Essays

1989: Where Does That Highway Lead to?

“Well, how did I get here?” – David Byrne. Phew. We’ve been submerged in the deep, dark waters of nostalgia — revisiting the month of June 1989. (Click here for a streamlined review of the thirty days, plus the bookend essays, … Continue reading →

Bill Simmons Is Important: Part 1

Back about six months ago, when I was letting the hordes of Beitelblog fans select the topic of each week’s essay by popular vote, one of the recurring options I offered up was “Bill Simmons vs. Peter King.” For the … Continue reading →

Bill Simmons Is Important: Part 2

A couple weeks ago, I wrote this big long thing about how Bill Simmons is important, not just as a sportswriter with a massive audience, but as a social phenomenon. It got so long, in fact, I had to break it … Continue reading →

Bill Simmons Is Important: Part 3

Okay: where did we leave off [click here for Part II]? Oh yeah: “Which brings us, more or less, to where we are right now. What the hell does all of that mean, you might ask? And what does it … Continue reading →

Birmingham: An Empty American City on Any Old Saturday Night

In the 1870s, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, sprouted up at the very tail end of the Appalachian mountain chain. There were natural reasons: by luck or providence, all the resources needed to make pig iron lie buried in the … Continue reading →

Faith Is an Abstract Art…

The other night was a vivid swirl of dreams. I can dredge up only gestures now: images, moods, colors. I know Grace Jones was there. I know it was something like the end of the world. But vibrant and alive. I … Continue reading →

Love (or Something Very Nearly Like It)

I’m just going to noodle around here for a little while. This one will come in fits and starts, and it might also be long, so if that’s not your cup of tea, feel free to skip it. Don’t mind … Continue reading →

Notes on a Series of Revelations: Parallel Universes, Rabbit Holes, and the Idea of Making it Big

“Sometimes I need a revelation.” – Glen Hansard, The Frames. I’ve spent the evening in a parallel universe. Which is to say: Ireland. Which is to say: YouTube. Which is to say: There’s a whole world full of stuff that … Continue reading →

Notes on an Alma Mater

  We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming… I had been posting a group of — for lack of a better word — “poems” in this space, all from a series I’ve dubbed American Cosmologies Sutras. Each of these thirteen “cosmologies” … Continue reading →

On Why Random Interaction with Strangers Is Sometimes the Best Proof We Have of a Larger (Benevolent?) Organizing Principle to the Cosmos

Okey-dokey, here’s some deep-seated wisdom for you. It’s all about how Saturday — yesterday — Valentimes Day — which is, of course, supposed to be a knockdown, drag-out celebration of the verymost intimate relationship(s) of your life — was, for … Continue reading →

Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution (Part 1): Media = Message

Martin Luther King, Jr., was good at a lot of things. Messaging was most certainly one of them. In the burgeoning age of mass media, he and Wyatt Walker, the SCLC’s executive director and a former journalist himself, knew how … Continue reading →

Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution (Part 2): Youth Will Be Served

There are two sound bites that stick with me from the SCLC march this weekend: 1) A man in overalls and an attractive, multicolored fez took it upon himself to be the unofficial manager of crowd flow. He wanted us … Continue reading →

The Unbearable Lightness of Being in the American South

A confession: I’ve lived in the American South for the last thirteen years. Not quite a third of my life but still a significant chunk of time. And I’m not counting the six years I lived in southwestern Virginia. That’s … Continue reading →