There's a strange uniformity in the vocabulary European soccer fans use to hate black people. The same primate insults get hurled. Although they've gotten better over time, the English and Italians developed the tradition of making ape noises when bl...
A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till i...
Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of “playing”. A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which “neighborhood...
Meditation is a mysterious method of self-restoration. It involves “shutting” out the outside world, and by that means sensing the universal “presence” which is, incidentally, absolute perfect peace. It is basically an existential “time-out...
Post-adolescent Expert Syndrome The tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the b...
He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season. But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in...
Words are harsh mistresses, to be sure. Like petulant divas, they want only those parts that play to their talents and mask their blemishes, and only when complete companies of players who love their parts are assembled will they sing in harmony. I a...
Narrator: [introducing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor] What you will see are the different things that might pass through your mind if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music. At first, you are more or less conscious of the orchestra. ...
Trapper John: But Hawkeye, that man has five times the man power to draw than we do. Hawkeye Pierce: Sure, so we get ourselves a ringer, right? We get Henry to apply, making a specific application for a neurosurgeon. He asks for Dr. Oliver Harmon Jon...
Patton: Men, all this stuff you've heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admir...
Judge Doom: [picks up the record from the record player - reads] "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". What a looney selection for a group of drunken reprobates. [all the drinkers turn away and cough - Doom sniffs the record] Judge Doom: HE'S HERE! [throws re...
Robert Graysmith: I've been thinking. Paul Avery: Yeah? Robert Graysmith: Somebody should write a book. Paul Avery: Somebody should write a fuckin' book, that's for sure. About what? Robert Graysmith: About Zodiac. I've been thinking, if you put all ...
Miaow Consider me. I sit here like Tiberius, inscrutable and grand. I will let "I dare not" wait upon "I would" and bear the twangling of your small guitar because you are my owl and foster me with milk. Why wet my paw? Just keep me in a bag and no o...
David St. Hubbins: [to the Janitor] We're in the group. We're in the group that's playing tonight. Janitor: You go right straight through this door here, down the hall... David St. Hubbins: Yeah. Janitor: turn right... David St. Hubbins: Yeah. Janito...
Mrs. Murphy: Don't you "Don't get riled, sugar" me! You ain't goin' back on the road no more, and you ain't playin' them ol' two-bit sleazy dives. You're livin' with me now, and you not gonna go slidin' around witcho ol' white hoodlum friends. Matt M...
We are not consumers. For most of humanity’s existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food. We are not addicts. “I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering ou...
The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orc...
Dialogue in the works of autobiography is quite naturally viewed with some suspicion. How on earth can the writer remember verbatim conversations that happened fifteen, twenty, fifty years ago? But 'Are you playing, Bob?' is one of only four sentence...
I was the cheerleader. Todd the captain of the football team. And Henry the stud dressed in black who cared nothing of football, yet still went to every game, watching beneath the bleachers looking for a reason, with a cigarette in his hand that he d...
I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room ...
«Eliza opened her furry black satchel. She pulled out a portable CD player. “Gav, look here. Once, I loved this machine. Because it plays all my CDs. But nobody buys music in the stores any more! Even I don’t pay for music, and I’m rich! I’m...