PARIS-
Michel Houellebecq has been all the rage among French intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals alike for the past decade or so. (more…)
GLENSIDE, PA-
The plan was simple:
And yet, it wasn’t so simple.
Because there was a good chance that it would be the last one.
The last bachelor party.
After a whirlwind two years of weddings and electric slides, the marriage boom among my friends was starting to wane. (more…)
SAN ANTONIO, TX-
I think we can all agree that humans certainly have not even come close to living up to our potential.
The fact that we only use 10 percent of our brains is one, perhaps obvious, example.
But nowhere is the evidence more abundant than in your seemingly innocuous refrigerator.
PARIS-
French people don’t like to work.
It’s not enough that they have approximately 420 days of vacation per year here.
It doesn’t matter that they’ve basically institutionalized ‘half-day Wednesdays,’ as if it were some sort of happy hour promotion going down at the local Applebee’s. (more…)
MOORHEAD, MN-
I don’t consider taking pens from restaurants and stores to be stealing.
If a waiter at a Mexican eatery uses a pen with that eatery’s name printed on it, then I consider it okay for me to put it in my pocket.
They’re free.
For me, not them.
I’m sure those pens cost the restaurants something.
I’m also reasonably sure that the cost of the pen is factored in to the price of the items on the menu.
PARIS-
The Fourth of July is celebrated on the fourteenth of July in France.
They call it Bastille Day.
Actually, no they don’t.
We Americans call it Bastille Day, because it was on July 14, 1789, that French citizens upset with the monarchy stormed the Bastille in an act that sparked the French Revolution.
(My fiancée, who knows much more about French history than I certainly do, just read that line and said ‘that’s a simplification of facts’, but you can read more on it elsewhere if you like.)
French people just call it ‘La Fête Nationale’.
But they don’t go around saying ‘Bonne Fête Nationale’ to each other.
They also don’t dress up in red, white and blue.
No face paint whatsoever, and no patriotic bikini tops. (more…)
I’m ashamed.
Recently I was so caught up in the World Cup that I missed the All-Star Game.
What happened to me?
I was such a normal kid, growing up with a basketball hoop in the driveway, running pass patterns in the yard, oiling the baseball glove every spring.
Where did I go wrong?
How did soccer become so important to me?
Yeah, I know, I live in France now.
It was bound to creep in a little bit.
But man, missing the All-Star Game?
Is there any acceptable excuse? (more…)
LOS ANGELES, CA-
Just before my friend, Jett, passed away
I was working on a piece of writing
That I felt reflected certain aspects
Of our lives
Part of it went like this:
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA-
In the immortal words of Rob Lowe…
It’s all about last night, baby.
Last night I laughed until I cried.
Last night I banged my head until it threatened to disconnect from my neck.
Last night I un-earthed my rock roots, and found that I didn’t have to dig very far at all.
Last night I discovered, up close, what 30,000 Lycra-clad bogans can smell like in a closed environment.
Last night I found Rock Heaven.
Last night a fireball singed off my eyelashes.
Last night I saw human frailty come head to head with Rock n Roll.
Last night…
… I went to a KISS concert.
LOS ANGELES, CA-
Okay then.
Welcome, everybody, to thenervousbreakdown.com.
People have been asking me lately what this site is, and what it’s all about.
I always tell them that I don’t really know yet.
“As we get going,” I say to them, “I tend to believe that the site will tell us what it is, rather than the other way around.”
I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds good, and people seem to like it, so I keep repeating it in an effort to sound knowledgeable.
On a general level, I guess you could call thenervousbreakdown a multi-blog site.
Or a multi-phlog site.
Or a collective experiment. (more…)
