At the tail end of June, I stopped posting on Twitter. I’d been inching toward that decision for a while, in large part because the space had become so joyless. I realized I was mostly there out of a sense of obligation, or maybe fear—if I wasn’t out their touting my own work, would anyone […]
Tags:lighthouses·Twitter
I’ve been trying really hard to fall back in love with the English language, and this gargantuan compendium of racehorse lineages is really helping. There’s such a pleasing alchemy to the way the names evolve over the different generations, and then often end up with a thoroughbred whose moniker can be interpreted as having multiple […]
Tags:horse names·horse racing·Jack Gilbert·language·poetry·writing
In the name of getting better as a writer, I’ve been grappling with the aspects of the craft that I’m pretty terrible at. High up the list is final paragraphs—I just struggle so much with concocting a hefty parting thought that naturally connects to all that has come before. On the rare occasions I manage […]
Tags:Blank Check·Bob Fosse·Dorothy Stratten·endings·movies·narcissism·podcasts·Star 80·Teresa Carpenter·Village Voice·writing
I’m still immersed in trying to get a hard-to-corral Wired story out the door, so deeper thoughts will have to wait another day or two. In the meantime, let me point you toward one of the better microprojects I’ve come across in recent days: A year-long effort to chronicle art that depicts reflections in space […]
If Goal A with the revival of Microkhan is to get myself back in the habit of writing and creating stories, then Goal B is to celebrate folks completely nerding out about the most random of subjects. I find few things more admirable or adorable than people who’ve clearly fallen in love with some arcane […]
Tags:boats·junks·martime·South Vietnam
Though the jury’s still out as to whether it was wise of me to reboot Microkhan, I’m happy to report that this endeavor has had one incredibly positive outcome so far: While hunting for some daily material the other week, I came across an idea that I’m tempted to to make my next major project. […]
Tags:1980s·books·Brian Bosworth·football·literature·Maui·memoirs
Like most folks who spend too much time on The Tubes, I’m signed up for dozens of newsletters that I rarely, if ever, crack open. But I never do a thoughtless delete of The Prepared, a weekly publication about the nitty-gritty of how complex and gargantuan objects get made. Though a fair chunk of each […]
Tags:engineering·manufacturing·newsletters·recommended·The Prepared·the sublime
When you pick through the work of accomplished nonfiction writers, you’ll usually find that they keep exploring the same general theme through multiple projects. In the case of Randall Sullivan, that theme can be neatly summarized as, “Charismatic individuals whose delusions of grandeur exert a strong gravitational pull on people in search of meaning.” It’s […]
Tags:adolescence·crime·FFF·gangs·Gizmondo·Los Angeles·Randall Sullivan·writing
I have a lot of good things planned for next week, including pieces about an obscure cinematic ending I’ve grown to love, a punk band with delusions of grandeur, and mouth-to-snout resuscitation. For the moment, though, I’ll confess to feeling out-of-sorts and thus not up to writing anything of particular value today: I’m pretty burnt […]
Tags:Stephen King·writing
The title of today’s post could easily be yesterday’s: “Commitment to the Bit.” Because what I find most fascinating about the field of hitchhiker studies is the effort that its practitioners pour into gathering data. I don’t know many social scientists who would throw themselves into their work quite like the authors of “WHO PICKS […]
Tags:flowers·hippies·hitchhiking·psychology·science·sociology
It would honestly have been super-easy for me to blow off posting here today, mostly because—and I have the page-view statistics to support this contention—literally no one is reading what I write. But I didn’t want to betray the main reason I opened Microkhan back up, which is my desperate need to get back in […]
My Grand Unified Theory of Celebrity Profiles™ is that they should only be written when the subject is smack dab in the creative valley between their early peak and their first real comeback. Because that’s when a writer worth his-or-her salt is able to capture the character traits I find most interesting in accomplished artists: […]
Tags:addiction·celebrity profiles·drugs·Esquire·Gregg Allman·writing
The Nakhla meteorite is one of the most famous objects to ever smash into this planet of ours. Originally produced by a Martian volcano some 1.3 billion years ago, the meteorite disintegrated over Egypt in 1911, producing at least 40 individual shards that currently reside in a range of museums. Locals who witnessed the event […]
Tags:dogs·Egypt·meteoritics·Nakhla meteorite·reporting·urban legends
