A “Mondegreen” is when they play Owner of a Lonely Heart, and you hear “Omar was a lonely horse.” I learned Home, Home on the Range when I was very young. I didn’t know what “seldom” meant when I learned the song: Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all ...
I have become convinced that higher powers are communicating with me via the graffiti that covers the walls along my train route. FREAK PHOBE Riot About half of the landscape I cross is heavy industrial. Last Thursday, I saw a group of men running across a lot. Their paths converged on the point of a ...
When I first visited UC Irvine, I was already committed to going to grad school there. I thought I should take a look around. We drove down from Los Angeles for the afternoon and spent the entire time lost. Irvine, both the campus and town, were meticulously planned for maximum disorientation. Sinuous, circular streets. No ...
This morning, I put H.’s breakfast bowl of oatmeal in the microwave, because she said she wanted it heated up. She proceeded to scream at me because I hadn’t let her push the buttons on the microwave. When I told her I hadn’t known that she wanted to push the buttons, she could push them ...
A long time ago in New York, I saw Ben Folds Five at a small club in the East Village. I held onto the name of the club for a long time, but my brain has now given up on such categories of information. I remember a standard-issue black box, with sticky floors and a ...