Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared December 3, 2010.
Harmony Korine’s latest film, Trash Humpers, is probably not coming to a theater near you – unless Chris Crofton makes it happen.
Somewhere in Arizona a rattle develops underneath Winnie Cooper. It’s not one of those rattles you can live with, it’s a heart-stopping rattle that is so loud that you can’t even hear the endless and life-killing whine of the tires on yet another stretch of…
Jean Shepard once wrote that “summer descends on the Midwest like a fat lady on a picnic bench.” Spring and fall are wonderful: full of vibrant colors. The summer, however, is beset by oppressive heat and humidity, and they don’t let up until late September….
THAT LONG NEWSPAPER SPOON was a xerox mag I sporadically produced between 1990 and 1999, under the imprint “Colicky Baby Records and Tapes.” The name is derived from a quote by William Burroughs: If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the…
The weather is freezing, and we’ve gone as far north and east as we are able. Time is crushing us and we have to get back to the middle of the country for a western route that will take us all the way to Utah…
Uncle Sonny, my father’s brother, died in a horrible car crash shortly after he turned 50. He was driving home to Ohio from Houston. He tried to pass a logging truck on a hill in Arkansas and ran into another truck. Blamo. Glass from the…
As we left off last week, Anna and Sigmund Freud were at the Vienna Zoo contemplating human sexuality… And, now the conclusion to the series. III. As father and daughter walked through the reptile section of the zoo, Sigmund pondered aloud the utilitarian explanations for…
Editor’s Note: This Dec. 16, 2011 post is being re-run to celebrate Walker Percy’s birthday.
A programming note: Comedy Central is now running back-to-back episodes of 30 Rock just about every night.
30 Rock is the only network sitcom to give Seinfeld a run for its money, if you ask me.
Maybe I should be on Twitter. #TinaFeyIsAGoddess. #Duh.
Reading Walker Percy does not make me want to tweet. It makes me want to write.
It’s hard to say which one of Percy’s novels I like best, because there are several I return to again and again.
Currently, it’s The Moviegoer. I don’t understand how anyone could not want to read this book 20 times.
The Moviegoer was published in 1961, and won the National Book Award in 1962. Percy’s debut novel was the product of a long artistic journey. He was in his mid-40s when The Moviegoer made him a force in “Southern literature,” which is the kind of literature all writers born south of the Mason-Dixon produce, apparently. (Don’t get me started.)
This is me, John Sheppard, not some writerly pose. This is me talking, so listen up, take a knee. I have something to say directly to you, without the mediating booze called fiction. Twenty years ago today, on May 27, 1992, my little sister Nancy…
Since 2003 I’ve not been on a plane. I don’t have fear of dying. Dying is afraid of me. But I have this sort of claustraphobic reaction when they close the big door. Sweaty head. Heart palpitations. It’s the same feeling I have when the…
Last week Gabacho concluded his post with the following comment, “The woman commentator was reading off the national and international headlines of freak-show oddities and she came across the work of two inventors that were designing a robot to take the place of prostitutes, which…
We were back on the road, headed east through Arkansas, south of Memphis, and down toward Mississippi. We spent the night at a mammoth RV park that was emptying out after a two-day swap meet that had been held on the grounds. We steered Winnie…
so there I was
minding my own business
and trying to take care of it
out of nowhere
the elephant sat on me
just needing to rest a bit