I’m built like a mullet. Business in the front, party in the back. What is it about an awkward ten-or-eleven-year-old that screams, “please call attention to my body?” That was the time when my body started developing; my family fretted that I might be swaybacked and admonished me to stand up straight. At dances, the [...]
I’m walking into the kitchen at my grandfather’s house, and my uncle Charles is there, watching TV on the little color set on the tiled counter. He’s watching the new Ken Burns documentary, and I’m preparing to slowly edge out of the room, because The Civil War (Parts 1-199) nearly robbed me of my will [...]
I was one of the first generations to grow up with rap music. When I was a child (in the good old days of Reaganomics) rap fell into two categories: message rap (Public Enemy) and party rap (Run D.M.C.). Message rap discussed politics and institutional racism and other important things. (Sometimes, but not always, Flavor [...]
Once, when I was taking an adult Bat Mitzvah class, I mused that, as a Jewish convert, the thing I missed most about Christmas was the smell of Douglas Fir in the hall. (Apparently, I’m not alone; the rabbi smiled and said, “everybody says that.”) I didn’t mention that I also miss my grandmother. Weeks [...]
I have been a lonely Jew on Christmas for nearly ten years now, and, each year, my tolerance for fail-Christmas songs lowers perceptibly. Part of it, I know, is merely old age: when I was a child, every Wham! “Last Christmas” or NKOTB “Funky Christmas” brought me closer to an obscene quantity of disposable plastic [...]
