1. Americans

Jackson was walking down the street, headed to The Container Store when he saw his friend Timothee approaching. He hadn’t seen Timothee since two summers ago, when they both were stagehands on Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, so they were happy to see each other. Timothee also appeared to be eating a taco.

My parents and I used to play a game where one of us would think of some ridiculous dare, assign an arbitrarily low price to it, and then would keep increasing the ask until a “Yes” happened.

The list of things that I don’t know is boundless. Endless. Infinite. There are so many things that I don’t know that the only thing approaching it in scale is the list of things I don’t even know that I don’t even know.

It’s morning in America, as we bask in the afterglow of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. winning the presidency after a contentious battle with Donald Trump. This wasn’t just a win for President-elect Biden and Kamala Harris. It was a victory for hope, for honor, for righteousness, for the ancestors, for a return of class,…

I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to eat the leftover tacos from last night’s dinner order. It’s the simplest but least attractive option, because refrigerated and reheated tacos don’t age well, so if I do eat them, I’ll probably eat them cold. Also, if I make this decision, will I choose the chorizo joints or the…

“Did you see us?” called a mysterious and haunting chorus behind me while I was walking down the street. I was puzzled because the street was just empty, so I assumed perhaps I was either daydreaming or just misheard an arbitrarily articulate dray of squirrels.

If you extract yourself from your body and the present and view America as a single, 401-year-long continuum, the only aspect of our nation that has remained static through our existence is white supremacy. It is both the threading fabric connecting 1619 to 1776 to 1863 to 1956 to 2016 and the amniotic fluid greasing…

When the dust settles and a winner of the presidential election is declared tomorrow night or some time in 2023, the results will immediately be proceeded by a vast and annoying ecosystem of discourse attempting to find answers, give thanks, and assign blame. Fortunately, we do not have to wait that long to perform…

When attempting to explain, during a university-sponsored book talk a few weeks ago, the difference between truth and honesty to the students, I posed a scenario where Jeff Bezos decided to buy a house on my block and live there. With him as my new neighbor, if you took the newly combined net worth of each of the…

Wait.

When first hearing about Kate Rubins, the NASA astronaut who’s currently in a space station 200 miles above Earth but was able to vote last week, I was excitedly curious about the process. Did NASA create a hologram Kate to enter a booth and cast a vote? Did a bewinged USPS truck travel to space to pick up and deliver…

Pictured is a buttermilk pancake and a brussels sprouts bowl. They’re both from a place called The Square Cafe, which used to be in the Regent Square neighborhood in Pittsburgh but recently moved to East Liberty. Although I haven’t eaten inside of a restaurant since March, I still do pick-up orders, and it might be my…

So Inside Out is a Pixar movie about a kid named Riley and mostly about the intersecting and competing emotions inside of her that exist like a control center in her brain and how all emotions—even the ones like sadness that we’d rather not have—have a symbiotic relationship. It was released in 2015 but I watched it…

It was a month ago, I think. Maybe two. Maybe last week. Time is a flat circle. I was on a Zoom call with either the people I don’t need to actually see in order to effectively communicate with them—which is most people. Like eight billion people. Or the people I might actually need to see while I’m talking to…

Do you remember this guy? If you’re my age (41) or older, you probably do. I’m sure Ice Cube does, because he’s old as fuck! If you don’t, his name is Ellis and he’s from a movie called Die Hard.

Along with my colorful collection of Crown Royal bags, tennis shoes and children, there’s probably nothing I have more of in my house than decks of playing cards. This is partially because of a habit I picked up in college due to rampant Spades playing: I never wanted to be caught out in the streets without a deck of…

I’ve always believed that the single Drakiest Drake song is “Shot For Me.” It’s petty, it’s passive-aggressive, and it’s actually pretty damn mean and nasty, but its meanness and nastiness are obscured by Drake’s falsetto-ey intonation.

1. Pestilence

This past weekend I did what I’ve done almost every weekend this year: took another L on the Nike SNKRS app. If you’re into buying sneakers, I’m sure some (if not most) of you can feel me.