway Park. The Sox were poised to sweep the Cards and thereby end the most ballyhooed dry spell in all of ...
He’s leaning over my keyboard, tappy-tap-tap, with his lousy beautiful sideburns and his Right Guard wafting all over the place, and underneath that this kind of wounded musk that tends to make my nipples go boing, and his teeth which I could fucking eat they look so healthy. I have, mind you, al...