Category Archives: Essay

Jul 20 2012
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Essay, Humor

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Men Who Sell Pixie Stix By The Highway

OK. So there are these men in Kansas City. Well, usually they’re men. And, anyway, they’re always standing at this busy intersection, this one right by my house, just a few blocks away, right down by the highway.

Like literally, By. The. Highway. Like maybe a hundred yards or so. Let’s see. There’s a stoplight. And then an intersection. And then the highway.

And what are they doing? They’re selling Pixie Stix. Yep, fucking Pixie Stix. Those big, plastic ones. Giant fucking Pixie Stix. Now, this is actually not the first time I’ve seen these men in Kansas City. I used to see them down by this busy intersection near the Plaza, right around State Line and Shawnee Mission Parkway. That made no sense, either. There was no convenient place to stop. The intersection was all sorts of busy. And they just stood there, on the medians, hawking pixie sticks. Giant fucking pixie sticks.

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Jun 27 2012
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Essay

Standing Outside the Sandusky House

I took this picture on Friday night. Tweeted it to a public and media that were growing increasingly frantic about any hint as to whether a jury would make its decision or deliberate deeper into the weekend.

Sandusky house

The picture displays Jerry Sandusky leaving his house for what would be the last time, Continue reading →

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Jun 11 2012
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Essay, Travel

On the Road

On God’s Son, Nas has a song titled “Book of Rhymes.” On this track, he supposedly rifles through an old book in which he has written a bunch of random lyrics, and he regales us with his findings. Most of the time his musings are unintentionally comical. These nonsensical short bursts (“How can I trust you, when I can’t trust me/picture me an old man, an old G”) are often followed by sound effects of him crinkling paper and throwing it into a trash bin. At one point, instead of rhyming, he begins acting like he’s stumbled upon a page featuring the phone numbers of several women. He is surprised, saying, “Oh shit, Tina. I’ve been lookin’ for this bitch’s number.” Later, he will complain about a lack of values regarding our treatment of women. In short, he pulls off the common rap achievement of sounding terribly unoriginal while also disrespecting women and then sounding hypocritical by calling others out for disrespecting women.

Nonetheless, this song has inspired me. I’ve had it stuck in my head all morning, and it’s made me want to copy its style and retell my road trip from Dallas to State College “Book of Rhymes” style, Continue reading →

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May 22 2012
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Dallas, Essay, Travel

Dallas on a bike

When I studied abroad, I biked. The first time was in Switzerland. After hitting the slopes for a day, and falling and falling and falling, I decided to switch from ski to bicycle the next morning. A bike shop stood adjacent to our hostel, largely unnoticed and unused. It was February. A light snow fell and temperatures hovered in the upper 30s at best, yet biking sounded like the right idea.

Unlike running, my exercise of choice, biking feels like the same activity I loved as a kid. My mind wanders much easier, and I don’t exert myself to the limits of pain. Biking is still a “fun” activity. Continue reading →

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Apr 27 2012
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Essay, New York

A Love Letter

I fall from the curb one wheel at a time and stand up to push with all my pounds against the slope. It’s never easy.

Up 16th Street east away from the harbor, leaving the Statue of Liberty behind. Each block is a confused collection of old and young: peeling, window-barred houses in the shadow of six-story condo buildings with ten-foot windows. A Puerto Rican flag hung here two years ago. Now, Liverpool FC.

*****

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Apr 23 2012
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Essay, Sports

Brew House Classic: Tillman’s Red Glare

Sunday was the eighth anniversary of the death of Pat Tillman, a former NFL defensive back who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. The following is re-published from a post about Tillman in Nov. 2009.

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“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind….” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let’s start with this: This essay isn’t intended to have any real political meaning.

We live in interesting times, and it seems everything is political these days. Everything is argued, and every argument is molded into two differing viewpoints. And only two. Every argument is black and white. And there is often little room for shades of gray.

Left vs. Right. Blue vs. Red. Yes vs. No. The NFL vs. Rush, and so on.

To often, Complexity is ignored. OK, we had to put that out there. Unfortunately. And it’s unfortunate because this post really isn’t about politics.

This is a post about Pat Tillman.

See, I’ve been thinking about Pat Tillman a lot lately. Thinking about his life. Thinking about his death. Thinking about football and Emerson and Afghanistan.

This will all make sense in minute. Probably.

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Apr 10 2012
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Dallas, Essay, Music, Travel

Heartbeat

The white beams appeared from nowhere. I suspect they had stood somewhere in the distance beyond the boundaries of downtown for quite some time, as two plastic moldings the size of a skyscraper that meet to form an arch can’t be constructed overnight, but I had never noticed them before.

I was driving with my sister, Rachel, and her friend, Sara, in my white Mustang convertible. Sara had just moved to Dallas. Rachel was visiting. I was giving them a tour. We drove through all the prominent neighborhoods: Uptown, Deep Ellum, Lower Greenville, Highland Park. Near home, the white beams raised from the flat horizon. Dallas must be trying to build a replica of the St. Louis Arch, I joked. Continue reading →

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Apr 06 2012
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Essay, Travel

New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS | It was my first time in New Orleans. Maybe I should start with that. I had arrived on a Wednesday, a full five days of work awaiting.

I had the most superficial understanding of New Orleans. Café Du Monde. Drew Brees. The Superdome. Katrina… and the scenes from the aftermath. Bourbon Street. That Simpson episode where Marge plays Blanche DuBois in a musical adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” And so on.

This was my New Orleans.

And then came Tuesday afternoon. My last day. For five days, I had covered basketball, tracking a Kansas team that wouldn’t wilt, and a Kentucky team that couldn’t. For five days, I had walked the streets of the French Quarter, all of its tackiness and beauty and charm blending together in some strange concoction of Bourbon-infused wonder.

They call this place Le Vieux Carré … the Old Square. Or at least they did.

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Mar 29 2012
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Essay

A Memory

I attended a creative writing class a couple of weeks ago. It was fairly basic: the stuff you’d learn in the first few sessions of an introductory college Fiction or Creative Writing class, all scrunched into one employer-funded weekday away from the grind of the office. Aside from its value as a reprieve from the stress of everyday, the class granted me a newfound obsession, triggered by a prompt to write about a memory of a pivotal life moment.

What and how and how much do we remember?

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Mar 14 2012
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Culture, Essay, Sports

On Obama picking Vanderbilt over Harvard

President Obama filled out his NCAA Tournament bracket this week. It’s become something of an annual tradition these past three years. Andy Katz shows up in a suit, hauls along one of those oversized, cardboard brackets, and Obama grabs a sharpie, delivering his picks with that trademark cadence.

This really isn’t about Obama filling out a bracket. It is, to me at least, one of the cooler things he does. Less cool that he does it on ESPN. But Obama seems to know ball, and his brother-in-law coaches Division I basketball, and basketball just seems to be a family sort of thing; one of those things he shares with people he loves.

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