New from me today at The Full Moxie
It is not the mundane we wish to escape by watching sports or going to the movies. It is the hardships. It is the stress of our jobs, the weight of the economy, the perils of war, the barrage of bad news that comes at us every day. We look to entertainment not to fill a space in our lives, but to smooth over the parts where our lives are full of bumps.
Read, enjoy, etc.
I broke up with hockey immediately after the lockout was announced. I’d been through this before; wasn’t something I wanted to experience again. There’s not enough Xanax in the world to get me through another messy “are we or aren’t we a couple” relationship again. I wanted to cut it off, clean break. Maybe see other people. Lionel Messi was calling. I could hook up with La Liga and never look back.
In which the NHL and I cautiously get back together after a messy breakup.
My latest at the Full Moxie, the sordid story of working in a record store during the Christmas season.
So many dropped jaws and wide eyes as parents spied the cover to Quiet Riot’s Metal Health. That’s what my child is listening to? Oh My God! He’s a devil worshiper! I knew it!! Or Suicidal Tendencies? OH MY GOD MY BABY IS GOING TO KILL HIMSELF! If a parent annoyed me by asking me to “suggest something” for a kid I knew nothing about, I’d go to great lengths to find albums with the most horrific artwork, or the most offensive names. Yes m’am, I’m sure your son would just love a copy of Crippled Children Suck by the Meatmen!
When the cookies were a bit cooled, I sprinkled the colored sugar on them. The sugar rolled off. There was a rainbow of Christmas all over the cookie tray, but not on the cookies. So I put more sugar on and pressed the sugar down on the cookie to get it to stay. The cookie broke.
I poured myself a glass of gin. No, not a martini. Just the gin. Not even an olive. This called for clearheadedness and olives just get in the way of that.
I put a fresh batch in the oven and a light bulb – a teeny tiny light bulb just like the one in an EZ Bake Oven – went off in my head. I’ll sprinkle the sugar on before they bake! That must be how Martha does it!
If New York is the city that never sleeps, Barcelona is the city that sleeps at weird-ass hours. Here in the early morning haze, a couple sits drinking whiskey. A few skateboarders whizz past us and two young women get off a bus, looking a bit disheveled and a lot drunk.
My latest column is up at The Full Moxie.
At first, we were champion survivors. We read by candlelight. We ate cheese sandwiches and blueberry muffins, drank bottled water and iced tea. We pretended we were the Ingalls. I even did my “Mary goes blind” imitation and everyone got a great laugh out of that.
That was the first night.
The second night we ran an extension cord to my neighbor across the street who luckily still had power. We lit a lamp, charged our phones and stared at each other. You know that Bugs Bunny episode where the two guys are stranded on a desert island and they start to see each other as hamburgers and hot dogs? We were seeing each other as television and Xbox consoles.
My second column at The Full Moxie: How Not to Survive a Hurricane Aftermath.
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Trying to find the humor.
