Tir na nOg In the land of Tir na nOg there lived a faery that wore size 14W Adventure Crocs. Some would call him an ogre and some would call him Grumpy Gramps. What was clear was that he enjoyed feasting on the stories of the realm of the Otherworld, the place where the faeries lived and heroes visited on quests of honor. Tir an nOg was a place just outside the realm of man,…
Virgin Slave Ship I begin by acknowledging that I will never evoke one gram of sympathy for the plight I will be describing in this story. I am officially on vacation as of three hours ago. We are on our way to Ireland for two weeks with all sorts of family and friends. I booked this trip and the house we have rented nine months ago and made a point of booking the flights at…
Lord of the Dance In 48 hours I will be arriving in Shannon, Ireland, gathering up a gaggle of family and friends (19 to be exact) and we will drive in two rented 9-passenger vans and one 4-passenger car the three hours to Westcove, where we have a peaceful and large (operative word is large…as in sleeps 26) manor house and grounds on the Ring of Kerry, right on a lovely cove that looks…
Hacking and Wheezing There has been some lousy bug floating around (I’m sure it’s not limited to New York City, but it’s definitely here) that is not the seasonal flu strain (I got that shot), but it has debilitated several people including me. When I say debilitated, I should be careful. I have not lost one day of work (some of my colleagues who have it have lost a few odd days), and I have…
Downtown Guy Billy Joel forever owns the term Downtown Guy from his song Uptown Girl, which many Billy Joel aficionados consider one of his less great and more bubble gum songs. I was more of a fan of it than others, but no one has ever accused me of having refined taste in music. At least they haven’t once they find out I’m a big Meatloaf fan. So it is with some apology…
Perpetual Notion The Bodies Exhibit was working out just right for Krista. She was taking home almost $400 every shift she worked, between the salary and the cash tips. Everything was handled in cash, which was just fine with her. If she could get just three shifts per week she could cover all her ordinary living expenses and then some. It left her lots of time and flexibility to go on auditions and go-sees,…
Power Sleeping The world talks about sleeping as much as any bodily function. It is clearly one of the basic necessities of life and yet few other functions enjoy such a broad range of discretion, habit and variability. The swaddling of babies is a subject that has been much studied by child development specialists. It turns out that people from northern climes swaddle their babies very tightly and those from southern climes swaddle them very…
Sicko I am blessed with a good healthy constitution, which I attribute mostly to my upbringing of eating a lot of emerging markets dirt. I spent six hears of my youth in the less than hermetically sealed areas of Latin America. The tropical valley in Costa Rica for two years seems somewhat self-explanatory. Things were always on the edge there. The edge of the jungle. The edge of civilization. The edge of tropical dampness. …
The Guy Behind Me I don’t really use Twitter or Instagram because I never feel that my whereabouts and my thoughts as expressed in short, clipped tweets or a selfie should be that interesting to anyone but my dearest closest relationships. Let’s put it this way, my wife might feel forced to keep up with all that, but I doubt even my kids would want that much information about me on a streaming basis. Therefore,…
The Zoo Today I attended the third annual “Power to Ammonia” conference here in Rotterdam. You have to love the tag line. As a child of the sixties, I can hear John Lennon singing “Power to the People”, followed by Jefferson Airplane and their Volunteers. “Got a revolution!” This was no difference, except it’s a different kind of revolution. We all wore bright green lanyards around our necks because what this conference is all about…