LAFAYETTE, LA -

This afternoon, aside from running my dog, all I did was sleep. 

After a temporary hiatus from caffeine for health reasons,[1] I had bought a twelve pack of diet coke the week before. I’ll just have one a day, I told myself, all smiles and rainbows in the artificial light of the grocery store. Everything will be fine. But everything was not fine. The first day I had one can.  The second day I had two. By the third, I was hitting the soda machine at the college where I teach like a crack fiend.[2] (more…)

HARRISON, NY -

Dear Mom & Dad,

Should you ever stumble across this article: it was all Grandpa’s fault. I swear. If he hadn’t taken me to the club, I never would have become a stripper.

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Laramie, Wyoming 
Cars and trucks parked on a street in the American West.

TNB TV 
God bless Lewis Black.

COLUMBUS, OH-

Shit is gold. That’s the message I saw written in the snow on the State House lawn as I waited for my bus transfer. It was Monday, January 19th, the last day of W’s reign of dumbness and I was feeling jubilant.  The stinging cold did not hinder the usual crowd of stragglers, panhandlers and misfits. Even the Thalidomide Kid was in his usual spot across the street, bobbing to his interior beat next to his coffee can full of change. I was hoping for the bus to hurry and as I waited, I wondered what the anonymous author meant by his cryptic message. (more…)

NEW PALTZ, NY -

My favorite song of all time is “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” by Billy Joel. The live version, the opening track on Songs from the Attic. Once in a blue moon they play it on the radio, but it’s always the slower studio incarnation, from Turnstiles, that lacks the urgency—provided by Liberty DeVito’s frenetic drumming—of the live cut.

Inspired by the famous Daily News headline (FORD TO NYC: DROP DEAD), “Miami 2017” is a science fiction piece, an imagination of the U.S. government unleashing the dogs of war on the Big Apple. It is a eulogy of New York City, a prescient piece of writing orders of magnitude superior to the maudlin “New York State of Mind” they play when the Mets win. Almost always, it gives me chills.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

“The Maid of the Mist isn’t running,” a tourist with a British accent says, studying a map of Niagara Falls, New York. “Wasn’t there something called the Cave of the Winds?” His companion, a slim woman with red hair and freckles and dark-brown eyes, shrugs, crinkling her nose. The man continues, “I remember you wore raincoats, climbed a slippery wooden stairway and entered a cave behind the falls.” “Maybe,” the woman answers, but she seems cold in her black pea coat, seems to shrink from an overcast day and icy drizzle. She puts a small hand on the man’s arm and asks, “Would we want it to be open in November?”

The Cave of the Winds, once located behind the Bridal Veil Falls, was destroyed by a controlled dynamite blast in 1955. By then the once large cave – 130 feet high, 100 feet wide and 100 feet deep, had shrunk and been reduced to about a third its original size. Falling rocks had ‘shrunk’ the cave and hurt or endangered several visitors. (more…)

TNB TV 
Danielle Ate the Sandwich is artsy and self-aware.

Winter Wonderland 
This is Zermatt, Switzerland at nightfall.

BROOKLYN, NY –

Filmmaker Kevin Smith jokes about the Platypus in the opening disclaimer to his film: DOGMA

Remember: Even God has a sense of humor. Just look at the Platypus.  Thank you and enjoy the show.

P.S. We sincerely apologize to all Platypus enthusiasts out there who are offended by that thoughtless comment about Platypi. We at View Askew respect the noble Platypus, and it is not our intention to slight these stupid creatures in any way. Thank you again and enjoy the show.

The Platypus

Genus: Ornithorhynchus
Species: Anatinus 

While categorically a mammal, the Platypus has physical characteristics of birds and reptiles as well. Studies have proven that the Platypus was the first species to diverge from reptile to mammal and therefore, evolutionarily speaking, it is sometimes thought of as The Missing Link.

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HOUSTON, TX -

There is a bird, a little brown and yellow bird, that has been outside my window for the last four days.  It’s a yellow-throated warbler if you need some more information to complete the visual.  I know that because my grandmother used to watch the birds in her backyard all the time and I used to sit out there with her as a kid.  This bird though… this bird wakes up at six in the morning.

TAP.  TAP.  TAP.

Tapping on my window while I’m sleeping isn’t the wisest thing.  Growing up with four brothers and spending nearly eight years living with a girl with a propensity for violence tends to make you sleep a little lightly.  I can go from REM sleep to “who’s getting kicked in the face” pretty quickly.  (more…)

SARANAC LAKE, NY -

It’s Friday afternoon by the time my plane lands in Albany.

It was supposed to be Friday morning, but Southwest has planes with phobias about flying that come from Florida to Baltimore and I inevitably wait an extra hour each time I fly north.

I’ve gotten used to it, unfortunately.

The nice man at the Enterprise kiosk asks me if I need a map as he hands me my receipt and I smile slightly, knowingly, and tell him that no, I know my way around.

These are old stomping grounds, this Albany area and the towns just north and to the east of it.

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TNB TV 
This is unsettling.

Barcelona 
The view from Park Guell, looking out to the Mediterranean.

PHILADELPHIA, PA-

John Updike did not influence my writing. The first time I read his sentences I thought: well…I can’t do that.  And I never tried. Updike, who died on Tuesday at the age of 76, was a writer to be admired, not imitated. His prose style was the literary equivalent of photorealism, and his deconstruction of suburban life revealed a witty sociologist with a deep understanding of human motivation.

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THE DEEP SOUTH-

The bottom of my socks are dirty, filthy even.

“Where are your shoes?” my wife inquires.

“Um….”

There’s a four-story corkscrew slide in the giant glass pyramid jutting from the roof of the Nashville Adventure Science museum. The sun has dropped behind the hills and the place is nearly empty.  My wife and I have been sliding, in pairs, head first upside down, having great fun.

“OK, this time…put your feet behind me and kick me down –”

“Kick you?” she asks.

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SALEM, MA-

“I don’t know how to break this to you, but I’m baking the penis cake.”

My wife shook her head, defeated. She knew that morning that there was nothing she could do to stop me. So instead, she made me promise that if the cake wasn’t well-received at the party, I would make a public announcement saying that she had not approved of it.

I agreed.

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New York City 
As seen from a window in a building.

TNB TV 
How to give yourself a pedicure.

SANTA MONICA, CA-

“Health is the intuitive art of wooing nature.” W.H. Auden

A trip to a Whole Foods market is always a pleasant adventure if not an education in wellness. From the delicious olives to the fine wines and exotic cheeses to the organic goat milk ice cream, who doesn’t love Whole Foods?! Needless to say, the samples are always my highlight. A few months ago, I was venturing through the aisles when I came across a sampling of an odd product called Ghizz.

“Interesting,” I said. “Is it organic?”

“Does a bear poop in the woods? Is the Pope Catholic? Is your yoga teacher insane?” the Ghizz employee quickly replied. “Try some.”

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