A Little Over Thirty Seconds
“The fastest way to get me to shut up and shut down.”
Hair of the Dog
“Here’s a weekend from ten years ago.”
Forced Conversation With a Seven Year Old
“We could be staring at the ghosts of dead stars.”
Profiles in Portfrancisco, or: Why Blogging is Dead
“It was simply a beacon, a lighthouse drawing others to me, and me to others.”
The Making of Rafael
“Sometimes I worry if my writer friend Rafo could survive the zombie apocalypse.”
Tunnel Vision
“It’s only the day after, but you can feel it in your bones.”
Interrogation
“My last statement, and in fact, this entire thing, is all just a tawdry device to share unimportant information about myself.”
Ergo
“Dissolve into quick perverse thoughts and observations about pop culture shifts.”
The Eight-Year College Reunion
“I don’t feel like these people I’m with.”
Times I Have Felt American
“On TV, they’ve unfurled an impressive United States flag that covers the entire field.”
If a Tree Falls
“OK so sometimes I wonder where technology will take us.”
Amish
“It’s just this very faint noise coming out of his mouth.”
Schaumburg
“More than several times during the summer of 2001 when I’d interned somewhere in Schaumburg, a ninety-minute commute for me, I’d gone out to lunch all by myself.”
The Parrot
“Remember that crazy old geezer I used to play basketball with in the Gold Coast a few years ago?”
When Snow Attacks
“The sun finally came out in the late afternoon.”
Auld Lang Signs
“When I was little New Years Eve used to scare the shit out of me.”
The Orb
“My stare, erratic at first, finally settled on a shiny red glass orb hanging from the tree.”
Bristol
“The jester, chained to stocks, mocks me once more.”
Lights Out
“This morning, as I walked into my bedroom to get dressed, I reached for the light switch.”
Foreheads
“On women I have a not-so-secret yet seldom understood fetish for foreheads.”
Hand Me Down
“So it was a shotgun wedding and they didn’t have much time to plan anything, which is why the reverend showed up in flip flops.”
Wiseguy
“We ate next to the mafia tonight.”
My Thing With Natalie Portman
“My thing with Natalie Portman is very complicated.”
An Unfortunate Enunciation, Not a Freudian Slip
“The sad thing about all of this is I used to be really laid back and easygoing.”
Now I Can Die in Peace
“Hey Bill, you’re a great sportswriter and I’mma let you finish, but Rick Reilly had the best book signing ever!”
Ronson
“The needle on the imaginary record player screeched to a halt, the room fell silent.”
Chasing Jillian
“Ran into Jillian from The Bachelorette at the Walgreens on Michigan and Illinois.”
Little Trouble in Big China
“People aren’t afraid to merge on freeways in Beijing.”
Steve Nguyen
“God, I am so sick of my twin brother wearing that stupid fake mustache.”
Annie Are You OK
“The King of Soda died yesterday.”
Bob (In Invisible Text)
“Some of us joke all the time that everyone at our college had Asperger syndrome, but this guy might have been the real deal.”
Unsweet Justice
“The mugger looked like Wyclef Jean.”
Typo
“Every time I chat on IM with a girl I try to seduce her by mentioning how bad I am at something.”
The Incredible Shrinking Peter
“Yes, many late nights I am downstairs in the kitchen furiously spraying aerosol cheese into my mouth.”
Coach He Was a Good Coach
“Who’s next, Coach asks, yawning a bit, walking circles around the mound.”
Palace of the Brine
“Do you know what sea-monkeys are?”
Vu
“The childhood memories came flooding in.”
The Uncle Named Fuck
“I have an uncle named Fuck.”
Reorganization of the Day’s Events
“First these guys parachuted into Wrigley Field, then Grant flirted with this greasy shiny-faced girl with a mustache.”
Absinthe-minded
“You could say the absinthe kind of made our trip and ruined our trip.”
All Night Diner
“You’ll never feel dumber when you rattle your pockets to see if you have everything before leaving the all night diner at three in the morning.”
Wikipedia Entry on Pistol Pete
“During the mid-90s, Peter devoted many hours of the school day scribbling rhymes into the margins of his notebooks.”
The Incident
“Things were never quite the same after I stabbed my father in the living room with a candy cane that I’d been working on all afternoon.”
Street Wisdom
“The homeless StreetWise Lady swears to me that she’s an expert on erectile dysfunction.”
Raining on His Parade
“I once shattered my old college record by downing nine Jamesons on a Saturday night surrounded by mostly strangers.”
Gerontophobia
“Many Thursdays are spent playing basketball with these old geezers at the Marriott Hotel off of Michigan Avenue.”
Indian Gothic
“All of a sudden I’m not living with my roommate anymore.”
Mea Culta
“The cult gathering that Rachel invites us to is something to do on a Friday night so Frank and I show up and it’s actually not so bad.”
Dramamine
“Even at sea level, we now know how people standing on top of Mount Everest must feel looking down on the world.”
Greenlawn
“No matter what we say to each other, we can’t shake the feeling that this is a really shitty thing to do.”
Strange Perks of Living on the 40th Floor
“It happened again. A low flying cloud passed through our building this morning.”
Ambitionz Az A Writer*
“Stop fucking around and be a man! There ain’t nothing out here for you—”
