Criticism-in-finity!
Posted in Reviews on Aug 29th, 2011
Anyone who’s talked to me this summer knows about my bowling team, “The Creepers.” For novices, “creeper” is the term for a slow moving ball. A bowling ball rolling very slowly down an alley. I’m being literal here, talking about the sport of bowling. Wanting to be modest about our abilities (our bowling abilities), my [...]
Posted in Reviews on Aug 26th, 2011
At this week’s soft opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, DC, a child yells out, “I have a dream,” mimicking King’s cadence. It’s a joyful voice, singing over the crowd. Everyone poses for photographs in front of the memorial’s elements: the Mountain of Despair, split down the middle, through which [...]
Posted in Reviews on Aug 22nd, 2011
Maintenance man Bob with the mullet coiffure says, “Th’ain’t jus’ become bitches and assholes, they’ve always been that way”– a time-weary observation shared by most of the staff. The job is paper-pushing, but it requires a moderate level of strength to push oneself through the thirteen floors of elderly tenants ranging from plantation inheritors to [...]
Posted in Reviews on Aug 16th, 2011
May 31st – Loss gets weighed and re-weighed. August 14th – The lights go out on New York. September 11th – A childhood friend dies in a plane crash in California; I go on a first date with my future wife. Anniversaries are opportunities to recount, to share experiences. They are elastic tethers that draw [...]
Posted in Replies & Rebuttals on Aug 11th, 2011
I moved into my apartment without meeting any of my roommates. I did not know then that the phrase “that’s classic Luis” would soon enter my vocabulary. When he broke our only trivet the other day, that was classic Luis. He broke all of our plates and now we’re down to two. A while back, [...]
Posted in Replies & Rebuttals on Aug 8th, 2011
The Decision: to run a marathon. To commit months of training, log the miles, ice the legs, tape together graying toenails, stretch the just-discovered intercostal muscles. To look in the mirror reflecting a body, at last, conquered. But what about conquering the mind? Because running a marathon demands one formed so differently from the gelatinous [...]
Posted in Reviews on Aug 3rd, 2011
While Googling myself, I discovered a brief synopsis for an upcoming film called The Telephone Hour, in which Robert Downey, Jr. plays an agoraphobic man named Sam Martone. Excited, I began Googling Sam Martone, not myself, but the character Sam Martone as portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr. in The Telephone Hour, only to learn the [...]